Pessoa, the Metaphysical Courier

Fernando Pessoa's artistic birth develops over two periods. The first moment: March 1914, the apparition, as decisive as opaque, of the four heteronymous poets, Alberto Caeiro, Ricardo Reis, Álvaro de Campos, and Fernando Pessoa himself. The second moment: the dramatic intellectual crisis of 1915-1916, during which the idea of the avant-garde and the meditation on the complexity and separation of metaphysics and art willingly battle and entangle themselves. This is a crisis of philosophy Pessoa experiences with anxiety, and which is the origin of the multiple births of the poet. From then on, the task of separating poetry from metaphysics begins. ----about the author Judith Balso has taught seminars on Fernando Pessoa, Wallace Stevens, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Osip Mandelstam, and Dante at the Collège International de Philosophie in Paris, France. She currently teaches poetry and philosophy at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland. Her latest book, Affirmation de la poésie is published by NOUS editions, France.