"A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe" by Fernando Pessoa

I am not a poet – and I definitely know it.  Poetry is not something within my writing constitution.  And yet, rather than being lost and bored from my reading of A LITTLE LARGER THAN THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE, a selection of poems from early 20^th century poet Fernando Pessoa, I actually found not only a personality in the Portuguese poet about whom it was fascinating to read, I also discovered a medium conveying Pessoa’s thoughts, dreams, hopes - everything the man was.  Be it good or be it bad, here was one man, laid out on paper, for the entire world to read.

Fernando Pessoa was far from your average poet.  He wrote his poetry through different heteronyms.  What are ‘heteronyms’, you ask?  Simply put, they are Pessoa’s own creations of different personalities through whom he could write.  In other words, he not only used different names (pseudonyms) under which to write; he also created biographies for each of these names, a.k.a. ‘heteronyms’.  The three major of which, Alberto Caeiro, Ricardo Reis, and Alvaro de Campos, as well as poetry written under Pessoa’s name itself, are depicted here within A LITTLE LARGER THAN THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE.

 The three write in differing styles with differing themes.  It is stated Caeiro feels things as they are; Reis feels things as they are within an ideal – in addition to as they are; while Alvaro de Campos simply feels. 

I cannot say, with the exception of Alberto Caeiro, that I read any of these works in that light.  Caeiro, from my impression, expressed a purpose of ‘not thinking’ in order to truly experience the beauty all around him.  For example:

‘A very light wind passes

And it goes away just as lightly

And I don’t know what I’m thinking

 Nor do I wish to know.

At first, I didn’t get it.  The ‘not-thinking’ concept made no sense.  But then I recalled an experience in college where, for a class, we dissected a famous stage play.   We learned how it worked and why it worked; we knew that play inside out and upside down.  We took it apart – but we never put it back together.  It lay in pieces, strewn across our professors desk, the magic that once had made it what it was -  gone.

I believe this is what Caeiro was saying.  Stop trying to analyze everything you see.  Some things, like the beauty in nature, just need to be experienced and enjoyed – absent the ‘figuring out’.  Reading through his selection of poems, such is the message I received.

The poetry of Reis, de Campos, or Pessoa himself never struck me with the same effect.  Their styles were clearly different, communicating their ideas in a manner that was inferior, for me, to how Caeiro wrote.  This is not to say moments of brilliance never shown through their words.  “Maritime Ode” from Alvaro de Campos, thirty-one pages in length, is certainly a work of such a salient nature, even readers who never advanced beyond the next comic book faze could appreciate the raw emotion exuding from these words.

Pessoa’s own “Un Soir de Lima” is a touching tale of a song his mother would play for him on the piano when he was a child.  As an adult, the song returns to him in his dire moments of need, reminding him of that happy time of simply listening to his mother play:

“I didn’t know then that I was happy.

 I know it now, because I no longer am.”

If all poetry emitted the same simplicity of the human experience we all share, everyone would be reading poetry.

But not all poetry is like this.  It is varied in style and theme many ways.  Some of it you will like; some you will love; and some you won’t be able to understand – if you can stand it at all.  Perhaps, that is the very definition of poetry.  It is what I, a non-poet, found within Fernando Pessoa, A LITTLE LARGER THAN THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE.