fernando pessoa, but not exactly (part i)

how did i find fernando pessoa? i'm not sure, but it doesn't matter, it's not about him. it's about alberto caeiro. because truth be told, i didn't enjoy pessoa's poems nearly half as much as i did caeiro's. it's beautiful how one can know oneself so well to be able to distinguish, i'd even say distil, each part, in order to let it fully flourish.

in the introduction to A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe: Selected Poems Richard Zenith writes:

[W]hat Pessoa did not believe in was unity. "Nature is parts without a whole" was, according to Pessoa, Caeiro's greatest, truest verse (from the forty-seventh poem of The Keeper of Sheep), and in Reis ode he proposed that "as each fountain / Has its own deity, might not each man / Have a god all his own?" The phenomenon of heteronymy reflects Pessoa's conviction that even at the level of the self there is no unity [...]

what's up with alberto caeiro?

his poetry is quite simple to summarize, which doesn't mean it is shallow. he celebrates nature, or should i say: Nature. at the same time, he doesn't fall into this new age spirituality trend (let gods be thanked for that, because his no, rock is not your sister agenda is something some people nowadays would benefit from hearing about). he takes it as it is without looking too much into it. he takes it with taoist simplicity; succinct poems that cut straight to the point. sometimes raw, but never cruel. there's enormous sympathy in this rawness. this is looking in a way that many people would describe as ignorant, but in reality is more of hey! look! it is really not that deep, pretty cool, huh? approach to the topic. and yes, it is pretty cool indeed.

against overthinking, and even thinking per se

caeiro was taoist in the way he opposed thinking about things. what is the point anyway? is it not enough to let it be? to let oneself be? to let them/us both coexist in the same time and space? at the end of the day: All it takes to be complete is to exist. 

[...] I'm capable of feeling the same wonder
A newborn child would feel
If he noticed that he'd really and truly been born.
I feel at each and every moment that I've just been born
Into a completely new world
[...]
But I don't think about it,
Because to think is to not understand.
The world wasn't made for us to think about it
(To think is to have eyes that aren't well)
But to look at and to in agreement.
I have no philosophy, I have senses... [...]

(from The Keeper of Sheep II; 8 march 1914)

caeiro really did believe in simple existence above everything: above language, philosophies, society. he disagreed with exploring the world with mind (i'm quite sure descartes wouldn't be happy about it), despite being a poet. for him, the verbalised wasn't the essence. 

[...] Why I even bother to attribute
Beauty to things.
Does a flower really have beauty?
Does a fruit really have beauty?
No: they have only color and form
And existence.
Beauty is the name of something that doesn't exist

(from The Keeper of Sheep, XXVI; 11 march 1914)

beauty is not real, words ain't real either as he writes in his different poem. so what is real? Nature. 

[...] As for me, I write the prose of my verses
And am satisfied,
Because I know I understand Nature on the outside,
And I don't understand it on the inside,
Because Nature has no inside.
If it did, it wouldn't be Nature.

(from The Keeper of Sheep, XXVIII)

and caeiro is consistent in his belief. humans are part of Nature, therefore we have no real “insides” as well, as it would be a contradiction to what he so confidently wrote earlier:

[...] Being real means not being inside myself.
My inner self doesn't have any reality I can conceive of.
I know the world exists, but I don't know if I do.

[...]
We live before we philosophize, we exist before we know we do,
And the earlier fact merits at least homage and precedence.
Yes we are outer before we are inner.
Therefore we are essentially outer. [...]

(24 october 1917)

we are outer, but we are not our bodies, as he earlier writes: For I am the size of what I see / And not the size of my height. 

and he is stoic too, of course he is

What will be, when it is, is what it will be when it is.

it didn't surprise me to find stoicism between caeiro's words. this is an element that fits well into his point of view. some may say that these are truisms, but there is a distinction between something known, and understood; sometimes verbalising things that “go without saying” is a way to hammer them home, to transfer them from the duh!-known zone, straight into the ooh!-understood sphere.

[...] What matters is to be natural and calm

In happiness and in unhappiness,

To feel as if feeling were seeing,

To think as if thinking were walking,

And to remember, when death comes, that each day dies,

And the sunset is beautiful, and so is the night that remains... [...]

(from The Keeper of Sheep XXI; 7 march 1914)

what is interesting about the above poem is that seneca wrote something similar about death:

Seneca makes an interesting point by reframing death as something that is happening every day[1].

"For we are mistaken when we look forward to death; the major portion of death has already passed. Whatever years be behind us are in death's hands."

Every moment is sand through the hourglass that once expired does not come back. It's up to us whether those moments were lived well or squandered.

Our final moment is when we stop dying, when the candle has burned all the way down and run out of wax.

(source)

memento mori is present in more than one caeiro's poem:

Better the flight of the bird that passes and leaves no trace,

Than the passage of the animal, recorded in the ground.

[...]

Remembrance is a betrayal of Nature, 

Because yesterday's Nature isn't Nature.

What was is nothing, and to remember is not to see.

Pass by, bird, pass, and teach me to pass! [...]

(from The Keeper of Sheep XLIII; 7 may 1914)

what's more, caeiro warns off about rushing, and calls to simply be where one happened to be, without seeking to what is awaiting further:

Beyond the bend in the road

there may be a well, a castle.

There may be simply more road.

I neither know nor ask.

As long as I’m on the road before the bend

I simply look at the road before the bend,

since I can see only the road before the bend.

It would do no good to look elsewhere

or at what I can’t see.

Let’s just concentrate on where we are.

There’s beauty enough in being here, not elsewhere.

If anyone’s there beyond the bend in the road,

let them worry about what’s beyond the bend in the road.

That is the road, to them.

If we arrive there when we arrive we’ll know.

Now we only know that we’re not there.

Here there’s only the road before the bend, and before the bend

there’s the road with no bend at all.

and before you summarize it with saying that he pays homage to being present -- i have to stop you right there. he predicted that, and has a response for you:

Live, you say, in the present.
Live only in the present.
But I don't want the present, I want reality.
[...]
I want only reality, the things themselves, without any present.
I don't want to include time in my awareness of what exists. [...]

(19 july 1920)

caeiro had his take on time as well, obviously he did. but just like with any previous case, his opinion is accurate to what he had already said. 

[...] This is what today is,
And since for the time being today is everything, this is everything. [...]

(10 july 1930)

what a harmonious guy

i know right? no matter what issue he would raise, his take on it would always make sense, and be in-character. he is a patchwork of a taoist, stoic, and empiricism beliefs, yet he is very much his own person. 

from all the pessoa's faces, alberto caeiro is my most beloved one. he's this type of poet you don't read for the aesthetics, for the feels, but rather for the values, for the prayers, for the simple celebration of your own, and world's, existence. and that is more than we could expect from him.