Fernando Pessoa and his Heteronyms: Alvaro de Campos

 

           Fernando Pessoa and his Heteronyms: Alvaro de Campos

Fernando Pessoa is a melancholic Portuguese poet and writer who created heteronyms (alter egos with different personalities and writing styles) to express his thoughts  in his writing. Fernando Pessoa created a total of 80 heteronyms but the three who have the most extensive body of work and that are most fleshed out are Albert Caeiro, Ricardo Reis, Alvaro De Campos. I am currently reading "A Little Larger than the Entire Universe" which is a collection of Pessoa's poetry. I want to share some of his work with the world so I will be highlighting his poetry as well as the poetry of the three heteronyms mentioned above.  This is an appreciation post- I want to appreciate Pessoa and I want to share writing that has helped me cope through these difficult times. His poetry is peace for me.

Last but not least we have Alvaro de Campos. De Campos has a very powerful and passionate (to the point of violent) writing style. There's these two contradictory feelings that abound in his words. On one hand he has a desire to be everything to consume and become it al, but on the other hand we have a sense of nostalgia and loneliness and emptiness. It feels to me like his writing is all about finding the meaning of his existence, on one hand to wants to be everything but on the other hand he feels a bit of hopelessness or disappointment in life and wishes to be isolated from it.

Here are some of his beautiful lines:

"My doing nothing is what condemned me"

"and if only I could be all people and all places"

"Ah, to depart by whatever means and to whatever place! To set out across the waves, across unknown perils, across the sea! To go far, to go wide, toward abstract distance, indefinitely, through deep and mysterious nights, Carried like  dust by the winds, by the gales! To go, go, go once and for all! All of my blood lusts for wings! All of my body lurches forward! I rush through my imagination in torrents! I trample myself underfoot, I growl, I hurtle! My yearnings burst into foam and my flesh is a wave crashing into cliffs!"

"a soul overflowing with sea"

"throw my life to the wind, to the waves, to the sea!"

"and my happy childhood wells up in me like a tear...calling up from my past...that happiness I'll never know again"

"light breezes of contradiction grazing my soul"

"I want physical bodies to belong to eachother like souls"

"No boundaries anywhere! No divisions in anything! Just me."

"and my heart is a little larger than the entire universe"