Poetry Within Pessoa

By Vincenzo Mercolino

Pessoa should be read slowly, internally. Savoring the words and thinking the pauses. It is a thin blade that penetrates but that does not hurt. This collection was born by chance after listening to a poem by Fernando Pessoa, ("Elsewhere") on the radio. I was intrigued and then I started to buy some books of this author of the twentieth century. Especially reading his prose, I started to get interested in his "Livro do desassossego" (The Book of Disquiet) whose aphorisms are the source of inspiration for the works presented in this book, born from the meeting of the 'knife' with the heart ...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Babelcube Inc.
• Release date: Feb 12, 2017
• ISBN: 9781507165430

Book preview

Mendes

Introduction

I listened for the first time the lines of Fernando Pessoa one evening, while I was returning home from Rome by car.

I was listening to one of my favorite radio stations (Radio Montecarlo: should I write it?), and poetry was presented by the speaker Luisella Berrino following the suggestion of a listener, and it was called Elsewhere:

Let's go, my child,

away to Elsewhere.

Where days are always mild

and fields are always fair.

Moon shines over those who

vague beyond happy and free.

Weaves light and darkness

of immortality.

There to start to see things,

tell tales so sweet one cannot talk,

Beyond the real, dream songs sing,

by lips one cannot walk.

The time there is a moment of bliss,

life a satisfied thirst,

love like that of a kiss,

when the kiss is like the first.

We don't need a boat, my child,

but our hopes until there,

no rowers, but fantasy and wild,

Oh, let's go Elsewhere!

This poem belongs to a collection, The Mad Fiddler that Pessoa wrote, full of Anglo-Saxon literary impetus, after returning from a trip from southern Africa. He had just completed the readings of classic English and American authors such as Poe, Shakespeare and Shelley; personally I