Restless Among Things

For Fernando Pessoa

1 Pessoa's Teacup

Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935), the Portuguese poet and writer, did not write as one voice, but as many. Over the course of his life, he created several heteronyms—fully imagined poetic personalities, each with their own biographies, philosophies, and literary styles. These were not mere pseudonyms or disguises, but alternate selves. The most fully developed among them—Alberto Caeiro, Ricardo Reis, and Álvaro de Campos—wrote in such distinct voices that Pessoa spoke of them not as inventions, but as companions. In a poem signed by Álvaro de Campos, he writes: “To be myself is to not be I. I am someone else always.”

Pessoa is obsessed, in his work, with describing a dual state of not coping with reality: an inner dispersion and a simultaneous estrangement from the world—almost to the point of madness, a poetic breakdown. However, as a poet, he is fully aware of his craft, using a highly conceptual literary style, shaped and performed in the service of art. His heteronyms are tools, which he handles with complete mastery. Each figure—Caeiro, Reis, Campos—is a facet of a wider consciousness, a way of articulating different forms of thought and feeling that could not be contained within a single voice. This stance is distilled in a note from The Book of Disquiet: “Having opinions is to betray yourself. Not having opinions is existence. Having all opinions is to be a poet.” 

For Pessoa, the poet cannot believe in resting points—in answers that shut doors or give the illusion of resolution. To hold fast to one’s opinions is not only a simplification—it is a betrayal. A betrayal of complexity, of nuance, of the changing weather of the mind. More crucially, it is a betrayal of art, whose loyalty is not to truth or doctrine, but to perception. The artist must question, indefinitely. This is why Pessoa both envies and ridicules the well-adjusted person, the “whole” individual who never questions the construction of the self or the world. Against this figure of singularity, Pessoa sets his own motto: “Be plural like the universe.” A metaphysical commitment: to remain open, undecided, multiple—not for the sake of novelty, but because only in this way can one stay true to the restlessness of thought. Art, in this sense, is the ongoing labour of not settling.

Pessoa’s work is, above all, a meditation on authorship—not as something innate or expressive of a natural self, but as something layered, consciously done. Pessoa approaches authorship as a collaboration with the self. It requires a certain distance—great distance, in his case. It begins with a willingness to shape and select beyond personal taste or opinion. It means recognising that every creation is already a conversation with otherness. From this understanding of authorship, the transition from self to other — imagined, or real for that matter — should follow almost effortlessly. Collaboration is not a leap across a trust divide, it is a gentle continuation. The work is already plural before anyone else arrives. 

And it is no less a study of imagination—not as an outpouring of inspiration, but as an attentive outlook on one’s motifs. For Pessoa, each literary motif is a bearer of a distinct temperament. Each has a life of its own and must be respected. They are discrete presences, with their own visual idioms, backgrounds and moods. In one instance he extends this literary concept to a teacup; “When one of my Japanese teacups shattered, I knew that it was not only due to the careless hands of a housekeeper. I had studied the anxieties of the figures inhabiting the curves of that porcelain, and I wasn’t surprised by the grim decision to commit suicide that took hold of them.”  Pessoa approaches the teacup as just another companion in his work. It is never entirely his, never his to fully control. Though perhaps that, too, is part of his style: the illusion that we might think so.

2 Things in Therapy

In The Book of Disquiet, published posthumously in 1982, there is an interesting passage where Pessoa proposes the development of the psychology “... of artificial figures and of creatures whose existence takes place only in rugs and in pictures.”  The suicidal figures on his teacup might have been saved by attending therapy sessions from a Freud who specializes in ornamental things. Surely, the waiting room would be full. Take, for example, the grotesques—a large group of hybrid beings, to say it politely— who inhabit many stately home, quietly suffering from their various afflictions. And what about Pierrot?

Ah, Pierrot...! A bungler and human punchbag in a white costume too large for his frame, who never utters a single word. He originates from the commedia dell’arte, already for centuries in trouble. In the early years of the twentieth century Pierrot is invariably rendered as a melancholy figure, always unhappy in love. Here’s a poem by Martinus Nijhoff, from 1916.

