EXCOMMUNICATION I, Charles Robert Anon, being, animal, mammal, tetrapod, primate, placental, ape, catarrhynce, (...)man; eighteen years of age, not married (except at odd moments), megalomaniac, with touches of dipsomania, dégénéré superior, poet, with pretensions to written humour, citizen of the world, idealistic philosopher, etc. etc. (to spare the reader further pains). In the name of TRUTH, SCIENCE and PHILOSOPHIA, not with bell, book and candle, but with pen, ink and paper, Pass sentence of excommunication on all priests and all sectarians of all religions in the world. Excommunicabo vos. Be damned to you all. Ainsi-soit-il. Reason, Truth, Virtue per C.R.A. s.d. Pessoa Inédito . Fernando Pessoa. (Orientação, coordenação e prefácio de Teresa Rita Lopes). Lisboa: Livros Horizonte, 1993. - 46. 1ª publ. in Moral, Regras de Vida, Condições de Iniciação. Fernando Pessoa. (Textos estabelecidos e apresentados por Pedro Teixeira da Mota.) Lisboa: Ed. Manuel Lencastre, 1988. It was a kind of disease — a perpetual pining for something which was I felt unobtainable; a longing for something so vague, so indefinably beautiful, that earth could not contain it. Affections, loves, relations of sex — all there seemed to me cold, so cold. Genius is a disease, a glorious disease, but a great one. s.d. Pessoa Inédito . Fernando Pessoa. (Orientação, coordenação e prefácio de Teresa Rita Lopes). Lisboa: Livros Horizonte, 1993. - 47. Holiness, consider my sin. I thought of my mother, whom I had lost in early childhood, and whom, oh God!, I shall never forget. And I imagined unto myself (…) They meant all well; yet they might have left the dream to the dreamer, as they would leave to the bird its young. My dream is to me as the scent is to the flower, as the color is to the sky, as the wave [?] of the ocean is to the ocean. s.d. Pessoa Inédito . Fernando Pessoa. (Orientação, coordenação e prefácio de Teresa Rita Lopes). Lisboa: Livros Horizonte, 1993. - 48. I noticed within myself the gradual and awful differentiation of the world and of myself the difference between men and me was greater than ever. Family affections — my family's to me — took a cold look, a painful appearance before my warmth of affection to all mankind. A disgust of living invaded my soul; I grew inimical to men's opinions, loving mankind deeply all the while. Every day that saw me older saw the widening of the fearful grief. I was a genius, I realised the truth, and saw also this other, that being a genius I was a madman. To succeed, says Dr. Reich, a young man needs 3 things: geography, history and religion. For «religion» I should substitute «faith», meaning by this sincerity. But to succeed in the world, if that be what Dr. Reich means, then I shall assert that to succeed in the world 3 things are required: lack of conscientiousness, of scruple; brutality; interest. They follow so easily upon one another, are so logically connected, that we may write them all in one word: criminality, or a tendency thither. s.d. Pessoa Inédito . Fernando Pessoa. (Orientação, coordenação e prefácio de Teresa Rita Lopes). Lisboa: Livros Horizonte, 1993. - 49. Ten thousand times my heart broke within me. I cannot count the sobs that shook me, the pains that ate into my heart. Yet I have seen other things also which have brought tears into mine eyes and have shaken me like a stired leaf. I have seen men and women giving life, hopes, all for others. I have seen such acts of high devotedness that I have wept tears of gladness. These things, I have thought are beautiful although they are powerless to redeem. They are the pure songs of the love on the vast dung heaps of the world. s.d. Pessoa Inédito . Fernando Pessoa. (Orientação, coordenação e prefácio de Teresa Rita Lopes). Lisboa: Livros Horizonte, 1993. - 50. My chief mania was a morbid propensity to search for the cause of things; I saw in all things cause and effect; lotteries raffles occupied me long in striving to find out their causality. I would reason at everything and with everything. s.d. Pessoa Inédito . Fernando Pessoa. (Orientação, coordenação e prefácio de Teresa Rita Lopes). Lisboa: Livros Horizonte, 1993. - 51. I loved a woman; there was the story of sex relations, an emotional novelty. They were sex relations and no more. It was pleasure and no more. s.d. Pessoa Inédito . Fernando