Fernando Pessoa: Álvaro de Campos, Ricardo Reis and Alberto Caeiro

14 Novembro 2017, 10:00 • Helena Carvalhão Buescu

Álvaro de Campos' theatrical singing of machinery (an epic of modern life in direct relation to Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass) in contrast with his melancholic desire to be everything and everyone at all times; his final sense of failure towards knowing how to connect with reality. Reading and discussion of "Lisbon Revisited (1926)" and "Salutation to Walt Whitman".

Ricardo Reis as a representative of intellectualism and as a follower of philosophical (Stoicism, Epicurism) and literary (Horatian odes) traditions from Classical Antiquity. A poetry of "control" in form and expression. The awareness of time and death as Man's greatest problem. Reading and discussion of "Not just those who envy and hate us", "Fruits are given by trees that live" and "Wise the man who's content with the world's spectacle".

Alberto Caeiro as a representative of empiricism and as a a poet of "complexity of the simple": an apparent and ironic simplicity that conceals the fact that he is a programatic poet - his program is to tell us not to think, which constitutes a program nevertheless. Reading and discussion of "II" (from The Keeper of Sheep). 

Fernando Pessoa (and all his (semi-)heteronyms) as an intellectual (ideas) rather than sentimental (feelings) poet.

Delivery of the second Response Paper (about the visit to Casa Fernando Pessoa).