Sem ver a cara que tem os meus versos em letra impressa...
These verses were written by Alberto Caeiro, the great zen-like, bucolic Portuguese poet! Born in Lisbon, on April 16, 1889, raised by an older aunt, never went to college, and preferred the simple life, near nature. Died of tuberculosis in, oh, not quite sure when he died… Well, history books say he died in 1915 but there are circumstances that indicate he may have lived much longer…
If I die young,
Without having been able to publish a book,
Without having seen how my verses look in print,
I ask those who would protest on my account
That they not protest.
If so it will have happened, then so it should be.
Even if my verses are never published,
They will have their beauty, if they're beautiful.
But they cannot be beautiful and remain unpublished,
Because roots may be hidden in the ground
But their flowers flower in the open air for all to see.
It must be so. Nothing can prevent it.
If I die very young, take note:
I was never more than a child who played.
I was pagan like the sun and the water,
With a universal religion that only humans lack.
I was happy because I didn't ask for anything,
I didn't try to find anything,
And I didn't think there was any explanation beyond
The word explanation meaning nothing at all.
I wanted only to be in the sun or in the rain--
In the sun when there was sun
And in the rain when it was raining
(And never in what was not),
To feel warmth and cold and wind,
And to go no further.
Once I loved and thought I'd be loved back,
But I wasn't loved.
I wasn't loved for one overwhelming reason:
It wasn't meant to be.
I consoled myself by going back to the sun and rain,
And sitting at the door of my house again.
The fields are not as green for people in love
As for those who are not.
To feel is to be distracted.
ENGLISH TRANSLATION:From «Fernando Pessoa & Co.: Selected Poems, edited and translated from the Portuguese by Richard Zenith (Grove Press: 290 pp.)
Se eu morrer novo,
Sem poder publicar livro nenhum,
Sem ver a cara que têm os meus versos em letra impressa,
Peço que, se se quiserem ralar por minha causa,
Que não se ralem.
Se assim aconteceu, assim está certo.
Mesmo que os meus versos nunca sejam impressos,
Eles lá terão a sua beleza, se forem belos.
Mas eles não podem ser belos e ficar por imprimir,
Porque as raízes podem estar debaixo da terra
Mas as flores florescem ao ar livre e à vista.
Tem que ser assim por força. Nada o pode impedir.
Se eu morrer muito novo, oiçam isto:
Nunca fui senão uma criança que brincava.
Fui gentio como o sol e a água,
De uma religião universal que só os homens não têm.
Fui feliz porque não pedi cousa nenhuma,
Nem procurei achar nada,
Nem achei que houvesse mais explicação
Que a palavra explicação não ter sentido nenhum.
Não desejei senão estar ao sol ou à chuva —
Ao sol quando havia sol
E à chuva quando estava chovendo (E nunca a outra cousa),
Sentir calor e frio e vento,
E não ir mais longe.
Uma vez amei, julguei que me amariam,
Mas não fui amado.
Não fui amado pela única grande razão —
Porque não tinha que ser.
Consolei-me voltando ao sol e à chuva,
E sentando-me outra vez à porta de casa.
Os campos, afinal, não são tão verdes para os que são amados
Como para os que o não são.
Sentir é estar distraído.
Alberto Caeiro, 1915, “Poemas Inconjuntos”, in Poemas de Alberto Caeiro.
Here, if you wish, you can see a dreamy video and hear the poem, recited in Portuguese, by Mario Viegas, a Portuguese actor. I like it for the marvelous recent discovery of his voice, it gives me chills, and for the music, of course. The video was made by Cine Povero, filmed in Portugal and in Holland, the background music by Arvo Part, Fur Alina. And a most peculiar entry point to the author’s worldview in the last line: “To feel is to be distracted”, “Sentir é estar distraído.”
Oh, but wait, isn’t Alberto Caeiro one of the many personas imagined by the intriguing poet Fernando Pessoa?
Yes, he is. The poet of my teenager years, when I and my best friend would choose to stroll down from school to downtown, instead of catching the crowded city bus, so that we could recite Fernando Pessoa, Alberto Caeiro, Ricardo Reis, Alvaro de Campos and his many others very loud, in happy harmony, memorized just for that day, to the last felt word. A bit before computers and the internet.
Autopsicografia O poeta é um fingidor. Finge tão completamente Que chega a fingir que é dor A dor que deveras sente. E os que lêem o que escreve, Na dor lida sentem bem, Não as duas que ele teve, Mas só a que eles não têm. E assim nas calhas da roda Gira, a entreter a razão, Esse comboio de corda Que se chama o coração. © 1931, Fernando Pessoa (himself), from: Poesia, Publisher: Assírio & Alvim, Lisbon Autopsychography The poet is a faker Who’s so good at his act He even fakes the pain Of pain he feels in fact. And those who read his words Will feel in his writing Neither of the pains he has But just the one they’re missing. And so around its track This thing called the heart winds, A little clockwork train To entertain our minds. © Translation: 2006, Richard Zenith, from: A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe: Selected Poems, published by Penguin, New York, 2006
And then Fernando Pessoa disappeared…until now, when I re-discovered the Book of Disquiet, sitting quietly on my bookshelf, given to me by a friend, published here in the States in 2002, in a masterful edition and translation by Richard Zenith - The Book of Disquiet is a must read.
