Always Astonished: Selected Prose

Fernando Pessoa

ISBN 10: 0872862283 / ISBN 13: 9780872862289

Published by City Lights Publishers, 2001

About this Item

2001. Paperback. . . . . .

Seller Inventory # V9780872862289

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Always Astonished: Selected Prose
• Publisher: City Lights Publishers
• Publication Date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0872862283
• ISBN 13: 9780872862289
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

"After looking for him in the poems, we search for him in the prose. The pursuit of the Other in Pessoa's work is never-ending," writes Edwin Honig. Essential to understanding the great Portuguese poet are the essays written about (and by) his heteronyms—Alberto Caeiro, Ricardo Reis, and Alvaro de Campos—the several pseudonyms under which he wrote an extraordinary body of poetry. In Always Astonished, Pessoa and his several selves debate and discuss one another's work, revealing how Portuguese modernism was shaped. Fernando Pessoa is one of the great voices of twentieth-century literature, and these manifestos, letters, journal notes, and critical essays range through aesthetics, lyric poetry, dramatic and visual arts, and the psychology of the artist. He gives us, too, a singularly heterodox political position in his strange work of fiction, The Anarchist Banker.

"Eloquent, volatile and obsessed with life—and death—(Pessoa is one of the) modernist giants in whose shadow we live and who made our century one of the extraordinary richness."—The New York Times

Fernando Pessoa is Portugal's most important contemporary poet. He wrote under several identities, which he called heteronyms: Albet Caeiro, Alvaro de Campos, Ricardo Reis, and Bernardo Soares. He wrote fine poetry under his own name as well, and each of his "voices" is completely different in subject, temperament, and style.

Synopsis

Fernando Pessoa was one of the greatest literary figures of the 20th century and this collection of prose examines aesthetics, lyric poetry, dramatic and visual arts, and the psychology of the artist.