Fernando Pessoa
Fernando Pessoa
Fernando Pessoa, born Fernando António Nogueira Pessoa, was a Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, publisher and philosopher, described as one of the most significant literary figures of the 20th century and one of the greatest poets in the Portuguese language. He also wrote in and translated from English and French...
NationalityPortuguese
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth13 June 1888
CityLisbon, Portugal
CountryPortugal
I search and can't find myself. I belong in chrysanthemum time, sharp in calla lily elongations. God made my soul into an ornamental thing.
I never meant to be but a dreamer.
The superiority of the dreamer is that dreaming is much more practical than living, and that the dreamer extracts from life a much vaster and varied pleasure than the action man. In better and more direct words, the dreamer is the real action man.
I take with me the conscience of defeat as a victory banner.
The beauty of a naked body is felt only by the dressed races.
I come closer to my desk as to a bulwark against life.
The human soul is an abyss
I never had anyone I could call “Master”. No Christ died for me. No Buddha showed me the right path. In the depths of my dreams no Apollo or Athena appeared to me to enlighten my soul
All I’ve ever done is dream. That, and only that, has been the meaning of my existence. The only thing I’ve ever really cared about is my inner life. My greatest griefs faded to nothing the moment I opened the window onto my inner self and lost myself in watching. I never tried to be anything other than a dreamer. I never paid any attention to people who told me to go out and live. I belonged always to whatever was far from me and to whatever I could never be. Anything that was not mine, however base, always seemed to be full of poetry. The only thing I ever loved was pure nothingness.
As I walk, I construct perfect sentences that I cannot remember later at home. I don’t know if the ineffable poetry of those sentences derived from what they were or from their never having been (written).
And I have the others in me. Even when I’m far away from them, I am forced to live with them. Even when I’m all alone, crowds surround me. I have no place to flee to, unless I were to flee from myself.
I walk along a street and see in the faces of the passersby not the expression they really have but the expression they would have for me if they knew about my life and how I am, if I carried, transparent in my gestures and my face, the ridiculous, timid abnormality of my soul.
At first I felt dizzy - not with the kind of dizziness that makes the body reel but the kind that's like a dead emptiness in the brain, an instinctive awareness of the void.
I am the escaped one, After I was born They locked me up inside me But I left. My soul seeks me, Through hills and valley, I hope my soul Never finds me.