{"id":13680,"date":"2022-05-24T16:23:22","date_gmt":"2022-05-24T15:23:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cassandravoices.com\/?p=13680"},"modified":"2022-05-24T16:23:22","modified_gmt":"2022-05-24T15:23:22","slug":"and-the-flesh-was-made-word","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/2022\/05\/24\/and-the-flesh-was-made-word\/","title":{"rendered":"And the Flesh was Made Word"},"content":{"rendered":"

Through Fernando Pessoa the flesh was made word. Reminiscent of the renowned Chinese painter Wu Daozi, who, as legend has it, vanished into one of his own landscape paintings, Pessoa (1888-1935), the great Portuguese poet, appears to have disappeared bodily into his written works. Dispersing himself into the many lives of others through the medium of writing, Pessoa became nobody and many others simultaneously.<\/span><\/p>\n

Pessoa called these many others \u2018heteronyms\u2019 (other names). These distinct others who discovered a voice through Pessoa have left behind a treasure trove of philosophically charged poetic works. Their wide-ranging and diverse works created by the \u2018secret orchestra\u2019 of Pessoa\u2019s soul have given rise to a choral symphony whose resonance intensifies over time.<\/p>\n

One is left in a state of silent wonder and awe at the sheer scale and brilliance of what Pessoa managed to achieve while semantically composing the soul. The challenge for his readers is to break this silence and put into words what it is that Pessoa accomplished, thereby naming precisely his significance for how we humans understand ourselves, the way we see things, and how we dwell upon the earth.<\/p>\n

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Astute Philosophical Experimentation<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

A new book, Fernando Pessoa and Philosophy: Countless Lives Inhabit Us<\/em><\/a><\/span> edited by Bartholomew Ryan, Giovanbattista Tusa, and Antonio Cardiello (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Maryland, U.S, 2021) takes on this challenge with gusto.<\/p>\n

Its aim is to bring to light Pessoa\u2019s in-depth knowledge of philosophy and his ability to engage in astute philosophical experimentation, and at the same time highlight his capacity to confront, appropriate, synthesise, and strip bare complex ideas into art. Additionally, by focusing on Pessoa\u2019s writings through different philosophical lenses the chapters included in this volume seek to reveal novel ways of interpreting some of the seminal problems of philosophy.<\/p>\n

Bartholomew Ryan alerts us to the relevance and urgency of this task in his Introduction, where he claims that if \u2018philosophy is to survive the various crises of human civilization ahead of us, to respond and open up new pathways of thought\u2019 we will need the assistance of \u2018experimenters in literature, in order to help us reconnect with ourselves, others and all living species on the planet.\u2019<\/p>\n

Structurally, Fernando Pessoa and Philosophy<\/em> consists of an Introduction, Exordium, Notes for the Memory of My Master Caeiro, fifteen essays dedicated to Pessoa and philosophy, a detailed appendix, and a critical bibliography. The wide range of elements that make up this volume come together to create a joyous banquet of a book.<\/p>\n

Ryan opens this feast for the soul with a fast tempo-ed, polyphonous introduction, entitled \u2018An Encounter between the Poet and the Philosopher\u2019. He notes how it is the task of the philosopher not to read a poet in order to appropriate an idea for her\/his own purposes. Instead, the philosopher is prompted to engage with literature so as to learn how to dwell in an uncomfortable and uncontrollable region.<\/p>\n

For in this strange region where philosophy and poetry meet something innovative can occur. As Ryan writes: \u2018It is in this encounter between the philosopher and poet a vulnerability is opened on both sides to inspire the creating of a new concept in the philosopher and a new form and linguistic gesture in the poet.\u2019<\/p>\n

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One of Pessoa’s astrological charts from 1916.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A Sense of Journey<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

By entering into such an encounter with Pessoa, the philosopher has a lot to explore and discover. As a poet animated by philosophy Pessoa prioritises a sense of journey over notions of progress, development and evolution, as he writes: \u2018I don\u2019t evolve, I JOURNEY\u2019.<\/p>\n

Besides his emphasis on journeying, the heteronym \u00c1lvaro de Campos shares a similar vision for both the philosopher and artist when he notes in his futurist manifesto \u2018Ultimatum\u2019, how the philosopher should contain \u2018the greatest number of other people\u2019s personal philosophies; and that the artist should write \u2018in the most genres with the most contradictions and discrepancies.\u2019 These insights offer rich food for thought for the philosopher.<\/p>\n

The Exordium and Notes for the Memory of my Master Caeiro come after the Introduction. These two marvellous sections are comprised of words from Pessoa and four of his heteronyms, namely, Alexander Search, Alberto Caeiro, \u00c1lvaro de Campos, and Ricardo Reis. They serve to attune and acclimatise the reader to the mood and atmosphere of Pessoa\u2019s writings.<\/p>\n

