Fernando Pessoa, premature and dizzy

It wasn't until his death in 1935, at the age of 47, that Fernando Pessoa 's literary life slowly began to truly take off. Known for his ceaseless creative drive, the Portuguese author, as is well known, spent his life creating various literary avatars. We're talking, of course, about his famous heteronyms; the most recognized—Alberto Caeiro, Bernardo Soares, and Ricardo Reis—first appeared in public in the Portuguese magazine Presença , back in 1928; and the last of these even inspired one of the complex novels by another well-tempered and Nobel-winning Portuguese author, José Saramago.

The Book of Transformation combines a copious series of fragments in three languages ​​(Portuguese, English, French) in a plural translation; and, like a significant portion of the work, it remained unpublished during his lifetime. Recovered from the Archivo Pessoa of the National Library of Portugal, the texts embrace the heterogeneity and multiplicity inherent in the poet's interests. Written in the uncompromising heat of adolescence, The Book … configures other, lesser-known literary personalities, and, to the extent that they predate the most recognized heteronyms, this volume discusses four "pre-heteronyms."

We find the essayist and poet Alexander Search, to whom Pessoa gave essential biographical information, such as his city and date of birth; the nationalist satirist Pantaleão, a mask or nom de guerre rather than a fictional being, according to one of the translators, ready to frontally criticize the abuses of the dictatorship imposed in 1907; Jean Seul de Méluret, who, not without difficulty, persisted in writing in French with decidedly moral aims: condemning French society for its exhibitionism and perversion of morals. And finally, Charles James Search, Alexander's older brother, is the only one of these figures dedicated to translating.

The book's rich material compiles poems, moral fictions, political and psychiatric essays, satires, and translations, all of which have been making their way since 1908, a date imbued with a sense of political contingency. The carefully curated edition is also characterized by a touch of color as ingenious as it is sympathetic, an experimentation typical of Pessoa's laboratory: CJ Search, the last of the aforementioned pre-heteronyms, not only dedicates himself to the tricky profession of translation, but is himself translated by a sidekick who, to equalize terms and conditions, turns out to be as invented as he is: a certain Doctor Norberto Magenta.

Heteroclite and fragmentary, the translators question the true nature of the book and reach a different conclusion than the Portuguese editors, who considered it—even in its flagrant heterogeneity—a complete work. What, specifically, is The Book of Transformation? they ask. Can one book be several together? What plans did Pessoa have for publishing such a book? “Because it's hard to imagine,” they state, “what form a work in three languages, written by four authors, would take, broken down into collections of poems, monographs, essays, satires, fables, and translations of anthologies and entire novels, with distinct themes and tones, clearly intended to be published separately.”

Whatever it may be, the book includes poems from a tortured adolescence; essays that articulate physical and social degeneration; texts on the madness of Jesus Christ and political barricades; and moral satires. It demonstrates that from his youth, Pessoa conceived of the multitude as inscribed within his self, in a tireless drama that unfolded, as he was able to say, not in actions, but in people.

The Book of Transformation , Fernando Pessoa. Interzona, 512 pages.