Prose

minimal anthology

Pessoa, Fernando
Pizarro, Jerónimo (ed.)

To read this anthology, one must first accept what admirers of Pessoa the poet may find strange: “the greater part of Pessoa’s archive,” Jerónimo Pizarro explains, “is written in prose.” Thus, coming after the volume dedicated to poetry, this Minimal Anthology goes beyond The Book of Disquiet to embrace sociopolitical, philosophical, esoteric, epistolary, and theoretical writings. Some are well known, such as the letter to Adolfo Casais Monteiro on the genesis of the heteronyms, while others are more amusing—aphorisms, short stories, letters to Ofélia… But there are also surprises, even for those most familiar with Pessoa, such as the “Decorative Chronicle.” All are good reasons to embark once more on this new way of “unlearning” Pessoa (to use the word of the master, Alberto Caeiro) and to read him as if we were discovering him for the first time.
The essential prose of Fernando Pessoa and his principal heteronyms, in an edition by Jerónimo Pizarro