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The Forum: Fernando Pessoa: The man who multiplied himself

Statue of Portuguese poet and writer Fernando Pessoa outside Café Brasilera, Lisbonne, Portugal

05/09/2019 GMT

Fernando Pessoa: The man who multiplied himself

BBC World Service - The Forum, Fernando Pessoa: The man who multiplied himself

The great Portuguese writer Fernando Pessoa who invented dozens of alter egos

The many sides of the intriguing Portuguese writer Fernando Pessoa and his other selves. Joining Rajan Datar are Richard Zenith, Mariana Gray de Castro and Bernard McGuirk.

Fernando Pessoa is Portugal’s national poet and a giant of 20th Century literature but he’s also a writer who multiplied himself, who wrote under dozens of alter egos, ranging from an engineer trained in Glasgow in Scotland, to a hunchback who is helplessly lovesick, to a doctor and Latin scholar who’s a fervent Royalist. His masterpiece The Book of Disquiet, considered to be one of the defining works of modernist literature, is equally fragmented - written on scraps of paper and consisting of hundreds of virtually unordered manuscripts. So what makes Fernando Pessoa such a great writer and so relevant today? Joining Rajan Datar to discuss Fernando Pessoa and his many selves are his translator and biographer Richard Zenith, and the literary scholars and Pessoa experts Dr Mariana Gray de Castro and professor Bernard McGuirk.

(Photo: Statue of Portuguese poet and writer Fernando Pessoa outside Café Brasilera, Lisbon, Portugal. Credit: Anne Khazam/BBC)

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