Mikä yhdistää romanttista laivanrakennusinsinööriä Alvaro de Camposia, stoalaista lammaspaimenta Alberto Caeiroa sekä oodeja virittelevää esteetikkoa Ricardo Reisiä? Se, että kaikkien heidän runojensa haamukirjoittaja on portugalilainen kauppakirjeenvaihtaja Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935). Pessoa kuuluu viime vuosisadan omalaatuisimpiin ja kiinnostavimpiin runoilijoihin. Elinaikanaan hän julkaisi vain kaksi teosta, mutta jätti jälkipolville matka-arkullisen sekä omia että sivupersooniensa julkaisemattomia tekstejä. Tämä suomennosvalikoima muodostaa kattavan läpileikkauksen monikasvoisen mestarin tuotannosta. Runoissa hehkuvat niin futuristinen kiihko ja kokemisen hurma kuin askeettisen yksinäisyyden tunnot - aina kulloinkin äänessä olevan puhujan mukaan.
Author
Fernando António Nogueira Pessoa was a poet and writer. It is sometimes said that the four greatest Portuguese poets of modern times are Fernando Pessoa. The statement is possible since Pessoa, whose name means ‘person’ in Portuguese, had three alter egos who wrote in styles completely different from his own. In fact Pessoa wrote under dozens of names, but Alberto Caeiro, Ricardo Reis and Álvaro de Campos were – their creator claimed – full-fledged individuals who wrote things that he himself would never or could never write. He dubbed them ‘heteronyms’ rather than pseudonyms, since they were not false names but “other names”, belonging to distinct literary personalities. Not only were their styles different; they thought differently, they had different religious and political views, different aesthetic sensibilities, different social temperaments. And each produced a large body of poetry. Álvaro de Campos and Ricardo Reis also signed dozens of pages of prose. The critic Harold Bloom referred to him in the book The Western Canon as the most representative poet of the twentieth century, along with Pablo Neruda.
