A Great Portuguese Poet

This poet -1888-1935 is one of the greatest and most representative poets of the twentieth century.

To understand life, to give it a meaning or to refuse it depends deeply on our feelings, perhaps more than on our reason. And his poetry is an example of it. Philosophical profundity is, in his case, intimately connected to beauty, to art, to the ability of the writer to touch our souls, our astonishement, or his ability to open new horizons of awareness.

He worked as a literary critic, freelancer translator, wrote for many newspapers and magazines and published most of his poems in Portuguese and English. He created some fictional characters (heteronyms) to whom he gave almost a real existance and who were responsible for a large number of poems. And one day he expained it to one of his friends like this:

“…Ever since I was a child, I have had the tendency to create a fictitious world around me, to surround myself with friends and acquaintances who never existed. ( I don’t know, of course, if they didn’t really exist or if it is me who doesn’t exist.  On such matters, as in all others, one shouldn’t be dogmatic.)  Ever since I became aware of the thing that I call self, I can remember with mental precision, the figures, the movements, the character and the history of several fictitious people who were, to me, as visible and mine as those things which we, perhaps abusively, call real life. (…)”

Many more things could be written about this great poet, but it’s your turn to find out his name and his poems.