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Fernando (Antonio Nogueira) Pessoa |
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The achievement of Fernando Pessoa has no parallel in modern literature. Yet, while widely recognized as one of the greatest twentieth-century writers in the Portuguese language, he nevertheless remains the most obscure of the acknowledged masters of Western literary modernism. Recognition of the magnitude of his work beyond the confines of Portugal and other Portuguese-speaking lands has come slowly if steadily as his work has found readers and translators across linguistic boundaries. Especially captivating to Pessoa's readers has been the striking aspect of his creativity that enabled him to bring into being the poetry and prose of several other imaginary writers.
Pessoa started out as an English-language poet, writing poems in a still undefined poetic style. He began creating various voices, different from his own; he called them heteronyms and gave them individual biographies to go along with their names and the body of work assigned to them. In 1928 in the journal Presença, Pessoa defined his use of the term heteronym by distinguishing it from the term pseudonym:
A obra pseudónyma é do autor em sua pessoa, salvo no nome que assina; a heterónyma é do auctor fóra da sua pessoa, é de uma individualidade completa fabricada por êle, como o seriam os dizeres de qualquer personagem de qualquer drama seu.
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