Message by Fernando Pessoa
"Message" is a significant work of poetry by Portuguese writer Fernando Pessoa, composed in the context of Portugal's historical narrative and national identity. This collection is divided into three cycles, each exploring different facets of Portuguese heritage and mythology. The first cycle addresses heroic figures in Portuguese history, drawing parallels with earlier epic traditions such as Luís de Camões' "Os Lusíadas," which celebrated the maritime explorations during the Age of Discoveries.
The second cycle, titled "Portuguese Sea," delves into the impact of these explorations, reflecting on the death of Crown Prince Sebastian and the subsequent myths surrounding national identity and glory. It pays homage to notable explorers like Bartolomeu Dias, Ferdinand Magellan, and Vasco da Gama, contemplating the cost of their endeavors in a broader existential context.
The final cycle, "The Covered," presents a more mystical and esoteric perspective, hinting at Portugal's future and its role in the larger tapestry of humanity. Written primarily in the late 1920s and early 1930s, "Message" is notable for being the only collection published under Pessoa's own name during his lifetime. While it aligns with the nationalist sentiments of the era, Pessoa himself was critical of authoritarianism. This work thus invites readers to reflect on the complexities of national pride and the pursuit of identity within the framework of historical legacy.
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Message by Fernando Pessoa
Excerpted from an article in Magill’s Survey of World Literature, Revised Edition
First published:Mensagem, 1934 (English translation, 1992)
Type of work: Poetry
The Work
The first group or cycle of poems from the three sections of Message views Portuguese history through its principal heroic and princely figures. Pessoa produced the work within the tradition and under the shadow of the premier epic of Portuguese literature, Os Lusíadas (1572; The Lusiads, 1655), by Luis de Camões. This poem recounted the heroic exploits around the globe during Portugal’s Age of Discoveries. The Lusiads themselves were written under the influence of the heroic national epics of Rome, the Aeneid (c. 29-19 b.c.e.; English translation, 1553), and of Greece, Homer’s Iliad (c. 750 b.c.e.; English translation, 1611) and Odyssey (c. 725 b.c.e.; English translation, 1614).
The first poem of the initial cycle of Message views Portugal as the face of Europe, which sees the future from the perspective of the past. The next poem describes the arbitrary will of the gods and observes that while a life may occupy a small amount of time, a soul extends over a much greater length. There follows a sequence of eight poems, grouped as “The Castles,” referring to the stalwart figures of the founding and development of Portugal. The first figure is Ulysses, mythical founder of Lisbon, the Portuguese capital. Myth is considered a narrative made of nothing but which suffuses everything. The next poems concentrate on Portuguese monarchs and princes. In one poem, Pessoa speculates on nations as mysterious worlds unto themselves, begetting kingdoms and then empires.
The next cycle of poems, entitled “Portuguese Sea,” concentrates on the Age of Discoveries and begins with a poem on the death of Crown Prince Sebastian. His death in battle ended the dynasty of the discoveries and sparked the myth of Sebastianism, the idea that a royal figure would return to restore Portuguese glory. The section culminates with poems on the discoverers themselves: Bartolomeu Dias, Ferdinand Magellan, and Vasco da Gama. It begins with the observation that the desires of God become the dreams of men, prompting the work for their accomplishment. It culminates with a poem on the price for the Portuguese of the discoveries. Rhetorically, it inquires of the sea how much of its salt has come from Portuguese tears. Wondering whether the cost was worth the effort, the inquirer responds that anything not small-minded is worthwhile. God made the dangerous depths of the ocean yet its surface reflects an arching sky.
A third and final cycle, “The Covered,” gathers poems of a mystical nature, seeming to foretell or anticipate a culminating climax for Portugal and humankind. An air of mystery or of the mystifying permeates the poems. This section achieves this atmosphere through esoteric and numerological frames of reference and visionary interpretations of Portuguese heraldry.
Message was the only book in Portuguese published in Pessoa’s lifetime and under his own name, not a heteronym. It was compiled from poems written in the late 1920’s and early 1930’s, with a few going back to the period of World War I. They were compiled in order to compete for a 1934 prize in poetry, which he won, sponsored by the Secretariat of National Propaganda. The work’s dedicated nationalism complemented the nationalist objectives of the Portuguese dictatorship of the time, although Pessoa maintained he was opposed to authoritarian government.
Bibliography
Kotowicz, Zbigniew. Fernando Pessoa: Voices of a Nomadic Soul. London: Menard, 1996.
Monteiro, George. Fernando Pessoa and Nineteenth-Century Anglo-American Poetry. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2000.
Monteiro, George. The Man Who Never Was: Essays on Fernando Pessoa. Providence, R.I.: Gávea-Brown, 1982.
Monteiro, George. The Presence of Pessoa: English, American, and Southern African Literary Responses. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1998.
Sadlier, Darlene J. An Introduction to Fernando Pessoa: Modernism and the Paradoxes of Authorship. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1998.
Serra, João B. Modern Art in Portugal, 1910-1940: The Artist Contemporaries of Fernando Pessoa. Translated by John S. Southard. Zurich, Switzerland: Edition Stemmle, 1998.
Tabucchi, Antonio. Dreams of Dreams and The Last Three Days of Fernando Pessoa. Translated by Nancy J. Peters. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1999.