The sweet-heart, Ophelia Queiroz, reported when she was much older that Pessoa, whom she met in an office where they both worked, first declared his love with candle in hand and words borrowed from Hamlet: “O dear Ophelia, I am ill at these numbers; I have not art to reckon my groans: but that I love thee best, O most best, believe it.” Could it have been her name that induced ultraliterary, ever-playful Pessoa to woo her in the first place?

When he was a little boy, literature was Pessoa’s playground, and he never really left it. Like a lot of artists, but more so, Fernando Pessoa refused to grow up. He continued to live in a world of make-believe. Or shall we call it a world of make-literature? Believing, mere believing, bored Pessoa. Like a good artist, he harnessed his fertile imagination to make richly expressive things—his stunning poems, his well-turned prose, and his heteronymic nation, which was his greatest poetic act.

Chronology

The titles of Pessoa’s works have, for the most part, been translated into English.

 

1887 Ricardo Reis is “born” in Oporto on September 19 at 4:05 p.m.

1888 Fernando António Nogueira Pessoa is born on June 13 at the Largo de São Carlos, in Lisbon, at 3:20 p.m. He is the first child of Joaquim de Seabra Pessoa, born in Lisbon but with family roots in the Algarve, and of Maria Madalena Pinheiro Nogueira, from the Ilha Terceira, in the Azores.

1889 Alberto Caeiro is “born” in Lisbon on April 16 at 1:45 p.m.

1890 Álvaro de Campos is “born” on October 15 (Nietzsche’s birthday) in Tavira, the Algarve, at 1:30 p.m.

1893 A brother, Jorge, is born in January. In July his father dies from tuberculosis, and the family, which includes Dionísia, Pessoa’s paternal grandmother, moves to a smaller apartment.

1894 His brother Jorge dies in January. That same month his mother meets João Miguel Rosa, a naval officer.

1895 In July Pessoa composes his earliest known verses, a quatrain addressed to his mother. On December 30 she is married, by proxy, to João Miguel Rosa, recently named Portugal’s consul in Durban, capital of the English colony of Natal.

1896 In January Pessoa and his mother embark for Durban, South Africa, where he enrolls in the Convent School. In November his mother gives birth to Henriqueta Madalena, the sibling who will be closest to Pessoa.

1899 Pessoa enrolls in Durban High School, where he receives a solid English education.

1900 His mother gives birth to Luís Miguel.

1901 After completing three years of high school in little more than two years, Pessoa passes the First Class School Higher Certificate exam of the University of the Cape of Good Hope. In August he sails with his family for Portugal, where they will stay for a year, mostly in Lisbon, but with trips to the Algarve (to visit the paternal relatives) and to the Azores (to visit the maternal relatives).

1902 In May the family travels to the Ilha Terceira, staying with Pessoa’s Aunt Anica (his mother’s only sister). There—but also in Lisbon, before and after the trip to the Azores—Pessoa creates rather elaborate “newspapers” filled with real and invented news, jokes, riddles, and poems, all in Portuguese. The articles and other pieces are signed by various “journalists,” several of whom the “editor” invents biographies for. In July his first poem is published, in a Lisbon newspaper. In September he returns to Durban, where he enrolls in the Commercial School.

1903 His mother gives birth to João Maria. (Two daughters from her second marriage die in infancy.) In November Pessoa takes the Matriculation Examination of the University of the Cape of Good Hope and wins the Queen Victoria Prize for the best English essay from among the 899 examinees.

1904 Returns to Durban High School, where he pursues his first year of university studies. (The University of the Cape of Good Hope administers exams but does not yet offer courses.) In July he publishes, in The Natal Mercury, a satirical poem signed by Charles Robert Anon, the first literary alter ego with a reasonably large body of work. In December he takes the Intermediate Examination in Arts and receives the highest score in Natal. He withdraws from Durban High School.

1905 In August he returns for good to Lisbon, where he enrolls in the university-level course of Arts and Letters. During the first year he lives with his Aunt Anica, who has just moved from the Ilha Terceira to Lisbon.

1906 Having missed the exams in July due to illness, he re-enrolls in the first year of the Arts and Letters course. He writes poetry and prose in English under the name of C. R. Anon and Alexander Search, a heteronym whose output will include close to two hundred poems and various prose pieces. In October Pessoa moves into an apartment with his family, who have arrived from Durban to spend a long holiday in Portugal.

1907 Pessoa’s classes are suspended in April due to a student strike, and in the summer he drops out. After his family returns to Durban, in May, Pessoa lives with two maternal great-aunts, Rita and Maria. His grandmother Dionísia, who also lives with them, dies in September and leaves Pessoa, her only heir, a small inheritance.

1909 Pessoa uses his inheritance to buy a printing press. In November he moves into his own apartment and opens the Empresa Ibis, a printing office, but it shuts down almost immediately. Earns a modest living as a freelance, translating various kinds of texts and drafting letters in English and French for firms doing business abroad.

1910 On October 5, the increasingly unpopular monarchy falls and the Portuguese Republic is proclaimed.

1911 In September Pessoa’s family moves from Durban to Pretoria, where his stepfather has been named consul general of Portugal.

1912 Lives once more with his Aunt Anica. Publishes, in the Oporto-based magazine A Águia, several long articles on the current state and future direction of Portuguese poetry. In October his best friend, the writer Mário de Sá-Carneiro (1890-1916), moves to Paris and a lively, literary correspondence ensues.

1913 Publishes, in A Águia, his first piece of creative prose, a passage from The Book of Disquiet, signed by his own name.