Richard Zenith

Eighty-five years after his wrenching death in a cramped Lisbon apartment, where he left more than 25,000 manuscript sheets in a wooden trunk, Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935) remains one of the most enigmatic and underappreciated poets of the twentieth century. Celebrated for writing in dozens of different poetic voices, known as heteronyms, Pessoa has finally found his definitive biographer in renowned translator Richard Zenith. Setting the story of Pessoa's life against the nationalistic currents of early twentieth-century European history, Zenith charts the depths of Pessoa's explosive imagination and literary genius. Much as José Saramago brought one of Pessoa's heteronyms to life in The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis, Zenith traces the backstories of virtually all of Pessoa's imagined personalities, demonstrating how they were projections, spin-offs, or metamorphoses of Pessoa himself. Nothing less than a literary masterpiece, Zenith's monumental work confirms the power of Pessoa's words to speak prophetically to the disconnectedness of modern life.

A Biography

Pessoa

Fernando Pessoa

Ofélia Queiroz

Este volume reúne toda a correspondência amorosa trocada entre Fernando Pessoa e sua única namorada, Ofélia Queiroz, de 1919 a 1935, com 156 cartas inéditas. Foi uma história de amor discreta, que poderia ter permanecido totalmente esquecida se Fernando e Ofélia não tivessem guardado por toda a vida as quase 350 cartas, cartões-postais, bilhetes e telegramas trocados entre eles. Ofélia tem 19 anos e Fernando, 31, quando o namoro começa. Ela é uma moça inteligente e viva, apaixonada pelo poeta, de quem espera uma proposta de casamento. A jovem lisboeta o afoga em cartas, e chega a assinar - Ofélia 'Pessoa' (quem me dera). Mas também sabe se prestar ao jogo dos heterônimos de Pessoa - A.A.Crosse e Álvaro de Campos são presenças recorrentes nas cartas, e Campos até mesmo assina uma das cartas de Pessoa. A forma epistolar é fundamental nessa relação, com ruptura em 1920 e curta retomada em 1929. Para os admiradores de Fernando Pessoa, a leitura deste livro, no qual todas as imagens dos escritos na sua letra são reproduzidos pela primeira vez, faz reviver cada etapa deste episódio marcante de sua biografia, que humaniza o poeta.

Fernando Pessoa e Ofélia Queiroz

Like Richard Ellmann’s James Joyce, Richard Zenith’s Pessoa immortalizes the life of one of the twentieth century’s greatest writers. Nearly a century after his wrenching death, the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) remains one of our most enigmatic writers. Believing he could do “more in dreams than Napoleon,” yet haunted by the specter of hereditary madness, Pessoa invented dozens of alter egos, or “heteronyms,” under whose names he wrote in Portuguese, English, and French. Unsurprisingly, this “most multifarious of writers” (Guardian) has long eluded a definitive biographer—but in renowned translator and Pessoa scholar Richard Zenith, he has met his match. Relatively unknown in his lifetime, Pessoa was all but destined for literary oblivion when the arc of his afterlife bent, suddenly and improbably, toward greatness, with the discovery of some 25,000 unpublished papers left in a large, wooden trunk. Drawing on this vast archive of sources as well as on unpublished family letters, and skillfully setting the poet’s life against the nationalist currents of twentieth-century European history, Zenith at last reveals the true depths of Pessoa’s teeming imagination and literary genius. Much as Nobel laureate José Saramago brought a single heteronym to life in The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis, Zenith traces the backstories of virtually all of Pessoa’s imagined personalities, demonstrating how they were projections, spin-offs, or metamorphoses of Pessoa himself. A solitary man who had only one, ultimately platonic love affair, Pessoa used his and his heteronyms’ writings to explore questions of sexuality, to obsessively search after spiritual truth, and to try to chart a way forward for a benighted and politically agitated Portugal. Although he preferred the world of his mind, Pessoa was nonetheless a man of the places he inhabited, including not only Lisbon but also turn-of-the-century Durban, South Africa, where he spent nine years as a child. Zenith re-creates the drama of Pessoa’s adolescence—when the first heteronyms emerged—and his bumbling attempts to survive as a translator and publisher. Zenith introduces us, too, to Pessoa’s bohemian circle of friends, and to Ophelia Quieroz, with whom he exchanged numerous love letters. Pessoa reveals in equal force the poet’s unwavering commitment to defending homosexual writers whose books had been banned, as well as his courageous opposition to Salazar, the Portuguese dictator, toward the end of his life. In stunning, magisterial prose, Zenith contextualizes Pessoa’s posthumous literary achievements—especially his most renowned work, The Book of Disquiet. A modern literary masterpiece, Pessoa simultaneously immortalizes the life of a literary maestro and confirms the enduring power of Pessoa’s work to speak prophetically to the disconnectedness of our modern world.

