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This is the first of two posts which will feature the poetry of the great Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa who famously wrote his poems under various assumed identities or ‘personae’. In fact even his Portuguese surname translates as ‘person’ or ‘persona’. In this post, the poems chosen were published under his own name, which may well be as fictive as his more obviouslky created ‘heteronyms’.

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Fernando Pessoa (1888 – 1935) was born in Lisbon. At six years old, he accompanied his mother to Durban where his stepfather was Portuguese consul. At seventeen, he returned to Lisbon, where he remained throughout the rest of his life. Pessoa wrote poems either under his own name or under various ‘heteronyms’ (poetic personae he invented, each with a very different personality, style and biography). These were Alberto Caeiro (agrarian, little formal education, positivistic in outlook), Ricardo Reis (medical doctor, influenced by Horace) and Alvaro de Campos (retired naval engineer, explosively modernistic, influenced by both Whitman and the Italian futurist Marinetti). He wrote in Portuguese, English and a short sequence in French, Chansons Mortes (to be featured in The High Window shortly).

NB: You can listen to the original texts by clicking on the Portuguese titles.

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Four Poems by Fernado Pessoa translated by Ranald Barnicot

I DON’T KNOW HOW MANY SOULS I HAVE

How many souls have I? Search me!
Moment to moment I’ve changed, I change,
Never there to find, nor see,
Constantly to myself most strange.
From so much being just soul I take.
Soul can break the soul or ache.
Who sees is only what he sees,
Feelings furnish no identities,
To what I am and see attent,
I turn to them. And me? No sign!
Each dream, desire, spent or unspent,
Belongs to its own birth, not mine.
I’m my own landscape to survey,
My passage I witness and waylay,
Diverse, mobile and alone,
Each resting place unfelt, unknown.
Thus like a stranger I peruse
My being’s pages, never foreseeing
Whatever thought or act ensues,
Whilst past, forgotten, falls from being.
In the margin I jot, I scrawl,
Imagined feelings past recall,
Rereading then, ask, “Was that I?”
God knows, who wrote it, which is why.

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Não sei quantas almas tenho

Não sei quantas almas tenho.
Cada momento mudei.
Continuamente me estranho.
Nunca me vi nem achei.
De tanto ser, só tenho alma.
Quem tem alma não tem calma.
Quem vê é só o que vê,
Quem sente não é quem é,
Atento ao que sou e vejo,
Torno-me eles e não eu.
Cada meu sonho ou desejo
É do que nasce e não meu.
Sou minha própria paisagem,
Assisto à minha passagem,
Diverso, móbil e só,
Não sei sentir-me onde estou.
Por isso, alheio, vou lendo
Como páginas, meu ser
O que segue não prevendo,
O que passou a esquecer.
Noto à margem do que li
O que julguei que senti.
Releio e digo: «Fui eu?»
Deus sabe, porque o escreveu.

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AUTOPSYCHOGRAPHY

The poet is a fabricator,
Who fabricates so entirely –
Of self’s anguish skilful shaper –
This feigned anguish is felt truly.

Readers of what the poet writes
Feel in the anguish that they read
No anguish that in two divides,
Merely the single they don’t feel.

And so, gyrating on toy tracks,
Diverting reason – start-stop-start –
Drawn on electric cord clicks, clatters
This train we give the name of heart.

(Previously published in By Me, Through Me, Alba Press, 2019)

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Autopsycografía

O poeta é um fingidor.
Finge tão completamente
Que chega a fingir que é dor
A dor que deveras sente.

E os que leem 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 de roda
Gira, a entreter a razão,
Esse comboio de corda
Que se chama coração.

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SONG

Music’s playing — sylphs or gnomes? …
In the pine groves shadows brush,
Rhythms pattering and rustling,
Light breaths blending stir and hush,

Undulating curving roads
Flowing through I know not where,
Someone flitting tree to tree and
Vanishing to reappear.

Distant and uncertain shape
Never mine for all I try …
I scarcely hear, I all but weep,
Weeping though I know not why.

Such a tenuous melody,
If it exists I scarcely know,
Whether just the twilight falling …
The pines … sadness that pains me so..

But it ceases like a breeze
That forgets to shape its moan;
Now the music’s vanished, leaving
The pine trees’ music — that alone!

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Canção

Silfos ou gnomos tocam?…
Roçam nos pinheirais
Sombras e bafos leves
De ritmos musicais.

Ondulam como em voltas
De estradas não sei onde
Ou como alguém que entre árvores
Ora se mostra ou esconde.

Forma longínqua e incerta
Do que eu nunca terei…
Mal oiço e quase choro.
Por que choro não sei.

Tão tênue melodia
Que mal sei se ela existe
Ou se é só o crepúsculo,
Os pinhais e eu estar triste.

Mas cessa, como uma brisa
Esquece a forma aos seus ais;
E agora não há mais música
Do que a dos pinheirais.

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THINKER

They say I fib or feign
In all I write. Not so!
Imagining, I make
Such feelings as I show.
Of heart I just let go.

All that I am, go through,
All that may finish, fail me,
Is a terrace from which I view
New vistas to regale me.
There lies the beauty, truly.

That’s why I write, surrounded
By what no sense can reach,
Free, un-self-confounded,
Seriously reflecting the unreal.
Feel? Let the reader feel!

(Previously published in The Cannon’s Mouth)

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Pensador

Dizem que finjo ou minto
Tudo que escrevo. Não.
Eu simplesmente sinto
Com a imaginação.
Não uso o coração.

Tudo o que sou ou passo,
O que me falha ou finda,
É como que um terraço
Sobre outra coisa ainda.
Essa coisa é que é linda.

Por isso escrevo em meio
Do que não está ao pé,
Livre do meu enleio,
Sério do que não é.
Sentir? Sinta quem lê!

Ranald Barnicot is a retired English language teacher, having worked in Spain, Portugal, Italy and the UK.  He has published original poems and translations from Ancient Greek, Latin, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian in journals, including Poetry Salzburg Review, Acumen, Orbis and The High Window. A Greek Verse for Ophelia, and other poems by Giovanni Quessep (Out-spoken Press), co-translated from Spanish with Felipe Botero Quintana, came out in November 2018. By Me, Through Me, original poems and translations, was published by Alba Publishing in January 2019. Friendship, Love, Abuse etc The shorter Poems of Catullus (Dempsey and Windle) was published in July 2020.

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