Pierrot

I met a woman in the street at night, 

Painted, like pagans use to paint their dead –

I said: 'Woman, it's wandering I dread.'

She mocked  my gestures and my costume white.

Again I spoke: ‘Let’s die, so we might never part,

Woman, I’m called Pierrot –  What is your name?’

We danced as if in a drunken game.

And one could hear the breaking of my china heart.

This was a dance by all means dire,

Spelling utmost bewilderment. Like a fire

Madness raged through my body, ’t was not to bear-

As having murdered, such was my stare

And there I was, alone in the lantern light

With hands before my eyes I took to flight.

If ever a case for therapy has presented itself, this must be it. 

But the really interesting episode of Pierrot’s life plays out in the 19th century,  when his personage becomes part of the avant-garde. In an obscure little Parisian theatre, Jean Gaspard Baptiste Deburau (born as Jan Kaspar Dvorjak at Kolin, Bohemia, on July 31, 1796, in a family of circus performers) plays the part of Pierrot. Deburau is the founder of modern pantomime. New plays are staged, not the usual slapstick, but social satires. Deburau uses his white figure as an empty canvas, which he manages to fill with all manner of human emotions. He could not foresee how important the invention of pantomime would prove to be. In 1830 the liberal forces rise up against the absolutist style of Charles X. By imposing strict censorship on news and culture the authorities try to silence the opposition, but the silent Pierrot escapes the censors. Before long the performances at the Théatre des Funambules (theatre of the tightrope walkers) are frequented by the Parisian intelligentsia. Within three days, the so-called July revolution puts an end to the reign of Charles X. Pierrot is celebrated as a hero and Deburau is admitted into the circles of the Romantic painters and writers. He is buried at the cemetery of Père-Lachaise. On his gravestone the following words have been carved: “Here lies the man who could say all without uttering a single word.”

Deburau’s son took over the part of Pierrot and was later photographed in various poses by Nadar. A classic pose is le salut: at the start of each performance, Pierrot steps forward greeting the audience—open and vulnerable. Nowadays we encounter Pierrot on the shelves of second-hand shops, as jilted kitsch. Pierrot, as a cultural motif, has seen it all.

3  Home

Fernando Pessoa spent the final 15 years of his life residing in a rented apartment. This modest upper-floor flat, now preserved as the Casa Fernando Pessoa—a museum and cultural center dedicated to his life and work—is located in Lisbon’s Campo de Ourique district: a leafy, somewhat bourgeois neighborhood, slightly removed from the city's bustling center. He lived there from 1920 until his death in 1935.

The apartment includes a sitting room with a small balcony, a bedroom, and a study, linked by a narrow corridor and a tiny kitchen. While detailed descriptions of its interior during Pessoa’s time are scarce, the preserved rooms and museum exhibitions offer valuable glimpses into his living conditions and creative world. In this unassuming setting, Pessoa composed some of the most expansive and plural literature of the twentieth century.

When most people are at home, they relax. But when the poet is at home, he is restless. “I feel as if I’m always on the verge of understanding something that never quite lets itself be understood. Even the furniture seems to conceal meanings.” “I have conversations with chairs, with the wardrobe, with the sideboard. I ask them questions and they reply with the silence of things, which I interpret as I please.” These passages from The Book of Disquiet reveal Pessoa’s finely tuned sense of inner space—one far vaster than his outer circumstances. Inanimate things are charged with significance—they are nearly articulate. He toys with the idea of humanising objects while also exposing how imagination scripts their inner lives. Pessoa was not known for collecting objects in any deliberate or decorative way, but he did own a small number of personal items that reflect his introspective domestic life—such as writing instruments, notebooks, and indeed a few modest decorative pieces, including the tragic Japanese teacup. “All these familiar objects—books, furniture, knick-knacks—they're witnesses to my silence, companions of my weariness.”