«Assim é a vida, mas eu não concordo»: nodos e redes no processo criativo de Fernando Pessoa (apontamentos)

Abstract

“Books”, in this case Mensagem, in their intended material self-sufficiency, are units in opposition to the processes that made them possible, which are characteristically inconclusive, porous in their borders and unstable in their identity. Fernando Pessoa's works are more properly described by analogy with such processes: a work-archive, a continuous work-in-progress and not a work-collection-of-books, published or unpublished. Fernando Pessoa published one single book in Portuguese, in 1934, a year before his death. This book, however, is the product of a writing process that lasted over 20 years, carried through by partial publications in literary magazines. For the comprehensive recognition of this creative process, there are also dozens of documents that are part of the author's estate, whose degrees of affiliation to the book as a definitive product vary significantly. In this context, this paper shows how a poem from Mensagem, a diary entry from 1913, and the poetics of "O Guardador de Rebanhos" participate in a possible implicative readability of Pessoa’s literary work.