Portugal and a Portugese Poet

Welcome to Poetry Friday! This week we are hosted by Catherine Flynn HERE. Thank you for hosting, Catherine. I look forward to what she will be sharing this week. I saw her and Patricia Franz who is another Poetry Friday blogger, and other poetry friends last evening on line. We are attending the first week of a Georgia Heard workshops. The topic? Poetry collections!

My husband and I returned a week ago from a long planned, covid delayed, trip to Spain and Portugal, both countries beautiful,

with gorgeous cities and art such as the architecture of Antoni Gaudí. In his masterpiece, the Sagrada Familia church in Barcelona, still being built, have windows that make the inside spaces glow with extraordinary color, like it was, I swear, radioactive.

Here’s a selfie of me with the city of Toledo, built on a solid granite hill, a river on three sides and buildings full of Jewish, Arab, and Christian influences. Behind me, far below, is the river and the city rising above.

People were friendly everywhere we went.

This young man named João in a university town called Cuimbra, (pronounced queem-bra) was happy to discuss the famous Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa, suggest a book, and chat about Portugal.

I bought the following book from Joao, and in it I sought to discover who Fernando Pessoa was. He baffled me. According to the editor Richard Zenith, Pessoa was known for writing from the personas of many people that he created, that were part of him.

“His point of view was eloquently expressed by his . . . self-multiplication, into dozens of literary personalities whose names signed a large part of his sprawling output.” Richard Zenith

So in this book, you will find poems written by names Alberto Caeiro, Ricardo Reis and Alvaro De Campos, poets all created by Pessoa. He was like a playwright writing characters who speak from their own separate selves.

Pessoa wrote about his created characters, “The Author . . . cannot affirm that all these different well-defined personalities who have incorporeally passed through his soul don’t exist, for he doesn’t know what it means to exist, nor whether Hamlet or whether Shakespeare is more real, or truly real”

So what small piece of the work can I share that might interest young people as well as adults to know more? Pessoa wrote the following accessible and beautiful poem through the poet, Ricardo Reis:

To be great, be whole: don't exaggerate
       Or leave out any part of you.
Be complete in each thing. Put all you are
       Into the least of your acts.
So too in each lake, with its lofty life,
       The whole moon shines. 

I love the image of a moon in a lake that make the poem come to life.

It would take a while to get to know the many sides of Fernando Pessoa.

Below is my husband, Bart, with a sweet 19-year old waiter in a small lunch place. It’s easy to tell who is who. Everyone we met seemed to love their families and country. This young man said he wouldn’t leave as he would miss Lisbon, his family and especially, it seemed, the food. The grilled octopus and Bachalhau (codfish) were delicious.

I hope everyone enjoys the holidays. Thank you, Catherine, for hosting.