Pessoa: A Biography

Fernando Cabral Martins

Alvaro de Campos

Poemas escolhidos de Álvaro de Campos

Rui Zink

Hotel lusitano

Ilyās Khūrī

Peter Altenberg

Witold Gombrowicz

Julio Cortázar

Gérard de Nerval

Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar

Bill Johnston

Maḥmūd Darwīsh

Breyten Breytenbach

Magdalena Tulli

Richard Sieburth

Michael Henry Heim

Peter Wortsman

Francis Ponge

Peter Theroux

I︠U︡riĭ Rytkhėu

Archipelago Books

Jill Schoolman

Lee Fahenstock

Daniel Slager

Robert Bonono

Stinehour Press

Collection consists of the papers of the Press, including correspondence with authors, translators and advertisers; typescripts and manuscripts of books published; proof copies; and dust-jackets. International authors represented in the collection include: Breyten Breytenbach; Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar; Francis Ponge; Julio Cortázar; Tadeusz Rozewicz; Marguerite Duras; Robert Musil; Henri Michaux; Elias Khoury; João Cabral de Melo Neto; Witold Gombrowicz; and Jean Giono. Translators represented include: Michael Henry Heim; Richard Sieburth; Richard Zenith; Lee Fahenstock; Bill Johnston; Peter Wortsman; Daniel Slager; Robert Bonono; and Peter Theroux.

Papers

A bilingual volume that reveals an intriguing world of courtly love and satire in medieval Portugal and Spain The rich tradition of troubadour poetry in western Iberia had all but vanished from history until the discovery of several ancient cancioneiros, or songbooks, in the nineteenth century. These compendiums revealed close to 1,700 songs, or cantigas, composed by around 150 troubadours from Galicia, Portugal, and Castile in the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. In Cantigas, award-winning translator Richard Zenith presents a delightful selection of 124 of these poems in English versions that preserve the musical quality of the originals, which are featured on facing pages. By turns romantic, spiritual, ironic, misogynist, and feminist, these lyrics paint a vibrant picture of their time and place, surprising us with attitudes and behaviors that are both alien and familiar. The book includes the three major kinds of cantigas. While cantigas de amor (love poems in the voice of men) were largely inspired by the troubadour poetry of southern France, cantigas de amigo (love poems voiced by women) derived from a unique native oral tradition in which the narrator pines after her beloved, sings his praises, or mocks him. In turn, cantigas de escárnio are satiric, and sometimes outrageously obscene, lyrics whose targets include aristocrats, corrupt clergy, promiscuous women, and homosexuals. Complete with an illuminating introduction on the history of the cantigas, their poetic characteristics, and the men who composed and performed them, this engaging volume is filled with exuberant and unexpected poems.

Cantigas

This major bilingual anthology, with English translations by Richard Zenith and Alexis Levitin, introduces the work of 28 Portuguese poets (beginning with Fernando Pessoa and his 'heteronyms'), and reveals a richly varied body of verse that is at once a place of departure and exploration as well as, in the words of Alexandre O'Neill's 'Portugal', "an ongoing discussion with myself"

28 Portuguese Poets: A Bilingual Anthology

Jose Luis Peixoto

Antidote

A single-volume celebration of the great Portugese writer highlights the best of his fiction, drama, letters, and essays.

The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa

This major bilingual anthology, with English translations by Richard Zenith and Alexis Levitin, introduces the work of 28 Portuguese poets (beginning with Fernando Pessoa and his 'heteronyms'), and reveals a richly varied body of verse that is at once a place of departure and exploration as well as, in the words of Alexandre O'Neill's 'Portugal', "an ongoing discussion with myself" Poets included: Alberto CAEIRO - Ricardo REIS - Álvaro de CAMPOS - Fernando PESSOA - Florbela ESPANCA - Jorge de SENA - Sophia de Mello BREYNER - Carlos de OLIVIERA - Eugénio de ANDRADE - Mário CESARINY - Alexandre O'NEILL - António Ramos ROSA - Herberto HELDER - Ruy BELO - Fiama Hasse Pais BRANDÃO - Luiza Neto JORGE - Vasco Graça MOURA - António Franco ALEXANDRE - Al BERTO - Nuno JÚDICE - Ana Luísa AMARAL - Adília LOPES - Paulo TEIXEIRA - José Tolentino MENDONÇA - Luís QUINTAIS - Daniel FARIA - Margarida Vale de GATO - Daniel JONAS

Richard Zenith

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