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An important new reading of Portugal's greatest poet. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

a bridge for ivory towers not white castles
Perhaps the towering anticipation and immense joy experienced while purchasing a book on two powerful poets, Pessoa and Crane, caused me to endure a let down of sorts while reading it. The discussion of the poets together as well as the discussion of their individual poems proved sharp. But, the author has spent much effort, too much to my liking, trying to situate the discussion of all of Pessoa and Crane as well as the methods of comparison and analysis among the diverse ridges and plurality of valleys of literary and cultural criticism.

The book is useful to be sure, but there is so much to be ignored as an excrescent carapace willing itself rather unnecessisarily to the bodies of poets who not only lived without it, but also employed far more piercing modes of definition and discussion in their own works.

It is possible that other readers also will find these chapters try hard to justify themselves. No justification was necessary. These poets share a remarkable amount with respect to their attitudes, efforts, and poetic forms. The author is perceptive and had the opportunity to write a stunning appreciation of an Atlantic bound by the poems of Pessoa and Crane. The author chose instead to define a literary category (Anglo-American Modernism) and write just as much for a diverse camp of literary theorists as for Pessoa and Crane loyalists. I feel an opportunity has been missed, other readers may not share this sentiment considering some of the book's bright analyses. ... Read more

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bilingual ed, poetry tr Edwin Honig & Susan Brown ... Read more

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The purity of a simple heart
The most "ignorant" Pessoa heteromy Caeiro is a nature lover who doesn't care of anything else. For him, the senses, his senses, particulary the vision, are of great importance because it is they what give the possibility to Caeiro enjoy the beautiful nature that surrounds him, the nature he loves. In a set of astounding poems he explains his way of thinking, how nature is the most important thing of human existence, his idea that all should be seen, not thought. To think is to be sick with our eyes closed. Caeiro goes on, describing feelings and situations, maybe in a way a naive person with little culture would describe. In fact, this heteronym only has 4th degree and is a very simple person. But his filosofy, contrary to what looks like at first sight, is far from being simple, and Caeiro is far from being a "ignorant" human being. The more we read is poems more we see the greatness of his "simple" ideas. At the same time we ask ourselves about our own lives and the way we see the world. And at the end the question: "Isn't he right?..." ... Read more

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Trade paperback, 159 pages, text in Portuguese. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Creative Idea
This small little book is a clever idea.The book is a wonderful photographic biography of the great Portuguese poet from the 20th century - Fernando Pessoa.Even if one does not know anything about Pessoa, thisbook provides a wonderful pictorial view of what his life was.Here, onewill find pictures on almost every aspect of the poet's life, from hisbirth certificate, to family pictures, including pictures of letters, histypewriter, and terrific pictures of Lisbon in the early part of the 20thcentury.

Antonio Tabucchi introduction gives us a clear and well writtenexplanation of Fernando Pessoa's importance for the literature of the 20thcentury.I highly recommend this book.This is an excellent introductionto Pessoa. ... Read more

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Product Description
Antonio Tabucchi, one of Italy's most original prose stylists, gives us two ingenious worksof fiction in lucid translations by Nancy J. Peters, copublisher of City Lights Books. This is thesecond volume in our new series of contemporary literature in translation from Italy, City Lights/Italian Voices. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Name-dropping is no substitute for creativity
I was very disappointed by the Tabucchi's Dreams.The author attempts to recreate the dreams of twenty or so canonical figures from Western civilization.I felt that author made no effort to penetrate the psyche of these great human beings.The dreams were recreated by an obviously shallow reading of bio-sketches.If you want to know what I mean, select one of the characters you know very well and read his dream.I am familiar with Debussy's music and have no qualms about suggesting that Debussy's dream is a mediocre parody of his "Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun".

The same problems persist in the Last Three Days of Fernando Pessoa.This short work offended me more than the Dreams.I adore Pessoa and his poetry.It was heartbreaking to see all his heteronyms turn into colorless characters that stroll through this story.I consider Ricardo Reis to be the heteronym closest to Pessoa's personality.Unfortunately Reis comes back to the dying Pessoa to tell him that he didn't leave Portugal.Am I missing something here?? In short, any average reader of Pessoa can write a better book on the confrontations of the heteronyms with their creator.

