Slavoj Žižek

Alain Badiou

Bruno Bosteels

Costas Douzinas

Judith Balso

Idea of Communism

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, Alvaro 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 College 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 poesie is published by NOUS editions, France.

Pessoa, the Metaphysical Courier

Since the times of Plato and Aristotle, the relation of poetry to philosophy has been controversial. For certain scholars, poetry should in no way be confused with philosophy. For others, poetry is at the heart of the possibility of thinking itself. In Affirmation of Poetry, Judith Balso defends the significance of poetry as a necessary practice for thinking. For Balso, if reading poetry properly has become an obscure task, poetry itself still carries with it a power of thinking: the efforts of the poets must continue. In analyzing the affirmation of thought found within the work of such poets as Osip Mandelstam, Wallace Stevens, Alberto Caeiro, and Giacomo Leopardi, Balso reestablishes poetry’s place as a site of thought.

Judith Balso

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