Some sentences shine luminously in the Exordium, for example, \u2018There is for me \u2013 there was \u2013\u00a0 a wealth of meaning in a thing so ridiculous as a door-key, a nail on a wall, a cat\u2019s whiskers. There is to me a fulness of spiritual suggestion in a fowl with its chickens strutting across the road.\u2019<\/p>\n

Notably, the Exordium and Campos\u2019s Notes also reveal the humour and irony of Pessoa\u2019s writings. Campos writes in his Notes of the fictitious nature of the orthonym Fernando Pessoa: \u2018Even more curious is the case of Fernando Pessoa, who doesn\u2019t exist, strictly speaking.\u2019<\/p>\n

And when humorously critiquing the work of the great 19th century writer Giacomo Leopardi, Pessoa claims Leopardi\u2019s philosophical pessimism and overemphasis on suffering stems from a shyness with women. Pessoa remarks: \u2018\u201cI am shy with women: therefore there is no God\u201d is highly unconvincing as metaphysics.\u2019<\/p>\n

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Ricardo Reis, Alberto Caeiro and \u00c1lvaro de Campos seen by Jos\u00e9 de Almada Negreiros.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Four Sections<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Fernando Pessoa and Philosophy<\/em> is then divided into four sections: Spiritual Traditions, Metaphysics and Post-metaphysics, Philosophies of Selfhood, and Contemporary Problems and Perspectives. Each section has three to four chapters.\u00a0 The volume has been arranged by philosophical themes which are both central to Pessoa\u2019s work and to philosophy itself.\u00a0 The first section, Spiritual Traditions, focuses on Neopaganism, Daoism, Indian, and Islamic philosophy.<\/p>\n

The first chapter by Antonio Cardiello, \u2018Fernando Pessoa\u2019s vision of Neopaganism as Life\u2019s Supreme Art\u2019 explores Pessoa\u2019s project of reawakening polytheism and the Hellenic model of civilisation.\u00a0 Cardiello observes how Pessoa, using his orthonym, calls for a \u2018superior paganism\u2019 for modern times in which \u2018all protestantisms, all Oriental credos, all paganisms, dead and alive become Portuguesely fused.\u2019<\/p>\n

In addition to a \u2018superior paganism\u2019 Pessoa makes reference to a \u2018superior art\u2019 that can \u2018lift the soul above everything narrow, above all instincts, moral or immoral concerns.\u2019, and liberate us from \u2018life itself.\u2019 Merging a superior paganism with a superior art, Cardiello claims it was Pessoa\u2019s task to denounce two millennial of moral interpretation and substitute it for an aesthetic one that glorifies human life, thereby dispensing with unhealthy values for healthier ones that encourage humans to flourish.<\/p>\n

Paulo Borges\u2019s \u2018Fernando Pessoa, Daoism and the Gap: Thought of Insubstantiality, Vagueness and Indetermination\u2019 is the second chapter in this section. It closely examines emptiness and the \u2018gap\u2019 in the writings of the orthonym Fernando Pessoa and the semi-heteronym Bernardo Soares, comparing these themes with Daoist principles.<\/p>\n

According to Daoist thought, emptiness allows the emergence of the \u2018ten thousand beings\u2019 or the infinity of possibilities and the possibility of an authentic life lacking self-centredness. Borges highlights how in Pessoa, the overabundance of becoming other and the experience of heteronymy emerges from that insubstantial emptiness of self and of everything.<\/p>\n

While the abyss of being prior to defining oneself by naming oneself, surfaces as the \u2018gap\u2019 that \u2018is between\u2019 the self and itself. Towards the conclusion he identifies a wonderfully apt quote from Tchouang Tseu to describe Pessoa. Tseu writes that \u2018the perfect man is without any I, the inspired man is without work; the holy man leaves no name.\u2019<\/p>\n

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Marketplace in Goa, as depicted in Jan Huygen van Linschotens Itinerarium.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Imaginary India<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The third chapter, \u2018Pessoa\u2019s Imaginary India\u2019, by Jonardon Ganeri, looks at Pessoa\u2019s understanding of the \u2018Indian ideal\u2019 which he interprets as signifying the transcendence of the illusion that is living a human life.<\/p>\n

Pessoa regards the Indian ideal as \u2018inhuman\u2019 and speaks of \u2018the principle, which we already know to be absurd, that the universe is an illusion.\u2019<\/p>\n

Ironically, Hindu thinkers writing at the same time as Pessoa, such as Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan share Pessoa\u2019s critical sentiments towards this ideal. Borrowing a phrase from Nietzsche, Ganeri acknowledges an \u2018ironic affinty\u2019 between Pessoa\u2019s position that he occasionally assumes as his own contraposition to the \u2018Indian ideal\u2019, and the ideas of his contemporaries in India that he never knew.<\/p>\n

In the final chapter of this section, \u2018Pessoa and Islamic Philosophy\u2019, Fabrizio Boscaglia, brings to light Pessoa\u2019s engagement with Islamic philosophy and its impact on his writing. Boscaglia draws attention to Pessoa\u2019s interest in the philosophical thought of Omar Khayy\u0101m, through Edward Fitzgerald\u2019s translations, and the possible connections of Sufism in Pessoa\u2019s poetry.<\/p>\n

