SOURCE: "The Structure of Pessoa's Mensagem," in Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, Vol. LIX, No. 1, January 1982, pp. 58-66.

Sousa analyzes the structure of Mensagem, and explores its relation to the occult.

Over the past thirty-or-so years, criticism has raised a genre problematic about Mensagem, the one book of Portuguese poetry that Fernando Pessoa published in his lifetime. The basic question is: 'Is it historical, narrative, more-or-less "epic" poetry, or personal, "lyric" poetry?' The lines of the debate—recognized as such or not by the various participating critics—can be expressed in the following formulations: 'Is the book a recounting of the Portuguese past in more-or-less discrete, objectively-presented units that play a rôle akin to that of narrative episodes, or does the book's structure revolve about a subjective principle, as in "lyric"?' Allied to that question is one of readership: 'Should the reader—the general reader of...