The many imagined lives of Fernando Pessoa

thebaffler.com

35 points·no_kill_i··6 comments

There's a good BBC In Our Time podcast about Pessoa: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000q0yj

"There is a joke in Portuguese literature; Who are the four greatest Portuguese poets of the 20th century? A. Fernando Pessoa."

If looking for works translated into (fluent) English, visit the (Pessoa archive) site [ http://arquivopessoa.net/textos ]

click on the line that begins '7. Poesia Inglesa ' and it will reveal 6 links (e.g. '35 SONNETS') that lead to translations of Pessoa's work. Impressive.

As far as I know the “poesia inglesa” section, including the book you mentioned refer to poems originally written in English (not translated) by Pessoa.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/35_Sonnets

He went to school in Durban, South Africa and was fluent in English.

Past related threads (though some go kind of offtopic):

Fernando Pessoa: Office Worker, Occultist, Galaxy of Writers - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28191843 - Aug 2021 (16 comments)

The Politics of Fernando Pessoa - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27768795 - July 2021 (17 comments)

A Little Fellow with a Big Head: On Fernando Pessoa - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23983483 - July 2020 (7 comments)

Fernando Pessoa’s Disappearing Act (2017) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23894466 - July 2020 (46 comments)

Coincidentally, "pessoa" is Portuguese for "person."

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