Fernando Pessoa

In Our Time

BBC

History

4.6 • 9.2K Ratings

🗓️ 3 December 2020

⏱️ 50 minutes

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Summary

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Portuguese poet Pessoa (1888-1935) who was largely unknown in his lifetime but who, in 1994, Harold Bloom included in his list of the 26 most significant western writers since the Middle Ages. Pessoa wrote in his own name but mainly in the names of characters he created, each with a distinctive voice and biography, which he called heteronyms rather than pseudonyms, notably Ricardo Reis, Alberto Caeiro, Álvaro de Campos and one who was closer to Pessoa's own identity, Bernardo Soares. Most of Pessoa's works were unpublished at his death, discovered in a trunk; as more and more was printed and translated, his fame and status grew. With Cláudia Pazos-Alonso Professor of Portuguese and Gender Studies and Senior Research Fellow at Wadham College, University of Oxford Juliet Perkins Visiting Senior Research Fellow in Portuguese Studies at King’s College London And Paulo de Medeiros Professor of English and Comparative Literary Studies at the University of Warwick Producer: Simon Tillotson

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts.
0:05.0	Thanks for downloading this episode of In Our Time.
0:07.5	There's a reading list to go with it on our website, and you can get news about our
0:11.0	programs if you follow us on Twitter at BBC In Our Time.
0:14.9	I hope you enjoyed the programs.
0:17.1	Hello, Fernando Pazoa, 1888 to 1935, is one of the greatest Portuguese poets and some say
0:23.1	one of the greatest in the whole Western tradition.
0:26.0	In his lifetime, he was seen as well shockingly new and deeply conservative.
0:31.2	Some perms scandalized, others were recited at schools.
0:35.4	And since his death, he's been valued more and more for his explorations of the self.
0:39.6	In works under his own name and in over 70 other personas, some of them with full biographies,
0:45.4	whom he called his heteronims.
0:47.7	With me to discuss, Fernando Pazoa are Claudia Pazoa's Alonzo, Professor of Portuguese
0:52.8	and Gender Studies and Senior Research Fellow at Warnham College University of Oxford.
0:57.1	Jullit Perkins visiting senior research fellow in Portuguese studies at King's College
1:01.3	London and Paulo de Maneiros, Professor of English and Comparative Literary Studies
1:05.8	at the University of Warwick.
1:07.5	Jullit Perkins, what should we know about Pazoa's childhood?
1:11.2	Well, Fernando Pazoa was born on 13th June, 1888, in Central Lisbon, to well to do educated
1:18.8	parents.
1:19.8	His father, for example, was the son of a general and their family hailed from the Argav,
1:25.0	in the father was a civil servant, but also music critic for the Lisbon daily paper, the
	...

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