EPITHALAMIUM Fernando Pessoa English-Portuguese

EPITHALAMIUM / EPITÁLAMIO

Part I

Set ope all shutters, that the day come in

Abram-se as janelas e que entre o dia

Like a sea or a din!

Como um mar de ruído!

Let not a nook of useless shade compel

Nem reste um canto de vã sombra a compelir

Thoughts of the night, or tell

Pensares noturnos, ou contar

The mind's comparing that some things are sad,

Ao cotêjo da mente que há coisas tão tristes

For this day all are glad!

Neste dia de tanta alegria.

'Tis morn, 'tis open morn, the full sun is

É manhã, manhã aberta, o pleno Sol

Risen from out the abyss

Ascendeu do abismo

Where last night lay beyond the unseen rim

Onde à noite estêve além do inviso arco

Of the horizon dim.

Do horizonte fôsco.

Now is the bride awaking. Lo! she starts

Vai despertando a noiva. Eis!

To feel the day is home

Começa a sentir que entra o dia

Whose too-near night will put two different hearts

Cuja noite tão logo fará dois diferentes corações

To beat as near as flesh can let them come.

Bater tão perto quanto a carne o permitir.

Guess how she joys in her feared going, nor opes

Pensai quanto se alegra no temido ir-se,

Her eyes for fear of fearing at her joy.

Nem abre os olhos de medo de temer a alegria.

Now is the pained arrival of all hopes.

Já é a vinda dorida de toda a esperança.

With the half-thought she scarce knows how to toy.

Com tal pressentir ela nem sabe bem brincar.

Oh, let her wait a moment or a day

Oh, deixai que espere um instante, um dia

And prepare for the fray

P'ra dispor-se a esta luta

For which her thoughts not ever quite prepare!

À qual seu pensar nem sempre se dispôs!

With the real day's arrival she's half wroth.

Vindo o dia realmente, está quase irada.

Though she wish what she wants, she yet doth stay.

Se ela anela o que quer, assim mesmo fica.

Her dreams yet merged are

Seus sonhos 'inda imersos são

In the slow verge of sleep, which idly doth

Na tarda margem do sono, que em vão

The accurate hope of things remotely mar.

A precisa espera das coisas vagamente mancha.

***

Fernando Pessoa was an important author of
 Portuguese modernism.

                                                                            ***

Short biography Fernando Pessoa

Fernando Pessoa was born on June 13, 1888, in Lisbon, Portugal. As a child, he wrote in Portuguese, French and English. At the age of five, he lost his father, who died of tuberculosis. At the age of seven, he wrote the poem “To my dear mama”. His mother remarried, and Pessoa lived for nine years, from 1896 to 1905, in Durban, South Africa, as his stepfather was consul.

There, he entered the Convent School, a school run by nuns, and managed to study the contents of five in three years. Then, in 1899, he attended Durban High School, and in 1901 he received the First Class School Higher Certificate from the University of the Cape of Good Hope. It was in 1902 that he published his first poem — “When a pain me bittersweet” — in the newspaper O Imparcial, in Lisbon, while he was on vacation in his native country.

That same year, he began studying at the Commercial School in Durban. The following year, he published his first poem in English — “The miner’s song” — in The Natal Mercury newspaper and received the Queen Victoria Memorial Prize for the best essay in the qualifying exam at the University of the Cape of Good Hope. Thus, he returned to Lisbon, definitively, when he was 17 years old, in 1905, and entered the Faculty of Arts, which he abandoned in 1907.

In 1909, as the sole heir of his paternal grandmother, who died in 1907, he received the inheritance and, with the money, opened the Íbis Company (printer and publishing house). However, she went bankrupt the following year. A few years later, in 1916, he began to carry out automatic or mediumistic writing experiments.

Two years later, he published, with his own resources, his first two books in English — Antinous and 35 sonnets. In addition, in 1919, he worked as a translator of business letters, writing letters in French and English for Portuguese companies with branches in other countries.

In 1920, he founded the firm Olisipo (publishing and business from Minas Gerais). From that year on, with the return of his mother, a widow again, the poet went to live with her and her brothers. Olisipo published books by António Botto (1897-1959) and Raul Leal (1886-1964), who, in 1923, were seized by order of the Civil Governor of Lisbon, who considered them “immoral”. As a protest, Fernando Pessoa wrote two manifestos against the censorship of books.

