Fernando Pessoa and Co.

Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935) - a poet who lived most of his life in a furnished room in Lisbon, Portugal, and who died in obscurity there - has in recent years gained international recognition as one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century. Pessoa was as much a creator of personas as he was of poetry, prose, and criticism. He wrote under numerous "heteronyms," or literary alter egos, and invented fully fleshed biographies for all of them. In the voices of these heteronyms, who supported and criticized each other's work in the margins of his drafts and in the literary journals of the time, Pessoa ranged widely over the possibilities of language. His poetry contains echoes of symbolist verse, Portuguese folk song, and futurist manifesto; it evokes both the breathtaking minimalism of the theory of relativity and the revolutionary exuberance of Leaves of Grass.