Editing Fernando Pessoa (section)

===Alberto Caeiro===
[[Alberto Caeiro]] was the first heteronym which Pessoa considered to be great or seminal. Through that heteronym, Pessoa wrote exclusively poetry. According to an anthology edited by Jerónimo Pizarro and Patricio Ferrari titled ''The Collected Works of Alberto Caeiro'', "This imaginary author was a shepherd who spent most of his life in the countryside, had almost no education, and was ignorant of most literature."<ref>{{Cite web |title=The Complete Works of Alberto Caeiro by Fernando Pessoa {{!}} New Directions |url=https://www.ndbooks.com/book/the-complete-works-of-alberto-caeiro/ |access-date=2024-07-13 |website=www.ndbooks.com |language=en}}</ref>

Critics note that Caeiro's poems demonstrate wide-eyed childlike wonder at nature. [[Octavio Paz]], in translating his work, refers to him as an "innocent poet".<ref>{{Cite web |date=2021-02-21 |title="Octavio Paz: Paths Towards the Untranslatable" by Christian Elguera - Latin American Literature Today |url=https://latinamericanliteraturetoday.org/2021/02/octavio-paz-paths-towards-untranslatable-christian-elguera/ |access-date=2024-07-13 |language=en-US}}</ref> Specifically, Paz observes Caeiro's willingness to accept reality as such rather than attempting to dress it up in what other poets would consider to be aesthetic. Rather than using poetry as an interpretative and transformative device, Paz argues, Caeiro simply wrote poetry as such. In other words, Caiero's method is [[Phenomenology (philosophy)|phenomenological]] as opposed to [[Aesthetics|aesthetic]].<ref>Paz, Octavio (1983), "El Desconocido de Si Mismo: Fernando Pessoa", in ''Los Signos en Rotacion y Otros Ensayos'', Madrid: Alianza Editorial.</ref>

Such a philosophy makes Caeiro contrast greatly with his creator, Pessoa, who was deferential to modernism and thus interrogates the world around him rather than merely experience it. Pessoa regarded him as follows: "He sees things with the eyes only, not with the mind. He does not let any thoughts arise when he looks at a flower ... the only thing a stone tells him is that it has nothing at all to tell him ... this way of looking at a stone may be described as the totally unpoetic way of looking at it. The stupendous fact about Caeiro is that out of this sentiment, or rather, absence of sentiment, he makes poetry."<ref>{{citation |title=Fernando Pessoa & Co. : selected poems|last1=Pessoa|first1=Fernando |date=1998|publisher=Grove Press|last2=Zenith |first2=Richard |isbn=0802116280|edition=1st |location=New York|pages=40|oclc=38055974}}</ref>

The critic Jane M. Sheets notes that the creation of Caeiro was a necessary precursor to the later heteronyms to follow by providing a universalizing poetic vision from which others could be derived. While Caeiro was a short-lived heteronym in Pessoa's career, it established several tenets which would inevitably appear in the works of Campos, Reis, and Pessoa's own work.<ref>Sheets, Jane M., Fernando Pessoa as Anti-Poet: Alberto Caeiro, ''in Bulletin of Hispanic Studies'', Vol. XLVI, Nr. 1, January 1969, pp. 39–47.</ref>