Fernando Pessoa.

It is curious for me to read about this book (whose content I don't think Wood really explains) as, apparently, a book with lots of consecutive pages which add up to something, etc, because I have come to think of it as this box that Tim Hopkins made with matchboxes, envelopes etc inside, each with epigrams on them.

Thanks! You can read the introduction here if you're interested: https://serpentstail.com/media/previews/9781781258644_preview.pdf - I'm mentioned very near the end. As ever, I should say how helpful and nice Margaret Jull Costa and Serpent's Tail were in letting me have at their text.

Who's ready for a 1,000 page biography of Fernando Pessoa by one of his translators, Richard Zenith? pic.twitter.com/Q5ofr3PO2U

— Mark Haber (@markhaber713) January 14, 2021

I don’t think so, no.

By all accounts Pessoa...didn't do v much wtf

^^ that doesn't have to mean it can't be a compelling read.

I think it would help for a 1000 page book, but by all accounts Pessoa was highly inward, with few friendships and almost no relationships. If Zenith has uncovered a ton of stuff we didn't know then bring it.

Don't get me wrong The Book of Disquiet is one of favourite books, from one of my favourite poets. But a lot of writers lives are fairly boring. Of course it depends who is handling it and what they bring to it.

So if Zenith uses Pessoa to locate him in several artistic currents, looks at Portuguese culture of the time etc. But I don't know if Zenith has written much criticism before.

Separate biography (with primary and secondary sources) of each heteronym?

I hope the book's really interesting - from a personal point of view I spent a long enough time with Pessoa really. I still love the stuff, especially TBOD but I don't feel the need to think about him much more, for a few years at least.

zenith needs to write that book abt me instead

Working Title: "Sitting on a Pointy Fence"

thats right

Which translation of The Book of Disquiet do yall like best?

Are there more than one?

Amazon's got Zenith's, the Serpent's Tail edition, and The Complete Book of Disquiet. Haven't checked local library system yet.

Just windowshopping, but want to be sure I'm fantasizing about the right one.

I have the Serpent's Tail, there must be several different translations I think because the *actual text* is different in each one, on account of how it was assembled

The Serpent’s Tail and the Complete (which came out in Serpent’s Tail in the UK) are both translated by Margaret Jull Costa, I don’t know whether she re-worked any or all of the fragments for the complete edition. Her early 90s Serpent’s Tail is the one I read first and I love it.

Zenith is translator for the Carcanet edition ( The Book of Disquietude”) and the Penguin, I don’t know whether they are the same text. Interestingly the Carcanet one also claimed to be complete when published but is nowhere near as long as the MJC translated Complete Edition. This book is so slippery!

There is also a Quartet Encounters edition from the early 90s translated by Iain Watson, I haven’t read it.

I’ve only dipped into the Zenith, at a cursory glance I found it less lyrical than the Costa so I’m sticking with that one. I’ve talked to people who have done a bit of direct comparing, including with the original Portuguese, and they came out preferring the Zenith translation.

Okay, I have the New Directions, also translated by Margaret Jull Costa.

Is this the thread where I can complain about Gregory Rabassa hogging the translator limelight?

Thanks yall!

Fernando Pessoa introducing his new heteronym Bernardo Sanders. pic.twitter.com/eicowNgzJV

— rui tavares (@ruitavares) January 22, 2021

Lol

There is a podcast about Oessoa's life and work. Written about here

For the Almanac, I wrote about Fernando Pessoa and @disquietradio, an internet radio program about his life and work: https://t.co/EAnj5dvsgn

— Matthew Spencer (@unpaginated) April 1, 2024