Richard Zenith, the author of “Pessoa: A Biography.” Credit. He was awed, and a little afraid of his mind, its “overabundance.” What relation did it bear to a family history of nervous instability? Among his writings was a sheaf of papers that would become his masterpiece: “The Book of Disquiet,” a mock confession in sly, despairing aphorisms and false starts - “The active life has always struck me as the least comfortable of suicides.” In total, Pessoa created dozens of heteronyms, most complete with biographies, bodies of work, reviews and correspondence.

They were authored not only by Pessoa but by a flock of his personas (“heteronyms,” he called them): a doctor, a classicist, a bisexual poet, a monk, a lovesick teenage girl. After his death in 1935, the trunk was discovered, brimming with notes and jottings on calling cards and envelopes, whatever paper appeared to be handy. He published a few books that went mostly unnoticed, but there were rumors of a trunk in his room stuffed with his true life’s work.

It is the nonpareil Fernando Pessoa, the Portuguese poet, critic, translator, mystic and giant of modernism. As an artist, Dickinson “was determined to survive,” Rich wrote, “to use her powers, to practice necessary economies.”Īnother figure stumbles into view now, in customary camouflage - dark suit, face obscured beneath owlish glasses and thick mustache - another virtuoso of the necessary economies that allow the imagination to flourish. She held that Emily Dickinson chose seclusion not out of eccentricity but as a practical measure: to fasten her concentration and keep distraction at bay.

The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa