Fernando Pessoa and Co.

“One of the great originals of modern European poetry and Portugal’s premier modernist.”—Washington Post

“Pessoa has had many English-language interpreters but none better than Richard Zenith.”—New York Review of Books

Fernando Pessoa—a poet who lived most of his life in Lisbon, Portugal, and who died in obscurity there— is now recognized as one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century. In a newly updated and expanded edition of his celebrated 1998 Fernando Pessoa & Co., which Booklist hailed as “a beautiful one-volume course in the soul of the twentieth century,” translator and biographer Richard Zenith brings together Pessoa’s most memorable poetic works. Present here is poetry by Pessoa’s famous trio of alter egos—Alberto Caeiro, Ricardo Reis, and Álvaro de Campos—as well as a varied selection of poems signed by Pessoa’s own name. From spare minimalism to revolutionary exuberance, Fernando Pessoa & Co. showcases the seminal poet’s timeless and innovative work in all of its extraordinary depth and poetic passion.

“Like Beckett, Pessoa is extremely funny. . . . His work is loaded with delights.”—Guardian

“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.”—Los Angeles Times Book Review

Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935) - who lived most of his life in Lisbon, Portugal, and who died in obscurity there - has in recent years gained inter-national recognition as a leading figure in international literature. Now, Richard Zenith collects in a single volume a generous selection of the major work of a man The Guardian has cited as "among the greatest poets of this century."

Fernando Pessoa was as much a creator of personas as he was of poetry, prose, and criticism. He wrote under numerous "heteronyms," literary alter egos with fully fleshed identities and writing styles, who supported and criticized each other's work in the margins of his drafts and in the literary journals of the time. Ranging widely over the possibilities of language, Pessoa's poetry echoes symbolist verse, Portuguese folk song, and futurist manifesto. From spare minimalism to a revolutionary exuberance that recalls Leaves of Grass, Pessoa's oeuvre was radically new and anticipated contemporary literary concerns to an unnerving degree. The first comprehensive edition of Pessoa's poetry in the English language, Fernando Pessoa & Co. is a work of extraordinary depth and poetic precision.

"His verse is as searing as that of Rilke or Mandelstam."-The New York Times Book Review

"Zenith's selection of Pessoa is a beautiful one-volume course in the soul of the twentieth century."-Booklist

"Remarkable . . . rife with kindred moments of surprising and paradoxical self-reflection . . . An arresting . . . body of work, punctuated with compact, discomfiting epiphanies. It is impossible to do justice to the power and range of the poems."-Newsday

"Portugal's greatest poet since Camons . . . Zenith not only edits wisely, he translates magnificently. . . . English readers can at long last appreciate the wide range of talent, craft, intellect, and poetic achievement present in Pessoa & Co."-Christopher Sawyer-Lauanno, The Boston Book Review

Fernando Pessoa was born in Lisbon and spent his adult life there, earning a modest living as a commercial translator. During his lifetime he published little of his vast body of work, most of which appeared posthumously. Richard Zenith's many translations include The Book of Disquietude, Pessoa's major prose work. He has received grants from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.