Some might consider it eccentric that I could feel closer to Pessoa, this restless and mysterious Portuguese poet with a rather tragic life, than to actual living people with whom I share "real" conversations in my everyday life. He was a Shepherd of ideas, poetry his only way of existence, he who embraced solitude and anonymity with grace. He chose writing as his only release. Well then, I choose him. And I do it gladly.
So, I allowed this shepherd of thoughts to drag me into his world of unsettling and intoxicating verses, where there is no line between real and imaginary lives; was he pretending or acting out of sheer spontaneity?

"The poet is a forger who
forges so completely that
he forges even the feeling
he feels truly as pain."

He was a thousand different persons in one, always using several literary heteronyms, and with his endless thirst to experience, he pushed his mind to the limit, questioned everything relentlessly to the point of exhaustion and then was pulled down inexorably towards the abyss of his disturbing thoughts; leaving this huge legacy, leaving his poems, on the way.

"I don't know how many souls I have...

I do not know how many souls I have.
Each moment I have changed.
Feeling myself always as a stranger.
Never have I seen nor found myself.
Being so much, yet only soul I have.
Those who have souls have no peace
He who sees is just what he sees
He who feels is not he who he is. "

Some of his poems are overwhelmingly nostalgic and bleak, even a bit dantesque, they talk about the ruthless passage of time, death, love and his own understanding of the world. Others, for example his Odes, appear as enthusiastic ramblings in free verse, with a certain touch of tenderness, refreshingly innocent and somehow whitmanian with his aim to to become part of everything, to embrace humanity in all its forms, without exceptions.

"When I didn’t have you
I loved Nature as a calm monk loves Christ.
Now I love Nature
Like a calm monk loves Virgin Mary,
Religiously, in my way, like before,
But in other ways more moving and intimate…
I see the rivers better when I go with you
To the river banks through the fields;
Sitting beside you watching the clouds
I watch the clouds better…
You haven’t taken away Nature from me…
You have changed the Nature…
You have brought Nature closer to me
Since you exist, I see it better, though like before,
Since you love me, I love it the same way, but more,
Since you choose me to have you and love you,
My eyes stare for much longer time
At all things.
I do not regret for what I was in the past
Because I am still the same."

And the more I advanced reading, the more I noticed his overflowing love for Lisbon, the city with dimmed splendour, decadent and narrow cobbled streets, the land with its melancholic fados or laments; brilliant without light. And impossibly alluring, like his poems.

I close my eyes and I can imagine Pessoa walking down the Rua dos Douradores, reaching the Praça do Comércio with its imposing arches, or sitting in one of the tables of the literary Café A Brasileira scribbling down in a napkin, with his black topper on and the people passing by without taking any notice, and all his thoughts screaming in deafening silence only to be heard for future readers like us, who have come to appreciate Pessoa for what he really was. A man advanced for his time, a humanist who lived in isolation, wrapped in grief but contented anyway, and there is no contradiction there.
I choose Pessoa. Gladly. ( )

Fernando Nogueira Pessoa, född 13 juni 1888 i Lissabon, Portugal, död 30 november 1935 i Lissabon, var en portugisisk författare, poet och filosof. Merparten av hans litterära verk publicerades postumt. Hans storhet har gradvis uppdagats och såväl José Saramago (1998) som Gao Xingjian (2000) berörde Pessoa i sina nobelföreläsningar.

Pessoa levde som tillbakadragen handelskorrespondent, anställd i olika företag, och bidrog blygsamt med texter i avantgardistiska tidskrifter. Han gav endast ut en bok under sin livstid, Mensagem (”Budskap”). När han dog hittade hans anhöriga ytterligare texter: 27 543 stycken, sorterade i kuvert i en träkista. Utgivningen påbörjades 1943. Först utgåvan av "Orons bok" kom 1982. ( )