Fernando Pessoa (1888 – 1935) created more than forty-seven heteronyms and according to Richard Zenith, he wrote under at least seventy-five names. So this book might be considered a biography of many?
I quote from the book freely because the authors and their translator say it so well!
“Long before the deconstructionists began to apply their sledge-hammers to the conceptual edifice that sheltered our Cartesian sense of personal identity, Pessoa had already self-deconstructed, and without any hammer. Pessoa never set out to destroy himself or anything else. He didn’t attack, like Derrida, the assumption that language has the power to mean, and he didn’t take apart history and our systems of thought, in the manner of Foucault. He just looked squarely at himself in the mirror, and saw us all:”
Then on to a quote from Pessoa himself.
“Each of us is several, is many, is a profusion of selves. So that the self who disdains his surroundings is not the same self who suffers or takes joy in them. In the vast colony of our beings there are many species of people who think and feel in different ways. (Text 396)”
If you are familiar with Portuguese, check out the delightful open-source archives of Pessoa’s work, designed with fun and good teaching in mind.
“...hoje já não tenho personalidade: quanto em mim haja de humano, eu o dividi entre os autores vários de cuja obra tenho sido o executar. Sou hoje o ponto de reunião de uma pequena humanidade só minha.”
“...today I no longer have a personality: what there is in me of human, I have divided it among the various authors, and I am the doing of their work. I am today the meeting point of my own small humanity.”
A particular passage touches me, when Pessoa describes the birth of Alberto Caeiro. He is trying and failing to create the pagan poet he imagines and almost gives up. Then, one day, he stands up at his desk, as is his preferred custom, and he writes more than thirty poems:
“in a state of ecstasy, the nature of which I cannot define… It was a triumphal day in my life and I shall never have another one. …What followed was the showing of someone in me, whom I named Alberto Caeiro. Forgive me for the absurdity of the phrase: there appeared in me my master. That was the immediate sensation I had. “
So, Fernando Pessoa is a curious example of someone who created not one, not two, not three, but many personas, all writers, all in relationship to him, the author? A cultivator of self-polytheisms? In the early days of the 20th century…
Like much of what we see now, we live in a composite world, where selves and authors mesh, in a network of possibilities. Personally, I find it very interesting that the self can dissolve so easily and become else. Yet it is fascinating and strange to see the effort exerted in the reconstitution of the self into some kind of higher, better format… the self still, the main reference, but healed and enlightened? individuated and still separate? Very puzzling…
For another view of self, or maybe a similar one, a link to a friend’s blog archive, from before. Show me the face you had before you were here.
What also fascinates me is that Fernando’s people are not masks to cover a face, as masks tend to cover only the face. And so one may tend to reduce being to the recognition of the face/self. His people are entire beings expressed in bodies, with biographies, lives, professions, feelings, sensations and dreams. Each one had his or her own astrological chart, biography, signature and thus hand writing, their own likes and dislikes. And they lived in constant relationship to each other.
And here is one of my many Fernando Pessoa drawings, and for many years, I attributed the verses to him. Only very recently having discovered that he did not write the words at all, nor did any of his writing personas! The words are from Carlos Drummond de Andrade, another important and marvelous poet of my childhood. Go dare and figure out any absolute certainties you may have, about your many selves…^--^ “Memories drip from the neck from the suit and tie, from the rainbow wrap around your sleep and persecute you in search of iris in reflection.” “As memórias escorrem do pescoço do paletó, da gravata, do arco-iris enroscam no teu sono e te perseguem em busca de pupila que as reflitam” Carlos Drummond de Andrade Next on my list of puzzling and difficult books dealing with the many selves: Dahlia's Iris: Secret Autobiography and Fiction, by Leslie Scalapino. and a biography of self by a Tibetan Buddhist monk - a contradiction in terms... Apparitions of the self, the secret autobiographies of a Tibetan visionary, A Translation and Study of Jigme Lingpa's Dancing Moon in the Water and Dakki's Grand Secret Talk, by Janet Gyatsu, Princeton University Press. I may never finish reading them but they stay on as a challenge. And life continues amidst emojis, emails, and internet quotes: "All is worthwhile if the soul is not small." "Tudo vale a pena quando a alma não é pequena." Fernando Pessoa.
I've been thinking about koans, and the practice of being. These lines spoke to me:
"...I was pagan like the sun and the water,
With a universal religion that only humans lack.
I was happy because I didn't ask for anything,
I didn't try to find anything,
And I didn't think there was any explanation beyond..."
And, I love that you and your friend recited poetry together on the way home from school. So lovely and unsurprising, knowing you. Thanks, Erica.
Beautiful! No facts to face.