ALBERTO CAEIRO: THE COMPLETE POEMS

¶ Unearthed from the legendary trunk containing Fernando Pessoa’s literary oeuvre, the poems of one of his most celebrated heteronyms, Alberto Caeiro, are now available for the first time in their entirety in a bilingual Portuguese-English edition. At the core of Caeiro’s philosophy is the “shocking reality” that everything in nature is individual and distinct—valuable in and of itself without need for embellishment or comparison—be it a flower, a river, or the setting sun. Maintained in Michael Lee Rattigan’s careful and alert translations, Caeiro’s distinct philosophy is faithfully rendered and subtly re-worked so that the balance between anticipation and lived reality in the moment is expressed with the greatest tenderness and clarity.

¶ Thomas Crosse, a lesser-known English heteronym of Pessoa’s, was entrusted the task of gathering the poems of Caeiro into one for the English-speaking public. Capturing Caeiro’s unique voice with an immediacy that is true to the original, Rattigan’s sensitive translations have at last succeeded in carrying out Crosse’s task.

• Thomas Crosse (described here as “little known”), was the figure Pessoa would have liked to be able to thank for having “gathered together into one[!]” the complete poems of Caeiro, only to find in the event that neither of them, that none of them, could accomplish what Michael Lee Rattigan has achieved on their behalf. Being Fernando Pessoa’s heteronym Alberto Caeiro reminds us that “To exist is enough to be complete.” This is certainly what Caeiro would have said of it if he had been sent The Complete Poems for review. The translator, Michael Lee Rattigan, who is also the enabler, cannot be congratulated enough. ❧ John Pilling, PN Review

¶ Fernando António Nogueira Pessoa was born in Lisbon in 1888. He spent much of his childhood in Durban, South Africa, returning to Lisbon at the age of seventeen. He earned his living as a writer of foreign correspondence for business rms, as a translator, and horoscope seller. Of the four books of poetry published in his lifetime, three were in English. He also regularly contributed to magazines. He died in Lisbon in 1935.

¶ The heteronym Alberto Caeiro received formal education at primary level only, and spent almost his entire life on a farmstead in Ribatejo, a rural area outside of Lisbon. Recognised as a teacher by the other heteronyms, Caeiro was conceived of as the poet of spontaneity, directness, and instinct. The first poem written in the heteronym of Alberto Caeiro was on March 8, 1914—Pessoa’s “dia triunfal”—and the last was probably in 1930.

¶ Michael Lee Rattigan was born in Croydon, Surrey. He received a literature degree at The University of Kent and his first poems were published while taking postgraduate studies at Trinity College Dublin. He has lived and worked in Cancún, Mexico and Mallorca, Spain. A chapbook of his poems, Nature Notes: Fragments for an Elegy (2008), as well as his début poetry collection Liminal (2012) have been published by Rufus Books Publishing.