Pessoa. (Orientação, coordenação e prefácio de Teresa Rita Lopes). Lisboa: Livros Horizonte, 1993. - 17. Community of wives is an immoral theory not because it shocks popular opinion (it were moral did it only do so), but because the human faculty of conjugality is against it, because therefore, it disagrees with human nature. It is an honour to the phrenologists, that they, working a posteriori have hit the faculty of conjugality. s.d. Pessoa Inédito . Fernando Pessoa. (Orientação, coordenação e prefácio de Teresa Rita Lopes). Lisboa: Livros Horizonte, 1993. - 18. What is, for the man, all married life? A stepping from the brothel to the nuptial couch and thence back to the brothel — not litteraly but metaphorically, yet truly by making a brothel of that marriage bed. s.d. Pessoa Inédito . Fernando Pessoa. (Orientação, coordenação e prefácio de Teresa Rita Lopes). Lisboa: Livros Horizonte, 1993. - 19. THEORY OF PERCEPTION Let us consider, say, my perception of a table, and let us attempt to find what is the process of my thought in the perception. We find these to be the action of our mind. Previously, I know what a table is; this idea is in me, rooted. When I see this thing before me, my conception of a table passes out of me into the object, which is similar, of a generality, to it. My thought returns to me bearing with itself a particularised idea of a table — the table that I see before me. Thus thought, after passing through the object links the object to itself, as a particularisation of thought. C. R. Anon 1906? Textos Filosóficos . Vol. II. Fernando Pessoa. (Estabelecidos e prefaciados por António de Pina Coelho.) Lisboa: Ática, 1968. - 207. Psychologic automatism . Automatic motion (sans consciousness in the whole individual) of an arm is the effect of a cause — will in the cells, molecules with which constitute that arm. (CRA). What of double personality? Every spiritual act has the character of absoluteness or of infinity. Thought is neither extended nor temporal. It is the sensation of that thought which is in time and in space. To say judgement, reasoning, etc., is but the displacement of molecules is to talk nonsense. The phainomena are none the less heterogeneous, [...] Definition of cause (Schopenhauer): «The antecedent modification wich renders necessary the consequent modification.» (Scholastic): « Per causarn intelligo id quo sublato tollitur effectus .» This last definition has the defect of being also applicable to the conditions of a fact (phainoumenon). Taking away space and time. Definition: «By necessary is understood all that results from a given sufficient reason.» «The Ego», says Taine, «is but a property common to all the phenomena of consciousness, the property that they have of appearing to us as interior, abstracted from these phenomena and transformed by words into substance.» Is this not an argument similar to the idea — argument of Plato? C. R. A. 1906? Textos Filosóficos . Vol. I. Fernando Pessoa. (Estabelecidos e prefaciados por António de Pina Coelho.) Lisboa: Ática, 1968 (imp. 1993). - 128. IDENTITY OF BEING AND NOT-BEING Pure Being (that is, substance) is that beyond which, outside which nothing can be conceived. Now, that beyond which nothing can be conceived is unbounded, indeterminate and therefore inconceivable, for we can only conceive things in so far as we determine them. Now that which is inconceivable is that in which nothing can be conceived. But that in which nothing can be conceived is negation , not Being. Pure Being = Pure not‑Being. CRA. Simile of «substance and shadow». The realities (secondary) are will ( substance ) and idea (light), (but a light from within, created by the substance) the shadow they produce is the body. This is not a dualism; for the body is held to be but a phainoumenon. On the other hand neither is there a dualism of idea and of will, for these two, being of the same nature cannot constitute a duality. They are one. 1906? Textos Filosóficos . Vol. I. Fernando Pessoa. (Estabelecidos e prefaciados por António de Pina Coelho.) Lisboa: Ática, 1968 (imp. 1993). - 130. I saw the little children... (…) A hatred of institutions, of conventions kindled my soul with its fire. A hatred of priests and kings rose in me like a flooded stream. I had been a Christian, warm, fervent, sincere; my emotional, sensitive nature demanded food