35 Sonnets
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Book ExcerptBook Excerpt: ...That saw the Possible like a dawn grow paleOn the lost night before it, mute and vast.It dates remoter than God's birth can reach, That had no birth but the world's coming after.So the world's to me as, after whispered speech, The cause-ignored sudden echoing of laughter.That 't has a meaning my conjecture knows, But that 't has meaning's all its meaning shows.XXV.We are in Fate and Fate's and do but lackOutness from soul to know ourselves its dwelling, And do but compel Fate aside or backBy Fate's own immanence in the compelling.We are too far in us from outward truthTo know how much we are not what we are, And live but in the heat of error's youth, Yet young enough its acting youth to ignore.The doubleness of mind fails us, to glanceAt our exterior presence amid things, Sizing from otherness our countenanceAnd seeing our puppet will's act-acting strings.An unknown language speaks in
Fernando Pessoa
Fernando Pessoa was born in Lisbon. As a young child he moved with his mother and stepfather to Durban, South Africa, where he was educated and learnt English. After a decade, Pessoa sailed back to Portugal, settling in Lisbon. He subsequently began work as a translator, and published poetry, prose and criticism. Though he had been interested in creating characters and identities since childhood, with the publication of his first poem in 1914, Pessoa started publicly creating different literary identities, penning works under their names and constructing full biographies for each of these ‘heteronyms’. Though not all his writing plays with authorial identity in this way, his now-famous work The Book of Disquiet does. Pessoa died in 1935 and has now garnered a reputation as one of Portugal’s best-known writers.
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