Boscaglia also demonstrates how Pessoa\u2019s makes several references to the Islamic civilization as the keeper, interpreter and transmitter of Greek culture between the Middle Ages and the Renaissnance.<\/p>\n

In the second section of this book, Metaphysics and Post-metaphysics, the topics of time, nihilism and the nothing, transcendentalism, immanence and becoming-landscape take centre stage. Jo\u00e3o Const\u00e2ncio opens the section with \u2018Nihilism and Being Nothing in \u201cThe Tobacco Shop\u201d\u2019.<\/p>\n

The chapter seeks to respond to two significant questions: 1. What is the meaning for Pessoa, particularly in the masterpiece \u2018The Tobacco Shop\u2019 (by \u00c1lvaro de Campos) of \u2018being nothing\u2019 and 2. How can the study of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche\u2019s philosophical writings contribute to the understanding of such a paradoxical way of being, which consists of \u2018being nothing\u2019?<\/p>\n

Const\u00e2ncio delves into Campos\u2019s despair for \u2018being-nothing\u2019 and reveals it to be tantamount to despairing for having to be a mask, for not being able to avoid adopting an identity that is a mere linguistic construction, regardless of whether it implies some ultimate metaphysical purpose implicit to life within society.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, Const\u00e2ncio shows how Campos\u2019s \u2018conscious consciousness\u2019 makes him envy those who, living by way of an \u2018unconscious conscious\u2019, manage to believe in an identity that is intersubjectively attributed to them.<\/p>\n

\u2018Pessoa and Time\u2019 by Pedro Duarte is the second chapter in this section. For Duarte, it is possible to grasp the individuality of each of the three heteronyms Caeiro, Reis and Campo, by studying their different approaches and responses to time.<\/p>\n

But Duarte also includes Pessoa, the orthonym, in his analysis. For Pessoa the past needs to be rediscovered, and not set aside, because it summons the present to build the future. Caeiro takes time out of things, through detachment and unlearning and to see without thinking. Caeiro writes \u2018I don\u2019t want to think of things as being in the present; I want to think of them as things\u2019.<\/p>\n

Reis believed that \u2018we pass like the river\u2019 through life. For Reis, existence was all about adhering to this passage. Aging should be accepted. On the other hand, Campos desires to feel everything in every way, and find the beauty of the present moment, a beauty unknown to the ancients, hence electric lamps and factories are to be celebrated. Campos says \u2018I who love modern civilization and kiss machines with all my soul.\u2019<\/p>\n

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Walt Whitman aged 35.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

American Transcendentalism<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Benedetta Zavatta\u2019s chapter entitled \u2018Pessoa and American Transcendentalism\u2019, investigates the link between Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman and Pessoa. Emerson\u2019s influence on Pessoa had not received scholarly attention prior to Zavatta\u2019s essay.<\/p>\n

Zavatta convincingly hypothesises that Pessoa was drawn to Emerson and Whitman by the notion, repeatedly articulated by these two authors, that every individual latently contains within herself\/himself the seeds of an infinite number of different personalities.<\/p>\n

This in turn enables an individual to foster an empathetic connection with other humans, to the point where they \u2018become them\u2019. Enlarging this empathetic connection allows one experience how the whole world is seen and felt as these others see it and feel it.<\/p>\n

In the chapter \u2018Bernardo Soares\u2019s Becoming-Landscape\u2019, Jos\u00e9 Gil explores the use of landscape in The Book of Disquiet. Gil\u2019s philosophical approach to The Book of Disquiet<\/em> opens up this impossible book for the reader, by revealing that each of its fragments is \u2018a veritable landscape-state of emotion\u2019, providing it with \u2018both skeleton and flow\u2019.<\/p>\n

Gil\u2019s deft analysis of Bernardo Soares\u2019s becoming-landscape culminates with an enquiry into what occurs when the plane of the landscape clashes with the plane of emotions. Gil suggests \u2018all distances disappear, and the \u201cI\u201d itself, which functioned like a screen between sensations and the landscapes, explodes, disappears and ceases to exist\u2019.<\/p>\n

What remains is the pure landscape of event-sensations. A \u2018sensation-universe\u2019. Literary description ceases, and \u2018sensations attach themselves to the flow of the landscape because they result from them: it is no longer the sky yonder, or the I, here, like this sky: it is the sensation-sky or the sensation-light.\u2019<\/p>\n

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'the forests were monstrous \/ but they have always been divine' We bring you the lyrics and a first recording of Iguatu from Bartholomew Ryan of the Loafing Heroes to mark Earth Day 2020.#EarthDay2020<\/a> #EarthDay<\/a> https:\/\/t.co\/wDjSA07dwm<\/a>@broadsheet_ie<\/a> #theloafingheroes<\/a><\/p>\n

— CassandraVoices (@VoicesCassandra) April 22, 2020<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n