His first book in Portuguese — Mensagem — was published in 1934. For this work, the poet, who died on November 30, 1935, in Lisbon, won the Antero de Quental Poetry Prize. The day before he died, Fernando Pessoa wrote, in pencil, the following words: “I know not what tomorrow will bring”, that is, “I don't know what tomorrow will bring”. Thus, the poet left around 25 thousand pages of texts, which have been slowly published since his death.

Literary characteristics of Fernando Pessoa

Fernando Pessoa belongs to the generation of Orpheu (1915-1927), a group of artists who introduced modernism to Portugal. This occurred with the publication of the Orpheu magazine, in 1915, of a revolutionary character, as it intended to shock and criticize the bourgeois elite of Portugal. Thus, Pessoa's works have the following characteristics:

Experimentation

Subversion

unconventionalism

Provocation

Irreverence

Irony

critical nationalism

formal freedom

Innovation in relation to traditional art

Futuristic and Cubist elements

symbolist traits

Aesthetic multiplicity, through heteronyms

The poet, too, was the creator of sensationism, a movement that took place within modernism. This literary current sought the synthesis of all avant-garde movements. Hence, it was controversial, antithetical and paradoxical. Therefore, it started from the principle defended by the heteronym Álvaro de Campos:

Works by Fernando Pessoa

35 sonnets (1918)

Antinous (1918)

English poems (1921) — in three volumes

Message (1934)

Book of Disquiet (1982)

Message

Message, from 1934, the only book in Portuguese that Fernando Pessoa published in his lifetime, and winner of the Antero de Quental Prize, presents critical nationalism and opposes Portugal's past and present. Thus, the work is divided into three parts:

“Brasão”, which features historical characters;

“Portuguese Sea”, centered on major navigations;

“The Undercover”, whose focus is sebastianism, a kind of messianic nationalism.

Heteronyms of Fernando Pessoa

Fernando Pessoa is an orthonym, that is, the name of the author of flesh and blood. The heteronyms are fictitious authors, who have their own identities. The poet created several heteronyms, but the most important are:

● Álvaro de Campos

Place of birth: Tavira

Date of birth: October 15, 1890

Time of birth: one-thirty in the afternoon

Physical characteristics:

- white to brown skin

- smooth hair

- use of monocle

Education: Mechanical and Naval Engineering

Place of formation: Scotland

Literary features:

- decadence

- modernism

- futurism

- nihilism

- intimacy

- pessimism

● Ricardo Reis

Date of birth: September 19, 1887

Place of birth: Porto

Time of birth: four and five in the afternoon

Physical characteristics:

- shorter, stronger and drier than Alberto Caeiro

- shaved face

Education: educated at a Jesuit college.

Profession: doctor

Country of residence: Brazil (since 1919)

Political ideology: monarchist

Literary features:

- bucolicism

- classicism

- epicureanism

- stoicism

- moralism

- formal rigor

- Greco-Latin references

● Alberto Caeiro

Year of birth: April 16, 1889

Place of birth: Lisbon

Time of birth: one forty-five in the afternoon

Childhood: orphan of parents

Physical characteristics:

- blonde

- blue eyes

Residence: For a long time, he lived in the countryside with an elderly great-aunt.

Education: primary education only

Profession: none

Year of death: 1915

Cause of death: tuberculosis

Literary features:

- unphilosophical

- objectivity

- simplicity

- antimetaphysical

- sensationism

- pantheism

- formal freedom.

● Bernardo Soares

childhood: lonely

Physical characteristics:

- thirty years, approximately

- pale face

- air of suffering

- lean

- higher than low

- sloppy dressing

Profession: assistant bookkeeper in the city of Lisbon

Literary features:

- fragmentation

- autobiography

- reflection

- everyday images

Fernando Pessoa quotes

Below, we will read some sentences by Fernando Pessoa, taken from an interview published in Revista Portuguesa, on October 13, 1923:

“Every people is composed of an aristocracy and itself.”

“The aristocracy manifests itself as individuals; the people reveal themselves as a single individual.”

“It is only collectively that the people are not collective.”

“A true Portuguese was never Portuguese: it was always everything.”

“I entrust injustice to silence.”

“The urge to be complete leads to the despair of not being able to be.”

“What do I know about the present, except that it is already the future?”

“We are so denationalized that we must be reborn.”

“There is nothing to expect, of course, from the ruling classes, because they are not rulers.”

“All roads lead to the bridge when the river has none.”

***

Good reading

April 28, 2022

Sidney Matias

Editor

Book House Blog