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The amazing Portuguese poet...surpasses any creation by Borges...Pessoa was neither mad nor a mere ironist;he is Whitman reborn, but a Whitman who gives separate names to "my self," "the real me" or "me myself," and "my soul," and writes wonderful books of poetry for all of them.
~ Harold Bloom, The Western Canon (1994)
“He [Fernando Pessoa] accepted the dividedness of a human self so completely that he did something unique: wrote poetry under four names – his own and three & #39;heteronyms& #39;. Not pseudonyms: they are imaginary poets with real poems in them. ...
Fernando Pessoa was four poets in one: Alberto Caeiro, Ricardo Reis, Alvaro de Campos and himself; each strongly distinct from the others. One is soon struck by an external difference between their poems...”
~ Jonathan Griffin
~ Jonathan Griffin
“Almost any commentary of any length on Pessoa& #39;s writings, sensibility, and imagination is bound to convey a glimpse, at least, of its intensity and elusiveness, its apparently endlessly unfolding hall of mirrors.”
~ W. S. Merwin
~ W. S. Merwin
Nada en su vida es sorprendente — nada, excepto sus poemas.
Nothing in his life is surprising – nothing, except his poems.
~ Octavio Paz, "Unknown to Himself"
Nothing in his life is surprising – nothing, except his poems.
~ Octavio Paz, "Unknown to Himself"
The man who never was.
~ Jorge de Sena
~ Jorge de Sena
“Pessoa would be Shakespeare if all that we had of Shakespeare were the soliloquies of Hamlet, Falstaff, Othello and Lear and the sonnets. His legacy is a set of explorations, in poetic form, of what it means to inhabit a human consciousness...
What makes Pessoa& #39;s thought and poetry compelling is not that he picks up and develops the forms and themes of Whitman and Emerson...but because in the poems and prose he has passed a judgment upon the 20th century rejection of individualism.”
~ Lindsay Waters
~ Lindsay Waters
The most profound poet of the twentieth century.
~ Gao Xingjian
~ Gao Xingjian
[Pessoa was]…one of the most appealing European modernists, equal in command and range to his contemporaries Rilke and Mandelstam.
~ The Washington Post Book World
~ The Washington Post Book World
Eloquent, volatile and obsessed with life – and death – [his] poems place [him] among the modernist giants in whose shadow we live and who made our century one of extraordinary poetic richness.
~ New York Times, as quoted in Always Astonished: Selected Prose (1988)
![Eloquent, volatile and obsessed with life – and death – [his] poems place [him] among the modernist giants in whose shadow we live and who made our century one of extraordinary poetic richness. ~ New York Times, as quoted in Always Astonished: Selected Prose (1988)](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EfSk5kBWkAAk83W.jpg "Eloquent, volatile and obsessed with life – and death – [his] poems place [him] among the modernist giants in whose shadow we live and who made our century one of extraordinary poetic richness. ~ New York Times, as quoted in Always Astonished: Selected Prose (1988)")
~ New York Times, as quoted in Always Astonished: Selected Prose (1988)
