Fernando Pessoa
| Fernando Pessoa | |
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Portrait of Pessoa, 1914.
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| Born | Fernando António Nogueira Pessoa June 13, 1888 Lisbon, Kingdom of Portugal |
| Died | November 30, 1935 (aged 47) Lisbon, Portugal |
| Occupation | Poet, writer, translator and philosopher |
| Language | Portuguese, english, french |
| Nationality | Portuguese |
| Alma mater | University of Lisbon |
| Period | 1912–1935 |
| Genre | Poetry, essay, fiction |
| Notable works | The Book of Disquiet |
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| Signature |  |
Fernando António Nogueira Pessoa (Portuguese: [fɨɾˈnɐ̃dw pɨˈsoɐ]; June 13, 1888 – November 30, 1935), commonly known as Fernando Pessoa, was a Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, publisher and philosopher, described as one of the most significant literary figures of the 20th century and one of the greatest poets in the Portuguese language. He also wrote in and translated from English and French.
Pessoa was a prolific writer, and not only under his own name, for he dreamed up approximately seventy-five others. He did not call them pseudonyms because he felt that did not capture their true independent intellectual life and instead called them heteronyms. These imaginary figures sometimes held unpopular or extreme views.
Pessoa was born in Lisbon. On July 13, 1893, when Pessoa was five, his father, Joaquim de Seabra Pessoa, died of tuberculosis and next year, on January 2, his younger brother Jorge, aged one, also died.
Following the second marriage of his mother, Maria Magdalena Pinheiro Nogueira, with João Miguel dos Santos Rosa, on December 31, 1895, little Fernando sailed with his mother for South Africa in the beginning of 1896, to join his stepfather, a military officer appointed Portuguese consul in Durban, capital of the former British Colony of Natal.
He declared:
There is only one event in the past which has both the definiteness and the importance required for rectification by direction; this is my father's death, which took place on 13th July, 1893. My mother's second marriage (which took place on 30th December, 1895) is another date which I can give with preciseness and it is important for me, not in itself, but in one of its results – the circumstance that, my stepfather becoming Portuguese Consul in Durban (Natal), I was educated there, this English education being a factor of supreme importance in my life, and, whatever my fate be, indubitably shaping it.
The dates of the voyages related to the above event are (as nearly as possible):
1st. voyage to Africa – left Lisbon beginning January 1896.
Return – left Durban in the afternoon of 1st. August 1901.
2nd. voyage to Africa – left Lisbon about 20th. September 1902.
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