The Problem of Languages. If the possession of a great literature were in itself sufficient to establish, not the mere survival, but the widespread survival of a language, ancient Greek would to-day be the second language of civilization. But even Latin, which was once this, has been able to continue being this. To have a hold on a quantitative future, a language must possess something more than a great literature: the possession of a great literature is an advantage more real than actual, it will save a language from death but will nor promote it to life. The primary condition for a large hold on a future is, in a language, its natural widespreadness, and this depends on the mere physical fact of the number of people who speak it naturally. The secondary condition is its ease in being learnt; if Greek were easy to learn, we would all have Greek to-day as a second language. The tertiary condition is that the language be as pliant as possible, so that there be in it as full a capacity for expression of all moods as can be, and a consequent capacity to admit, by translation, the reflex of other languages and thus dispense, from the literary standpoint, with the learning of them. Now, taking not only the present but immediate future, in so far as it may be considered as developing on the embryo conditions of our time, there are only three languages with a popular future — English (which has already a widespread hold), Spanish and Portuguese. They are the languages spoken in America, and in so far as Europe means European civilization, Europe is becoming more and more settled in the Western continent. Such languages as French, German and Italian are never anything but European: they have no imperial power. So long as Europe was the world, they held their own, and even triumphed over the other three, for English was insular and Spanish and Portuguese right at the end. But when the world became the earth, the scene shifted. It is therefore among these three languages that the future of the future will lie. s.d. Pessoa Inédito . Fernando Pessoa. (Orientação, coordenação e prefácio de Teresa Rita Lopes). Lisboa: Livros Horizonte, 1993. - 108. The fatal drawback of Spanish psychology (?) seems to be their tendency to division. This is very clearly seen in South America. Whereas the Portuguese part, enormous as it is in territory, has kept one under the name of Brazil, the Spanish portion has split up into several republics. This cannot be said to be a reflex of the essential division of Spain itself, for the two divisions are of a different type. The division of Spain proceeds from the fact that it incorporates several nations, speaking different languages, and not merely different dialects — Catalonia, the Basque Provinces and Galicia, neither of which have Spanish as a natural language; the rest may be considered as «conquered». But the division of Spanish America does not derive from any linguistic origin, for throughout those territories, it is Spanish, i. e. Castilian, which is spoken. Separatism seems to be, for some unknown reason, a Spanish character. For our present case, all depends on how far this division will influence any possible linguistic division. There is a tendency to linguistic division in all the American continent. We all know and see how the English spoken in America is departing from British English. But the same thing happens in respect of Spanish and Portuguese in the other parts of the Continent. The divergence between the Spanish of Spanish America and the Spanish of Spain is varying; it is greater in some regions than in others, as might be supposed. The divergence between Brazilian and European Portuguese is similarly divergent in respect of the various provinces which make up Brazil. But whereas in North America there is very little reaction in favour of «pure English undefiled», and in Spanish America very little in the same sense with regard to Spanish, in Brazil there is and has always been a strong «classical» current. As a matter of fact, the best Brazilian Writers (except in such cases as the great poet Cattulo Cearense, who dramatizes his poems in the patois of the Brazilian Backwoods) are particulary scrupulous in the use of Portuguese and write more classically and more near to the Vieira standard than the best writers in Portugal. Again, Brazilian newspapers are generally written in better Portuguese than the Portuguese papers, which are in the main deplorably anti-national in this respect. That is to say, the Portuguese (using the word in a sufficiently wide sense to include the Brazilians) maintain, even in this respect, their organic tendency to unity and cohesion. The recent decision of the Brazilian Foreign Minister, Dr. Octávio Mangabeira, that Portuguese be used by Brazilian delegates in every international congress in which Brazil shall take part, shows very clearly how deliberate and conscious is the Brazilian tendency to defend the mother tongue. s.d. Pessoa Inédito . Fernando Pessoa. (Orientação, coordenação e prefácio de Teresa Rita Lopes). Lisboa: Livros Horizonte, 1993. - 109. A. Caeiro In placing before the English-reading public my translation of these poems, I do so with the full confidence that I am making a revelation. I claim, in all confidence, that I am putting before Englishmen the most original poetry that our young century has as yet produced - a poetry so fresh, so new, untainted to such a degree by any kind of conventional attitude, that the words a Portuguese friend said to me, when speaking of these very poems, are more than justified. «Every time I read them», he said, «I cannot bring myself to believe that they have been written. It is so impossible an achievement… !» And so much more impossible, that it is of the simplest, most natural and most spontaneous kind. II Alberto Caeiro - that is not his whole name, for 2 names are suppressed - was born in Lisbon in August 1887. He died in Lisbon in June of the past year. …… The Keeper of Sheep remains one of the highest works of all time, hard-bound upon a sense of nature or spirit, so spontaneous, so fresh and so natural that it is astonishing that any one should have had it. …… The Keeper of Sheep is both a series of solitary [?] poems and a philosophical [...]; hence its strenght, its unity and its power. The later poems, even allowing for the fact that they are mere fragments, are weak even in form, in comparison with that great achievement. Exception must be made for the two love poems. But thereafter his tone suffers. It does not become garrulous or, properly speaking, weak. But it loses its intellectual keenness, it becomes uncertain, even tentative. Each fragment must to have cost him an effort to write, and he seems to have been tired of things to write it. * Caeiro has created (1) a new sentiment of nature (2) a new mysticism (3) a new simplicity, which is neither a simplicity of faith, nor a simplicity of sadness (as in […]'s case), nor a simplicity of abdication from things and (...). Much as he likes to prove his irrationalism, he is a thinker and a very great thinker. Nothing is so ennobling as this faith that declares the senses superior to the intellect, that speaks of intellect as of a disease. He has contradictions very slight, but he is conscious of all of these and has forewarned his critics. His contradictions are of 3 kinds: (1) in his thought, (2) in his feeling, (3) in his poetical manner. …… But the most astonishing circumstance is that C[aeiro] possesses in an extraordinary degree that metaphysical subtlety which is generally, if not universally, considered as associated with spiritualistic and transcendentalist doctrines. This pure and absolute materialist, who admits no reality outside things as he feels them, writes, quite in accordance with his theory of things, [...] There is something not less than scholastic and (...) in the exterior subtlety of his metaphysics. Yet no one can ignore that it is natural from begining to end. And the astonishing final verse of the (...) poems Things are the only occult meaning of things The only occult meaning of things is the things themselves. A verse of which it is not to much to say that it opens new roads for philosophical meditation. Caeiro is the only poet of nature. In a sense, he is Nature: he is Nature speaking and being vocal. …… He has neither interest in mankind, nor in any human activity, not even in art. All these things are to him unnatural. OnIy Nature is divine and it is not divine. 1916 Pessoa por Conhecer - Textos para um Novo Mapa . Teresa Rita Lopes. Lisboa: Estampa, 1990. - 388. But Caeiro displaces all our mental habits and puts all our notions out of drowsing. He does it, first of all, by the philosophy which can hardly be said to be simply «at the bottom» of his poetry, because it is both at the bottom and at the top of it. Whatever a mystic may be, he is certainly a kind of mystic. But he is, not only a materialistic mystic, which is already strange enough, but still can be imagined, for there is some sort of a modern precedent in Swift and of an ancient one in some poets, but a non-subjectivistic mystic, which is quite unworldly. [...] but it is so difficult to discover a recent «modern» being precisely like a primitive greek, that we are not at all aided by the very analogy that does at first seem to help us. Caeiro puts us out, next, by the secondary aspects of his philosophy. Being a poet of what may be called «the absolute Concrete» he never looks on that concrete otherwise than abstractly. No man is more sure of the absolute, non-subjective reality of a tree, of a stone, of a flower. Here it might be thought that he would particularize, that he would say «an oak», «a sacred stone», «a marigold». But he does not: he keeps on saying «a tree», «a stone», «a flower». All these observations will be better understood after reading the poems. But, if the matter is this perplexing, the manner is more perplexing still. The intellectual manner, to begin with. There is nothing less poetic, less lyrical than C.’s philosophical attitude. It is quite devoid of «imagination», of vagueness, of «sympathy» with things. Far from «feeling» them, his mental process, a hundred times explicitly put, is that he does not feel them, or feel with them. Again, his simplicity is full of intellectual complexity. He is poet purely of sense, but he seems to have his intellect put out his senses. Then, again, his is absolutely self-conscious. He knows every possible unconscious of his. Where there may be a big fault, he hastens to the rescue with a simple and direct argument. Where (...) This man, so purely or anciently a primitive greek that he is unworldly, is quite «modern» at the same time. It is this man of contradictions, this lucidly unworldly personality that gives him his complex and intense originality - an originality, in every way, scarcely ever attained by any poet; certainly never before attained by a poet born in a worn and sophisticated age. Dr. Antonio Mora, explaining his outlines of a similar philosophy - in discipular lines, perhaps - has left this aspect of him out; and that is why I do not feel it [...] to call attention to it. Dr. Mora is also a Pagan, in the same complex and full sense that Caeiro is a Pagan. So, to Dr. Mora, C[aeiro] is a great poet, but hardly a strange poet. He is great because he has brought back the Pagan sense of the world; he is not strange because Dr. Mora thinks the Pagan sense of the world a possible sense in our time. Now the great point is that the Pagan sense of the world is impossible; and the formidable majesty of Caeiro lies in that he has realized this impossibility. s.d. Pessoa por Conhecer - Textos para um Novo Mapa . Teresa Rita Lopes. Lisboa: Estampa, 1990. - 389. TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE At first sight it seems that something of Whitman is present in these poems. I have no information as to Caeiro's knowledge of foreign languages, or of English and of Whitman particularly; yet, on the face of it, and after a very cursory reading of the poems, I suspect the first to have been, at best, very slight, and the second and third nil. However it may be, on close examination there is really no influence of Whitman here. There is at most an occasional coincidence and the coincidence is merely of tone, and more apparent therefore than real. The essential difference is enormous. The traits common to the two poets