Another masterpiece from Antonio Tabucchi
This book is a collection of short stories of dreams of various major artists or influences on the arts - from Daedalus to Freud.It is a book that makes me wish to be more broadly educated in European literature - forwhen I was familiar with the biography and works of the individual, thematching of the imagined dream to the individual was more clear.Forexample, the dream of Federico Garcia Lorca picks up on his work regardingdeepsong.Lorca is on stage singing a Gypsy song "a song about duelsand orange groses, passion and death" ...A small black dog leads himtowards his death as a traitor ... The dream is a wonderful mix of clarityand chaotic jumps, as are real dreams.

Tabucchi writes in his normal tautprose - with wonderful lines to mull over: "Life is indecipherable,answered Pessoa.Never ask and never believe.Everything ishidden."

But this book, unlike his other works requires significantknowledge of his reader.If you've never read Tabucchi, I would suggestthat you begin with any of his other books.If you are a Tabucchi fan,this new book will not disappoint you. ... Read more

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This a revised edition of Zbigniew Kotowicz's pioneering essay on the work of Pessoa, who is finally being recognised as one of the great European writers, and one of the great modernist poets of the 20th Century. Published in a uniform format with the rest of the Shearsman Books Pessoa Edition. ... Read more

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35 Sonnets is presented here in a high quality paperback edition. This popular classic work by Fernando Antenio Nogueira Pessoa is in the English language. If you enjoy the works of Fernando Antenio Nogueira Pessoa then we highly recommend this publication for your book collection. ... Read more

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This creative translation by a Canadian poet of Fernando Pessoa's classic long poem O Guardador de Rebanhos manipulates central images to shed new light on life in 21st-century Toronto. Where Pessoa introduced sheep roaming the Portugese countryside in 1914, Mouré reflects on the hordes of wild cats that infest the aging neighborhoods of modern Toronto. The contrasts and affecting tones and vocabulary highlight the precarious boundaries of rural and urban life and showcase a renowned poet at her most playful and ingenious. ... Read more

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Pessoa wrote a large number of poems in English, some of them in the guise of early heteronyms (such as Alexander Search and Charles Robert Anon) which prove to be fascinating precursors of the later, modernist work in Portuguese. While not the equal of the masterly Caeiro, Campos, Reis or Pessoa-himself, these poems deserve to be better known and at least available in the English-speaking world. Pessoa was educated in English in Durban, as the stepson of a Portuguese diplomat, and was completely bilingual. He translated several books from English for Portuguese publishing houses. The sometimes startlingly frank content of the earlier English poems - published privately in Lisbon - may well have prevented their wider dissemination in more prudish British circles. What is not so well-known is that Pessoa continued to write poetry in a bookish form of English throughout his life and this volume is an attempt to show the nature of that work to its originally intended audience - an anglophone readership. ... Read more

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Darlene Sadlier's detailed commentary on Pessoa's work explores some of the cultural, political, and personal implications of the artistic impersonation that made him one of the major figures in modern literature. He created a large gallery of authors, each with his own history, who also wrote essays commenting on one another-including Fernando Pessoa "himself." Sadlier's study demonstrates the scope of Pessoa's writing, ranging in style from "artless" simplicity to subtle, almost Borgesian irony, and it also traces the ways in which Pessoa's four major "authors" (which he called "heteronyms") are related to one another. Sadlier shows that the four poets engage in a dialogue, enabling Pessoa to dramatize the contradictions in his attitudes toward language, history, and society. And she demonstrates that, while distinct in attitude and style, they nevertheless share a preoccupation with the nature of poetry and are responsible for some of the most unusual and skillfully composed verse in the twentieth century. In striking fashion, they anticipate the postmodern deconstruction of the idea of authorship. Sadlier offers a historical context for Pessoa's work, grounding his poetry in Portuguese culture and the major political and artistic concerns of his day. She presents an especially important commentary on his childhood verse and on the early, formative stages of his writing. Finally, she discusses his posthumous reputation, showing how he has been ironically transformed into a single, apparently unified figure who has become, for many, a symbol of Portugal's national identity. ... Read more