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.
(I am the escaped one )
_______
I am nothing.
I shall always be nothing.
I can only want to be nothing.
Apart from this, I have in me all the dreams in the world.
(The Tobacconist´s by Álvaro de Campos)
_______
I made of myself something beyond my knowledge,
And what I could make of myself I failed to do.
The domino costume that I wore was all wrong.
They immediately took me for someone I was not
and I didn’t deny it, and I was lost.
When I tried to take off the mask,
It was stuck to my face.
When I took it off and looked in the mirror,
I had grown old,
I was drunk, and I didn't know how to put on
the costume that I had not taken off.
I threw the mask away and slept in the dressing room
As a dog tolerated by the management
because he’s harmless.
And I’m going to write this story to prove
that I’m sublime.
_______
I bring inside of my heart,
As in a safe that if cannot close of full,
All the places where it stows,
All the ports that I arrived,
All the landscapes that i saw through windows or guards,
Or of quarter-decks, dreaming,
And everything this, that is in such a way, is not enough for what I want.
...
I travelled for more lands of that those where I touched...
Saw more landscapes of those where I put the eyes...
I tried more sensations of that all the sensations that I felt,
Because, no matter how hard it felt, it always lacked that to feel to me
And the life always ached me, it always was little, and I, unhappy
...
I feel that was outside of what I imagined everything what I wanted,
That even so I wanted everything, everything lacked to me....
(PASSING HOURS )
_______
My soul is a light bulb that is turned off but is still hot...
(Absurd Hour)
_______
The poet is a faker
Who's so good at his act
He even fakes the pain
Of pain he feels in fact
_______
Contradiction is the essence of the universe...
WHEN IT ALL HAPPENED...
1888: Fernando Antonio Nogueira Pessoa is born on June 13, in Lisbon. - 1893: His father dies. - 1895: His mother marries Commander João Miguel Rosa. They move to Durban, South Africa. - 1904: He receives the Queen Victoria Memorial Prize, for an essay presented as part of the admission tests for Cape of Good Hope University. - 1905: He returns to Lisbon, alone. - 1912: He debuts as a writer in the literary magazine Águia. - 1915: Together with some friends, he founds Orpheu Magazine. - 1918/21: Publishes English Poems. - 1925: The poet's mother dies. - 1934: Publication of Mensagem. - 1935: Fernando Pessoa dies in Lisbon, victim of liver disorders.