for its hunger, fuel for its fire. But when I looked upon these men and women, suffering and wicked, I saw how little they deserved the curse of a further hell. What greater hell than this life? What greater curse than living? «This free-will», I cried to myself, «this also is a convention and a falsehood invented by men that they might punish [?] and slay and torture, with the word «justice», which is a nickname of crime (which is a hallowed crime)». «Judge not», the Bible has it — the Bible; «judge not, that ye may not be judged!». When I had been in Christ I had thought men responsible for the ill they did — I hated tyrants, I cursed kings and priests. When I had shaken off the immoral, the false influence of the philosophy of Christ, I hated tyranny, kinghood, priesthood — evil in itself. Kings and priests I pitied because they were men (...) s.d. Pessoa Inédito . Fernando Pessoa. (Orientação, coordenação e prefácio de Teresa Rita Lopes). Lisboa: Livros Horizonte, 1993. - 52. «Thy will be done» (with a capital T) Though ever on earth and on sea There be the shadow of thy curse Daily more terrible and worse Thy will be done! «Thy Will be done» (with a capital W) O Man, though many a woe doth trouble you, Still you pray on, and beat your heart, And thank the Tyrant in his nest: «Thy w[ill] be done». «Thy will Be done» (with a capital B). Though more than horrid misery Break the whole earth and wreck the nations Man cries on, in vile resignations: «Thy will be done!» «Thy will be Done» (with a capital D) All are (...) and all unfree, And yet from cottage and from hall The groaning and the dying call «Thy will be done!» «Thy W[ill] Be Done» (all with capital letters), Although God (...) our mind and fetters, We roll our eyes and groan uncheerly We join our hands and half-sincerely Exclaim from life we pay too dearly: «Thy will be done!» 3-4-1906? Pessoa Inédito . Fernando Pessoa. (Orientação, coordenação e prefácio de Teresa Rita Lopes). Lisboa: Livros Horizonte, 1993. - 53. GOD'S EPITAPH Here lies a tyrant whom some called a devil, Snake-like his folds around our life he curled; He's dead now, and the world hath no more evil, Because there is no longer any world. 2-1906 Pessoa Inédito . Fernando Pessoa. (Orientação, coordenação e prefácio de Teresa Rita Lopes). Lisboa: Livros Horizonte, 1993. - 54. EPITAPH OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH Friends, tread in peace, here lies the devil; The world hath now but little evil. 2-1906 Pessoa Inédito . Fernando Pessoa. (Orientação, coordenação e prefácio de Teresa Rita Lopes). Lisboa: Livros Horizonte, 1993. - 55. RONDEAU I swore my love should never fall For her, the one entrancing she; I promised marriage, I recall, And said none was more dear to me. But soon this love began to fall, And all her joy was turned to gall; Till from the beak there came a call To mind me that in times of glee I swore. At court all men she did enthrall, Myself was left no room to crawl; She won the case. When I did see Five thousand was the hellish fee, Why — hang it — then, confound it all, I swore. 1-1905 Pessoa Inédito . Fernando Pessoa. (Orientação, coordenação e prefácio de Teresa Rita Lopes). Lisboa: Livros Horizonte, 1993. - 56. My soul is like a painted boat That like a sleeping swan doth float Upon the silver waves of thy sweet singing. s.d. Pessoa Inédito . Fernando Pessoa. (Orientação, coordenação e prefácio de Teresa Rita Lopes). Lisboa: Livros Horizonte, 1993. - 57. A kiss is more than a touch of lips (it is a touch of two hearts, of two souls, of two glowing portions of the life spirit). s.d. Pessoa Inédito . Fernando Pessoa. (Orientação, coordenação e prefácio de Teresa Rita Lopes). Lisboa: Livros Horizonte, 1993. - 58. Durban, 7th. July, 1905 «The Man in the Moon», «Natal Mercury» Office, Durban. Sir, I have been somewhat astonished, in the perusal of the «Natal Mercury», and especially of your column, to perceive how meanly, and in what slavish way, sarcasm and irony are heaped on the Russians, on their army, and on their Emperor. I know too well that it is the nature of men; where are not culture and dignity, to laugh at misery and at disaster, so that these be to the harm of others, and implicate themselves in no way. Even where some consideration exists for the soul-clear bounds of tragedy and of comedy, and nothing but that