Fernando Pessoa didn’t travel much during his adult life, which corresponds to his literary maturity. He was almost always in Lisbon, writing, working as a translator and spending hours in the capital’s literary cafés. During his childhood, between 1896 and 1905, he lived in South Africa for family reasons. There, in the city of Durban, he spent important years for his literary formation, but the poet’s place of choice was undoubtedly Lisbon, it was Portugal. Apart from the capital, Pessoa visited few other places during his life, even in Portugal. However, other cities and places in Portugal played an important role in his life and work, for different reasons. Here are five of them that we hope will be of interest to readers, literary tourists and literary tour operators, to build their itineraries through poetry and Portuguese and universal culture, of which Pessoa is an outstanding representative.

1. Lisbon

Fernando Pessoa was born in Lisbon, in a private flat opposite the National Theatre of S. Carlos, nº 4, 4º Esq., in Largo de São Carlos, on 13 June 1888. The Portuguese poet and thinker lived in the same capital for most of his life, and died there at the Hospital de S. Luís dos Franceses, in Bairro Alto, on 30 November 1935. There are countless literary events and passages in Pessoa’s work that are directly or indirectly related to Lisbon, undoubtedly the city of his heart and soul. Famous are the two poems entitled ‘Lisbon Revisited’, one from 1923 and the other from 1926, which we quoted in a previous article on this very blog. Among other texts dedicated to the city that, according the legend, was founded by Ulisses, we’ve chosen one from the Livro do Desassossego , from 1930, in which Pessoa’s affection for Lisbon is manifest in the final exhortation:

«THUNDERSTORM
The blue of the sky showing between the still clouds was smudged with transparent white.

The boy at the back of the office suspended for a moment the cord going round the eternal package.

‘I can only remember one other like this,’ he statistically remarked.

A cold silence. The sounds from the street seemed to be cut by a knife. Then there was a long, cosmically held breath, a kind of generalized dread. The entire universe had stopped dead. Moments, moments, moments… Silence blackened the darkness.

All of a sudden, live steel …..

How human the metallic peal of the trams! How happy the landscape of simple rain falling on the street resurrected from the chasm!

Oh Lisbon, my home!»

(Text: ed. Richard Zenith; image: BNP/E3, 3-30r-31r.2, porm.; consulted on the website LdoD)

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2. Terceira Island (Azores)

Fernando Pessoa’s mother, Maria Madalena Pinheiro Nogueira, was born in 1861 in Angra do Heroísmo, on Terceira Island (Azores). To her, whom Pessoa loved very much, he dedicated his first poetic verses in Portuguese, written in 1895 in Lisbon, in a quatrain entitled ‘To my dear mum’:

“Here I am in Portugal
In the lands where I was born
However much I love them,
I love you even more.”

On Terceira Island, the young Pessoa spent a holiday with his family in 1902, a Portuguese interlude during the nine years he spent living in Durban, South Africa, for family reasons. On Terceira Island, Pessoa wrote some youthful poems in Portuguese, including ‘Antigone’, written in June 1902, dedicated to the eponymous character from Greek mythology, the daughter of the incestuous relationship between King Oedipus and his mother, as the myth tells it:

«ANTIGONE

How do I love you? I don’t know how many ways
I adore you, woman with blue, chaste eyes;
I love you with the fervour of my worn-out senses;
I love you with the fervour of my daily precepts.

My love is pure, like pure tabernacles;
My love is noble, like the noblest glories;
It’s as big as the vast, high seas;
It’s gentle as the odour of lonely lilies.

A love that finally breaks the raw bonds of the Self;
A love so simple that it increases in fortune;
A love so loyal that it increases in suffering;

A love of such a nature that in gloomy life
Is so great and in the most vile yearnings of life,
Much greater will it be in the peace of the grave!»

(Commemorative plaque at Rua da Palha, Angra do Heroísmo, Terceira Island; photo by RTP Açores)

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3. Tavira

Fernando Pessoa’s father, Joaquim de Seabra Pessoa, was born in 1850 in Lisbon, with a branch of his family having roots in Tavira, in the Algarve. This man died in 1893, when Fernando was a five-year-old child. This event triggered a series of events – firstly, the second marriage of the poet’s mother to João Miguel Rosa, the Portuguese consul in Durban – which led Pessoa to South Africa in 1896. During his aforementioned trip to Portugal in 1901, the young poet visited some relatives on his father’s side in Tavira. The importance of this city for Pessoa is revealed, among other things, by the fact that the writer chose Tavira as the ‘birthplace’ of his heteronym Álvaro de Campos. Campos’ fictional biography, reflecting the experiences and sensations of Pessoa “himself” (the orthonym), is linked to Tavira, as can be seen in the 1931 poem “Notes about Tavira” :

«NOTES ABOUT TAVIRA

I finally arrived in the town where I spent my infancy.
I got down from the train, I remembered, I looked, I saw, I compared.
(All of this took the length of time of a tired look).
Everything was old where I was young.
And now – other shops, and other painted fronts to the same buildings,
A dark-yellow car I’ve never seen (there were none before)
Stagnates in front of a half-opened door.
Everything is old where it was new.
Yes, because even what is newest in relation to me means the rest being older
The house they newly painted is old because it is newly painted.
I stop in front of the landscape, and what I see is me.
I have imagined myself here before, splendidly aged 40 – Lord of the world –
But I’m 41 when I get down from the train [indolent?]
What have I conquered? Nothing. Nothing, that is, worth conquering.
I bring my tedium and my insolvency, physically making my suitcase heavier
Suddenly I proceed secure, resolutely.
I have got round my hesitation This town of my infancy is, in the end, a foreign city
(I make myself at home, as always, faced with what is strange, what means nothing to me).
I am a foreign tourist, transient.
It is clear; this is what I am.
Even in myself, oh God, in myself.»

(Tavira railway station; photo by Fabrizio Boscaglia)

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4. Portalegre

In 1909, Fernando Pessoa came of age and was finally able to receive the inheritance money left to him by his paternal grandmother, Dionísia, who had died in 1907. With this money, Pessoa decided to buy printing machines to open the Íbis – Tipográfica e Editora Company, in Lisbon, at Rua da Conceição da Glória, 38. Pessoa bought the machines in August of the same year, in Portalegre, where the poet spent a few days in a hotel. This company would be the first of many business failures throughout Fernando Pessoa’s life. Indeed, Íbis closed in 1910, after less than a year in business, due to a lack of customers. The writer’s brief stay in Portalegre was followed by a letter written in English to his friend Armando Teixeira Rebelo on 24 August 1909. The letter contains a poem by Pessoa dedicated to the Alentejo:

[…]
The taking-to-pieces and packing of the printing office is taking a damned long time — poetically speaking, of course. — Nevertheless, the men have worked quickly enough and I have looked on (and off) with the greatest energy. I sincerely believe that if I were to remain here a month, I would have to go to Lisbon, afterwards to Bombarda Hotel. You can hardly imagine the hyperboredom, the ultra-get-tired of-everythingness, the absolute what-the-blooming hell-is-a-chap-to-do-hereability that reigns in my spirit! I found a book to read, but was unable to muster energy to read it. I am anxious to get back to Lisbon; yet I think I will have to stay here yet three days more.

Alentejo seen from the train

Nothing with nothing around it
And a few trees in between
None of which very clearly green,
Where no river or flower pays a visit.
If there be a hell, I 've found it,
For if it ain' here, where the Devil is it?

Fare thee well,
F. Nogueira Pessoa

P. S. — Don’t write to me for Portalegre. I may no longer be here. Wait for my return to Lisbon. We’ll talk then.»

(Porta de Alegrete, Portalegre, century XIII; photo by isol)

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5. Porto

Pessoa’s mother was born in Porto. The year of her marriage to the poet’s father, 1887, was chosen by Pessoa as the date of the ‘birth’ of his heteronym Ricardo Reis, which, according to Reis’ fictional biography, took place in Porto. A Cidade Invicta is also important because it was home to the Portuguese Renaissance movement, whose magazine A Águia, directed by the poet Teixeira de Pascoes, gave Pessoa the opportunity to make his public debut in 1912 with the article ‘A Nova Poesia Portuguesa Sociologicamente Considerada’ . In 1919, there was a monarchist counter-revolution in Porto, known as the ‘Monarchy of the North’, which outcome disillusioned Ricardo Reis (a monarchist, like Pessoa), leading Reis himself to go into self-exile in Brazil. Indirect references to these ‘events’ can be found in the famous letter ‘on the genesis of the heteronyms’ sent by Pessoa to Casais Monteiro on 13 January 1935:

« A few more notes on this subject… I see before me, in a colorless but real space of a dream, the faces and gestures of Caeiro, Ricardo Reis and Álvaro de Campos. I made out their ages and their lives. Ricardo Reis was born in 1887 (I can’t remember the day and month, but I have them somewhere), in Porto, he’s a doctor and now lives in Brazil. Alberto Caeiro was born in 1889 and died in 1915; he was born in Lisbon, but lived almost all his life in the countryside. He had no profession and almost no education. Álvaro de Campos was born in Tavira on 15 October 1890 (at 1.30 pm., so Ferreira Gomes tells me, and it’s true because, according to the horoscope made for this hour, all is correct). As you know, he is a naval engineer (he studied in Glasgow) but he is currently living in Lisbon and not working.»

(Plaque in honour of the Portuguese Renaissance and A Águia, Rua dos Mártires da Liberdade, Porto; photo by José Bastos, porm.)

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Many other places in Portugal and around the world are Pessoa’s places, at least from a literary point of view, which was always the most important thing for the poet from Lisbon. This article, in fact, will hopefully be followed up by others, which will allow us to discover and value Pessoa’s heritage more and more from the point of view of Literary Tourism.


Fabrizio Boscaglia
(Professor at Lusófona University, Pessoa researcher, literary consultant at the Lisboa Pessoa Hotel)


The links in the text refer to the sources and bibliographical references consulted and cited. The spelling of the passages quoted has been updated.

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