are the love of Nature and simplicity, and the astounding acuity of sensation. But, whereas Whitman insistently reads transcendental meanings into Nature, nothing can be further from Caeiro's attitude than that; it is, as a matter of fact, the exact opposite to this attitude. And whereas Whitman's sensations are immensely various and include both natural and artificial, and the metaphysical as well as the physical, Caeiro's persistently exclude even the more «natural artificial» things and are only metaphysical in that extremely peculiar negative manner which is one of the novelties of his attitude. Again, Caeiro has a perfectly definite and coherent philosophy. It may not be as coherent in word and phrase as might be wished from a philosopher; but he is not a philosopher, but a poet. It may not be coherent from the outset, but it grows more and more definite as we read on till, in the final poems of the Keeper of Sheep, it takes a definite and unmistakable shape. It is a quite perfectly defined absolute objectivism — the completest system of absolute objectivism which we have ever had, either from philosopher or from writer. There is philosophy in Whitman, but it is the philosophy of a poet and not of a thinker; and where there is philosophy it is not of an original cast, the sentiment alone being original. Not so in Caeiro, in whom both thought and feeling are altogether novel. Finally, though both are «sensationists», Caeiro's sensationism is of a type different from Whitman's. The difference, though it seems subtle and difficult to explain, is nevertheless quite clear. It lies chiefly in this: Caeiro seizes on a single subject and sees it clearly ; even when he seems to see it in a complex way, it will be found that is but some means to see it all the more clearly. Whitman strives to see, not clearly, but deeply. Caeiro sees only the object, striving to separate it as much as possible from all other objects and from all sensations or ideas not, so to speak, part of the object itself. Whitman does the exact contrary: he strives to link up the object with all others, with many others, with the soul and the Universe and God. Lastly, the very temperaments of the two poets differ. Even when he thinks, Whitman's thought is a mode of his feeling, or absolutely a mood, in the common decadent sense. Even when Caeiro feels, his feeling is a mode of this thought. This description of their differences might be prolonged indefinitely. Whitman's violent democratic feeling could be contrasted with Caeiro's abhorrence for any sort of humanitarianism, Whitman's interest in all things human, with Caeiro's indifference to all that men feel, suffer or enjoy. After all, and all things considered, when we eliminate the superficial resemblance derived from nonrhythmical character of the poetry of both men, and the abstract revolt against civilization, the resemblances between them are exhausted. Besides, Whitman has really a sense of metrical rhythm; it is of a special kind, but it exists. Caeiro's rhythm is noticeably absent. He is so distinctly intellectual, that the lines have no wave of feeling from which to derive their rhythmical movement. What after all is Caeiro's value, his message to us, as the phrase goes? It is not difficult to determine. To a world plunged in various kinds of subjectivisms, he brings Absolute Objectivism more absolute than the pagan objectivists ever had it. To a World over-civilized he brings Absolute Nature back again. To a world merged in humanitarisms, in workers' problems, in ethical societies, in social movements, he brings an absolute contempt for the fate and the life of man, which, if it be thought excessive, is at last natural to him and a magnificent corrective. Wordsworth had opposed natural man to artificial man; «natural man» is for Caeiro as artificial as anything else except Nature. Our first impression of Caeiro is that everybody knows that he tells us, that there is therefore no need to say it. But it is the old story of Columbus’ egg. If everybody knows this, why has no one said it? If not worth saying, but true, why has every poet said the contrary? s.d. Páginas Íntimas e de Auto-Interpretação. Fernando Pessoa. (Textos estabelecidos e prefaciados por Georg Rudolf Lind e Jacinto do Prado Coelho.) Lisboa: Ática, 1996. - 368. TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE [ A preface is always bad, and a translator’s preface positively immoral. But sometimes, like immorality, a preface is a necessary thing. This is one of the cases in which there is the excuse of necessity. The great poet whom I present to the English reading public — rather more attentive to poetry than it recently had fallen off from being — belongs to a literature of which we know less than the classic next-to-nothing. And this miserly bit of knowledge of that literature is merely that Camões is its greatest poet, — a statement which, though it is controvertible and has been controverted, has at least the appearance of supposing knowledge of other poets, when, after all, it only means that we are more or less sure there must be others. The ordinary presentation of Alberto Caeiro to the English public should, in this literary connection, mean an establishing of his relation to immediately preceding literature in his country, and an establishing of such of his influences as are outside the normal, or even abnormal, knowledge of that public. But being so, this is in the present case entirely the contrary. The curious fact about Alberto Caeiro is that he comes apparently out of nothing, more completely out of nothing than any other poet. The one Portuguese poet whose influence he supposes himself to be under is so remote from him both in quality and strength of inspiration, that it is idle to do more than say so. But we will not limit our brief study of Caeiro to seaking of his influences; we will push our study further and summon the reader's attention gently to the absolute aspects of the present book as poetry of national and other relational connections. s.d. Páginas Íntimas e de Auto-Interpretação. Fernando Pessoa. (Textos estabelecidos e prefaciados por Georg Rudolf Lind e Jacinto do Prado Coelho.) Lisboa: Ática, 1996. - 376.