The strange case of the poet who drowned in pseudonyms. BBC radio profile of Fernando Pessoa

Pessoa is Portugal’s most famous poet and a pretty odd dude. He invented over 75 pseudonyms. Some were literary critics and had lively bitchy correspondence with each other in magazines. You could almost say Pessoa suffered from multiple personality syndrome. He was ‘possessed’ by these alter egos. In fact, he didn’t call them pseudonyms but rather heteronyms to emphasise they had a separate existence. But after a while, these excursions into imaginary characters became an excuse not to deal with his own life. He had no real friends and only one somewhat doomed love affair with an office clerk called Ophelia.

His writing was done on the back of envelopes and the printed stationery you used to be able to get in cafes. Pessoa was a commercial translator working for shipping and mining interests - he spent most of his free time bouncing between those various Lisbon cafes or riding around in trams.

After he died archivists found a huge trunk of writing which was his plans for a strange book Pessoa called ‘The Book of Disquiet’ written by the heteronym most like himself - Bernard Soares - ‘a mutilation of myself’. The mutilation was an absence of Pessoa’s witty take on life. Bernard Soares was a portent for the latter life of Pessoa when the effort of maintaining 75 separate existences got too much and the lack of any intimate social life or fame ground him down. He turned into the grey half-shadow of the man he had dreamt up. Or had dreamt up him..

Matt Thompson spoke with Pessoa’s best English translator and an expert on the book of disquiet, Richard Zenith. Another fascinating witness is Pessoa’s niece, Manuela Nogueira, who knew him well when she was a child.

All the readings are by David Holt.

Producer Matt Thompson

Loftus/Rockethouse Production for BBC Radio 3.

For educational purposes only.