Portuguese poet, writer, and philosopher (1888–1935); creator of the heteronymic system including Alberto Caeiro, Ricardo Reis, Álvaro de Campos, and Bernardo Soares
Fernando Pessoa (13 June 1888 – 30 November 1935) was a Portuguese poet and writer, most of whose work was published posthumously. He wrote frequently under heteronyms, alter egos with developed personalities, biographies, jobs, habits, attitudes, addresses, etc., who sometimes quoted and interacted with each other and other people.
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Original: Tornamo-nos esfinges, ainda que falsas, até chegarmos ao ponto de não sabermos quem somos.
Original: Nunca pretendi ser senão um sonhador.
Original: Minha Pátria é a língua portuguesa.
And with a relentlessness that comes from the world's depths, with a persistence that strikes the keys metaphysically, the scales of a piano student keep playing over and over, up and down the physical backbone of my memory. It's the old streets with other people, the same streets that today are different; it's dead people speaking to me through the transparency of their absence; it's remorse for what I did or didn't do; it's the rippling of streams in the night, noises from below in the quiet building.
I feel like screaming inside my head. I want to stop, to break, to smash this impossible phonograph record that keeps playing inside me, where it doesn't belong, an intangible torturer. I want my soul, a vehicle taken over by others, to let me off and go on without me. I'm going crazy from having to hear. And in the end it is I – in my odiously impressionable brain, in my thin skin, in my hypersensitive nerves – who am the keys played in scales, O horrible and personal piano of our memory.
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عمر الخيام كانت له شخصية معينة، أما أنا فلا أملك لحسن الحظ أو لسوئه، أي شخصية على الاطلاق، ما أكونه في لحظة معينة، أنفصل عنه في اللحظة الموالية، ما كنته ذات يوم، أنساه في اليوم الذي يليه. لا يشبه عمر الخيام إلا ذاك الذي يعيش في عالم واحد، هو العالم الخارجي. أما من هو مثلي فيحيا في عالم داخلي متعاقب متنوع. وحتى لو رغب في أن تكون له نفس فلسفة عمر الخيام فلن يستطيع ذلك حتما،
Beyond the bend in the road
There may be a well, and there may be a castle,
And there may be just more road.
I don't know and don't ask.
As long as I'm on the road that's before the bend
I look only at the road before the bend,
Because the road before the bend is all I can see.
It would do me no good to look anywhere else
Or at what I can't see.
Let's pay attention only to where we are.
There's only enough beauty in being here and not somewhere else.
If there are people beyond the bend in the road,
Let them worry about what's beyond the bend in the road.
That, for them, is the road.
If we're to arrive there, when we arrive there we'll know.
For now we know only that we're not there.
Here there's just the road before the bend, and before the bend
There's the road without any bend.
Original: Viajar? Para viajar basta existir. [...] Para quê viajar? Em Madrid, em Berlim, na Pérsia, na China, nos Pólos ambos, onde estaria eu senão em mim mesmo, e no tipo e género das minhas sensações? A vida é o que fazemos dela. As viagens são os viajantes. O que vemos não é o que vemos, senão o que somos.