Editing Fernando Pessoa (section)

==Summaries of selected works==
{{More citations needed|section|date=March 2024}}

===''Message''===
[[File:1edicao Mensagem 1934.jpg|thumb|right|200px|''Mensagem'', first edition, 1934.]]

''[[Mensagem]]'',<ref name= "FPMessagemEdEF2016">{{citation |author-last= Pessoa |author-first= Fernando |editor-last= Freitas |editor-first= Eduardo |year=2016 |language= pt |title= A Mensagem: Editado Por Eduardo Filipe Freitas |publisher= CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform |isbn= 978-1-535-19909-4}}</ref> written in Portuguese, is a symbolist epic made up of 44 short poems organized in three parts or Cycles:<ref>''Message'', Tr. by [[Jonathan Griffin]], Exeter: Shearsman Books, 2007.</ref>

The first, called "Brasão" (Coat-of-Arms), relates Portuguese historical protagonists to each of the fields and charges in the [[Coat of arms of Portugal|Portuguese coat of arms]]. The first two poems ("The castles" and "The escutcheons") draw inspiration from the material and spiritual natures of Portugal. Each of the remaining poems associates to each charge a historical personality. Ultimately they all lead to the [[Portuguese discoveries|Golden Age of Discovery]].

The second Part, called "Mar Português" (Portuguese Sea), references the country's Age of Portuguese Exploration and to [[Portuguese Empire|its seaborne Empire]] that ended with the death of [[Sebastian of Portugal|King Sebastian]] at [[Ksar el-Kebir|El-Ksar el Kebir]] (''Alcácer-Quibir'' in Portuguese) in 1578. Pessoa brings the reader to the present as if he had woken up from a dream of the past, to fall in a dream of the future: he sees King Sebastian returning and still bent on accomplishing a Universal Empire.

The third Cycle, called "O Encoberto" ("The Hidden One"), refers to Pessoa's vision of a future world of peace and the [[Fifth Empire]] (which, according to Pessoa, is spiritual and not material, because if it were material England would already have achieved it). After the Age of Force (Vis), and Taedium (Otium) will come Science (understanding) through a reawakening of "The Hidden One", or "King Sebastian". The Hidden One represents the fulfillment of the destiny of mankind, designed by God since before Time, and the accomplishment of Portugal.

King Sebastian is very important, indeed he appears in all three parts of Mensagem. He represents the capacity of dreaming, and believing that it's possible to achieve dreams.

One of the most famous quotes from ''Mensagem'' is the first line from ''O Infante'' (belonging to the second Part), which is ''Deus quer, o homem sonha, a obra nasce'' (which translates roughly to "God wishes, man dreams, the work is born"). Another well-known quote from ''Mensagem'' is the first line from ''Ulysses'', "O mito é o nada que é tudo" (a possible translation is "The myth is the nothing that is all"). This poem refers to [[Odysseus|Ulysses]], king of [[Ithaca (island)|Ithaca]], as Lisbon's founder (recalling an ancient Greek myth).<ref>{{Cite book |last=Pessoa |first=Fernando |url=https://purl.pt/13966 |title=Mensagem |publisher=Parceria A.M. Pereira |year=1934 |location=Lisbon |access-date=22 December 2023}}</ref>

===Literary essays===
[[File:A Aguia.JPG|thumb|right|200px|''A Águia — Organ of the Portuguese Renaissance'' — issue nr. 4, April 1912.]]

In 1912, Fernando Pessoa wrote a set of essays (later collected as ''The New Portuguese Poetry'') for the cultural journal ''A Águia'' (The Eagle), founded in [[Porto|Oporto]], in December 1910, and run by the republican association Renascença Portuguesa.<ref>Martins, Fernando Cabral (coord.) (2008). ''Dicionário de Fernando Pessoa e do Modernismo Português''. Alfragide: Editorial Caminho.</ref> In the first years of the [[Portuguese Republic]], this cultural association was started by republican intellectuals led by the writer and poet [[Teixeira de Pascoaes]], philosopher Leonardo Coimbra and historian Jaime Cortesão, aiming for the renewal of Portuguese culture through the aesthetic movement called Saudosismo.{{Efn | The Portuguese Republic was founded by the revolution of 5 October 1910, giving freedom of association and publishing.}}  Pessoa contributed to the journal ''A Águia'' with a series of papers: 'The new Portuguese Poetry Sociologically Considered' (nr. 4), 'Relapsing...' (nr. 5) and 'The Psychological Aspect of the new Portuguese Poetry' (nrs. 9,11 and 12). These writings were strongly encomiastic to saudosist literature, namely the poetry of [[Teixeira de Pascoaes]] and [[Mário Beirão]]. The articles disclose Pessoa as a connoisseur of modern European literature and an expert of recent literary trends. On the other hand, he does not care much for a methodology of analysis or problems in the history of ideas. He states his confidence that Portugal would soon produce a great poet – a super-[[Camões]] – pledged to make an important contribution for European culture, and indeed, for humanity.<ref>Pessoa, Fernando (1993). ''Textos de Crítica e de Intervenção''. Lisboa: Edições Ática.</ref>

===Philosophical essays===
The philosophical notes of the young Pessoa, mostly written between 1905 and 1912, illustrate his debt to the history of [[philosophy]] more through commentators than through a first-hand protracted reading of the Classics, ancient or modern.<ref>{{citation | last = Zenith | first = Richard | year = 2021| title = Pessoa: A Biography | place = New York | publisher = Liveright Publishing Corporation | isbn =  9781324090779}}.</ref> The issues he engages with pertain to every philosophical discipline and concern a large profusion of concepts, creating a vast semantic spectrum in texts whose length varies between half a dozen lines and half a dozen pages and whose density of analysis is extremely variable; simple paraphrasis, expression of assumptions and original speculation.

Pessoa sorted the philosophical systems thus:
[[File:A Mensagem. Fernando Pessoa.jpg|thumb|300px|A passage from his famous poem "Mar Português" from ''Message'', in the city of [[Lagos, Portugal]].]]
# Relative Spiritualism and relative Materialism privilege "Spirit" or "Matter" as the main pole that organizes data around Experience.
# Absolute Spiritualist and Absolute Materialist "deny all objective reality to one of the elements of Experience".
# The materialistic [[Pantheism]] of [[Baruch Spinoza|Spinoza]] and the spiritualizing Pantheism of [[Nicolas Malebranche|Malebranche]], "admit that experience is a double manifestation of any thing that in its essence has no matter neither spirit".
# Considering both elements as an "illusory manifestation", of a transcendent and true and alone realities, there is [[Transcendentalism]], inclined into matter with [[Arthur Schopenhauer|Schopenhauer]], or into spirit, a position where [[Henri Bergson|Bergson]] could be emplaced.
# A terminal system "the limited and summit of metaphysics" would not radicalize – as poles of experience – one of the single categories: matter, relative, absolute, real, illusory, spirit. Instead, matching all categories, it takes contradiction as "the essence of the universe" and defends that "an affirmation is so more true insofar the more contradiction involves". The transcendent must be conceived beyond categories. There ''is one only and eternal example of it. It is that cathedral of thought -the philosophy of [[Hegel]].''
Such [[pantheist]] [[transcendentalism]] is used by Pessoa to define the project that "encompasses and exceeds all systems"; to characterize the new poetry of '''Saudosismo''' where the "typical contradiction of this system" occurs; to inquire of the particular social and political results of its adoption as the leading cultural paradigm; and, at last, he hints that metaphysics and religiosity strive "to find in everything a beyond".