consideration — no feeling and no thought besides — laughter is repressed at those things which outlie the bounds of the ridiculous. Every reverse and disaster of the Russian army or navy is in such a way made the subject of a jest among us, that we seem to have nothing more amusing. Some of the Russian admirals, even after their death or their capture, have caused us outbursts of sniggering. The Czar himself, when dismayed by revolution and by war, and when in distress and in grief over his armies, appears to be taken by the British people as an animate joke of great value. To us, Englishmen, of all men the most egotistic, the thought has never occurred that misery and grief ennoble, despicable and self-caused though they be. A drunken woman reeling through the streets is a pitiable sight. The same woman falling awkwardly in her drunkenness is, mayhap, an amusing spectacle. But this very same woman, drunken and awkward though she be, when weeping the death of her child is no contemptible nor ridiculous creature, but a tragic figure as great as your Hamlets and your King Lears. If I may be permitted to make one more consideration, I should like to point out that pure shame should restrain us from laughter at the Russian woes, and from the making of jokes upon them. It is quite clear, I believe, that our hearty amusement may be constructed, not even by one malicious, into a joy from the relief we now have from fears of an Indian disturbance. Russia does not now threaten our Eastern possession; and is it therefore that we laugh? Surely this thought is too obvious; it must have occurred to us ere we laughed — the greater shame that we laugh notwithstanding. As an answer, however meagre, to these ridiculings, I send you three sonnets, for which I ask such pulicity as has been extended to writers on the other side. On the whole, I am extremely sorry to have such proofs of human ignobleness and unfeeling. We should not, were we in truth manly, laugh at the woes of others; but we cannot, as it seems, force manliness on ourselves. Yet if misery and grief delight us, and the woes of our enemies amuse, let us be so far noble as to say no thing, and look within us our joy — let us not, however it may be, burst into laughter, least of all into the unsteady sniggering of those whose fears are dispelled, than which there is nothing more base. Yours faithfully, Charles Robert Anon. 7-7-1905 Pessoa Inédito . Fernando Pessoa. (Orientação, coordenação e prefácio de Teresa Rita Lopes). Lisboa: Livros Horizonte, 1993. - 59. ON THE LIMITS OF SCIENCEs Empirical investigation can lead to nothing, for it is based upon an illusion - on a coherent illusion, but none the less on an illusion. When I say can lead to nothing, I mean it cannot be made the basis of a philosophic system. Idea of immortal life not horrible. It would be horrible if it were immortal life of body and mind together. Immortal life of the soul alone is not horrible but natural and pleasing to it. 1907 Pessoa por Conhecer - Textos para um Novo Mapa . Teresa Rita Lopes. Lisboa: Estampa, 1990. - 138. So many philosophies, so many theories, all of them how strange in the light of day. How they wound men in their common sense, in the mode of reasoning by which they are nearest to the animals. How many phrases monstrant of madness! How many hidden things! How many thoughts that have no name! Look on this system of philosophy; madness! Look upon that: more madness still! How many a gigantic edifice of reasoning and of pure thought is but, however great its truth may be, a symptom of insanity of mind! «Le silence éternel des espaces infinis m'effraie!» Consider the meaning of this. s.d. Pessoa por Conhecer - Textos para um Novo Mapa . Teresa Rita Lopes. Lisboa: Estampa, 1990. - 139. DEATH Man's fear of death caused by the tought of how hard it is to leave this warm frame and become cold etc. The senses' pleasures are hard to relinquish. The fact that man knows nothing. The unknown is terrible. All thought useless, for the more we think of death the more we are unable to understand it; useless efforts of all philosophy. Earth so fair, seems impossible that we shall ever leave it. In front of the dead how striking is the awful change, especially if they have been joyful; we recognize how easlly beings die. It has been said that pain is in dying not in death - Various states of misery man can reach (even a coward when he loses all fear of death, and may even commit suicide, his is so terrible a state of mind that it is well not to consider it. s.d. Pessoa por Conhecer - Textos para um Novo Mapa . Teresa Rita Lopes. Lisboa: Estampa, 1990. - 140. THE DEATH OF THE TITAN EPICUREAN From night's great womb with pain the horrid morn hao broke, Far o'er the throbbing earth the clattering thunders roar, The Titan wakes at last, his front begrimed with gore, His brutal gasp abrupt uproots the rugged oak. In mortal throes he raves, and with his stertorous croak The birds are struck, the streams with terror dried, the shore Caves into sea, mounts break down to their horrid core, The tottering crags are rent, is rent the cloud’s gray cloak. The lightning shrinks, the seas in roaring clangor splash, The giant sways and now, with sudden thunderous crash, Falls, and the throned stars from glittering seats are torn. He fell; the startl'd earth, with frantic fury stung, Split, burst, and broke; the air with rankling curses rung But in the sky the sun still smiled as in scorn. 4-1904 Pessoa por Conhecer - Textos para um Novo Mapa . Teresa Rita Lopes. Lisboa: Estampa, 1990. - 141. Atribuído a Alexander Search in Poesia Inglesa , Liv. Horizonte, 1995 ON DEATH When I consider how each day's career Doth with its footstep dark [?] yet heavy tread Approach my soul to those great regions dread And bring my youth to timeless death more near, Though strange and sad to one it doth appear That I (who now feel life) must soon he dead Some vague, uncertain sorrow weighs my head And whelms my coward mind with lengthless fear. Nevertheless through sorrow, rage and tear, My heart yet each moment's boon shall sense. And shake rude laughter from each heart-felt moan: Not without hope is most extreme despair, I know not death and think it no release - The bad, indeed, is better than the unknown. 5-1904 Pessoa por Conhecer - Textos para um Novo Mapa . Teresa Rita Lopes. Lisboa: Estampa, 1990. - 142. Atribuído a Alexander Search in Poesia Inglesa , Liv. Horizonte, 1995 SONNET Could I say what I think, could I express My every hidden and too silent thought, And bring my feelings, in perfection wrought, To one unforced point of living stress; Could I breathe forth my soul, could I confess The inmost secrets to my nature brought, I might be great; yet none to me has tought, A language well to figure my distress. Yet day and night to me new whispers bring, And night and day from me old whispers lake… Oh for a word, one phrase in which to fling All that I think or feel and so to wake The world, but I am dumb and cannot sing - Dumb as you clouds before the thunders break. 5-1904 Pessoa por Conhecer - Textos para um Novo Mapa . Teresa Rita Lopes. Lisboa: Estampa, 1990. - 143. Atribuído a Alexander Search in Poesia Inglesa , Liv. Horizonte, 1995 ESSAY ON DETECTIVE LITERATURE Order: Part One. 1. Popularity of detective stories and reasons for it. 2. What are detective stories? 3. Necessary points of these tales. 4. Obstacles in the way of detective-story writers. 5. Deterioration of detective literature. Part Two. 1. Edgar Allan Poe. 4. Conan Doyle. 5. A. Morrison and others. s.d. Pessoa por Conhecer - Textos para um Novo Mapa . Teresa Rita Lopes. Lisboa: Estampa, 1990. - 146. Anyone who is acquainted with the English and American literature of today knows weIl that a large portion of the works produced are what are called detective stories or tales of mystery. There is no being who can hold a pen but writes, and there are few who have not attempted, now and then, to write an intellectual story. When we consider them, it cannot but be astonishing that, until now, no one should have thought of writing an essay on this branch of literature or of studying its laws and its logic. But the reason is no other than that of the 2 classes of readers, (the high critical being one, and the low critical and the crowd generally the other), the first, seeing these tales mostly in the hands of mere scribblers, considers the type as of no value; and the second being pleased with them (as they are, indeed, pleased with any sort of nonsense) cares nothing for the rules, for, in its opinion, the tales are perfect. s.d. Pessoa por Conhecer - Textos para um Novo Mapa . Teresa Rita Lopes. Lisboa: Estampa, 1990. - 147.