Famous People

Fernando Pessoa (13th June 1888 – 30th November 1935)

Fernando Pessoa was the most famous poet in Portugal. He was one of the most original poets of European modernism and at the forefront of its development in Portugal. Pessoa was born is Lisbon in 1888, his father died of tuberculosis when he was at the age of five. A year later his mother remarried to a Portuguese consul in South Africa, which evidently led to their relocation there, where he was given an English education in Durban. While living in Durban (South Africa) Pessoa learned English concluding to him writing his first three books of poetry in English. The first book that he wrote in Portuguese only appeared in 1934.

Lisbon was very much part of his soul and he returned to the city at the age of 17, studying briefly at the University of Lisbon from 1906. Eventually when Pessoa dropped out of university, he made his money from translating and writing business letters in English and French. He started his literary career in 1912, starting with literary criticism and moving onto a creative prose of poetry. He believed that literary texts should be appreciated for themselves and not because of the association with the author’s name. This begins to explain why he wrote under numerous pseudonyms and heteronyms.

Pessoa died in November 1935 from cirrhosis of the liver, leaving a case with more than 25,000 pieces of poetry, letters and journals by a variety of his heteronyms. Today he is widely celebrated and cherished in Lisbon, where a bronze statue permanently sits at a table outside A Brasileria.