| Synopsis: |
This is the only integral collection of Pessoa's Caeiro heteronym in English, and the poems are accompanied by the introductions of Ricardo Reis and a memoir by Alvaro de Campos, two of Pessoa's other major poetic heteronyms, as well as a poem dedicated to Caeiro by Coelho Pacheco, believed by many commentators to be another one-off heteronym. Ricardo Reis says: "Alberto Caeiro da Silva was born in Lisbon on April 16, 1889, and died of tuberculosis in the same city on (...), 1915. He spent nearly all his life in a village in Ribatejo, and only returned to the city of his birth in his final months. In Ribatejo he wrote nearly all his poems ..." Fernando Pessoa was educated in English in Durban, as the stepson of a Portuguese diplomat, and was completely bilingual. During his lifetime he was to publish only one collection of his poems in Portuguese, although many appeared in literary journals, under a number of alter egos, or heteronyms, chief amongst them Alberto Caeiro, Alvaro de Campos and Ricardo Reis. At his death in 1935, Pessoa left more than 20,000 manuscripts - poetry and prose - in a large trunk, the contents of which are still being transcribed and deciphered to this day.He is the greatest modern poet in the Portuguese language, but always considered himself a poet in the English tradition. |