Intrepidly Ineffectual

Born on this day in 1888 was that strange, fascinating, very Portuguese - quintessentially Lisbonese - writer whose natal name was Fernando Pessoa. There's a good essay on him - and, in particular, on The Book Of Disquiet - by John Gray here (though I'm not sure I go along with Gray's equation of 'the postmodern condition' with individual loss of a single strong identity). Gray doesn't mention that, though born in Lisbon, Pessoa spent his early years in Durban, where his stepfather was Portuguese consul, and his first published poems appeared in, of all things, the Natal Mercury. He was 17 when he returned to Lisbon, and he never left it again. It was the perfect city for him to live his life of determined obscurity and boredom (tedio) - as Gray says, 'no one has lived an ineffectual life as intrepidly as Pessoa did, or written about it with such insight and charm' - or through so bewilderingly many aliases. His literary career was barely noticeable - the creation of a short-lived modernist magazine and the publication of some poems and other odds and ends, in English. When he died, he had published only one unsung work in Portuguese. His legacy was the inchoate treasure trove that became, one way and another, The Book Of Disquiet.