Fernando Pessoa Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Richard Zenith

Critical Essay by Richard Zenith

SOURCE: "Fernando Pessoa and the Theatre of His Self," in Performing Arts Journal, Vol. XV, No. 2, May, 1993, pp. 47-9.

Below, Zenith provides a general overview of Pessoa's career and the development of his poetic persona(e).

Not widely known in his own country and scarcely at all outside it at the time of his death in 1935, Fernando Pessoa (born 1888) is now generally regarded as Portugal's most original poet since Luís de Camões and one of the most original poets of any land writing in the twentieth century. This phenomenal increase in stature is related more or less directly to the increasing availability of the 25,000 + manuscript sheets left by Pessoa in a large trunk and housed today at the National Library in Lisbon. Pessoa was rapidly appreciated by the Portuguese-speaking world as much of his most important poetry saw print in the 1940s, and in the...
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