Fernando Pessoa, poet, publisher, and translator

Abstract

• FERNANDO PESSOA is widely considered to be the greatest Portuguese poet of the twentieth century and a major writer of European stature. His enigmatic personality and the potent combination of poetic genius and metaphysics in his verse have fascinated a wide variety of readers both in Portugal and abroad. His invention of heteronyms, or alter egos, poets of his own creation who conducted a poetic 'drama in people', has found a response in the anxieties of the twentieth century, while the innovations in his poetic style, partly influenced by his fluency in English, have revolutionized modern Portuguese poetry.