Fernando Pessoa: Office Worker, Occultist, Galaxy of Writers | Hacker News Reader

Fernando Pessoa: Office Worker, Occultist, Galaxy of Writers

nytimes.com

Side note but maybe interesting. As many writers, Pessoa worked in a variety of occupations and wrote the first portuguese Coca-Cola slogan. Pessoa wrote the following slogan for Coca-Cola:

"Primeiro estranha-se. Depois entranha-se"

In my opinion it is a great slogan, but it's very hard to translate and must be appreciated in the native language. Most translations are wrong. This was in the 20's, and Portugal was already under press censorship, and what would be a 50 years dictatorship. Lisbon's director of Health at the time had Coca-Cola banned on the premises:

"- If one of the ingredients is coca, from which cocaine is extracted, then the product can't be sold so as to not intoxicate the public.

- If the product does not have coca, then selling it under that name to get customers is fraud; hence, it cannot be sold.

- Pessoa recognized its toxicity, for his slogan was very specific. Not liking a substance at first but then getting used to it is a characteristic of drugs.

And so Pessoa inadvertently sealed Coca-Cola's fate in Portugal for the following decades..."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3AFernando_Pessoa

Edit:

Another interesting point that if you are new to Pessoa you might not know, is that the writers Alberto Caeiro, Álvaro de Campos and Ricardo Reis are also Fernando Pessoa! His creativity could not be captured simply via one identity so he created heteronyms, and their style is quite different. He also used more than 70 pseudonyms but those the style still is Pessoa.

Note I refer to Heteronym as in literature not as in Linguistics:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heteronym_(literature)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heteronym_(linguistics)

Great side note, never heard of this, thanks! And great slogan indeed.

I couldn’t think of a translation either and went to Google Translate, which has become quite good in the last years, but gave ”estranhar” the plainly wrong translation of ”wonder, marvel”.

There is a huge archive effort of Pessoa's poems in:

http://arquivopessoa.net/

Most of it is in original Portuguese but there is an English poems section 'Poesia Inglesa'.

To be fair I think as with most poetry it is worth reading in the native language to fully appreciate it.

To clarify, Pessoa did write also in English and French. His poems in English are not translations, he did write in those languages.

If I'm not mistaken, his famous "Give me some more wine, because life is nothing"[1] was originally written in english.

[1] https://disquietthoughts.blogspot.com/2007/11/there-are-dise...

Indeed to clarify his poems under the pen name 'Alexander Search' were originally written by Pessoa in English. The general understanding is that the heteronym was influenced by his childhood in South-Africa.

Thank you. This guy seems quite interesting.

A review of one of his most popular books - "The Book of Disquiet" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAsMYhmuyhU https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40881621-the-book-of-dis...

Honestly this guy seems in denial with his depresssion, at least if I look him with the lens of contemporary culture.

Everything is in his head, fantasy is elevated as a higher value. According to today's "here and now" attitude his lifestyle is not healthy at all.

Pessoa dealt with several major depressions during his lifetime and was very aware of them. If anything he wallowed in his depressions. This is all documented. I love his books so I'm biased, but this is too much of a dismissive comment about a writer with a great body of work. If anything I think his struggles improved his writing which can help people deal with their own depressive moods, even if it prevented him from leading a happy life himself.

I did not mean to dismiss him, sorry if it seemed that way.

I enjoyed some of his works. You can admire his work but not follow his lifestyle, that's I think relevant for many artists.

It felt a dismissive comment for me too, but I think the main point of GP is that you are wrong about Pessoa being ”in denial” of his depression.

Most famous artists of the past lived lifestyles that would not meet the approval of our present-day corporate overlords.

Possibly with the exception of commercially-minded artists like Bouguereau, a 19th century French painter who spent his considerable talent on churning out endless canvases of cute baby angels. He is supposed to have said: “I lose 100 francs every time I have to stop painting to take a piss.” — Clearly a model of contemporary productivity.

Whichever mental illness he had didn't get better by drowning in absinthe.

He is certainly not the only artist who had a not so healthy lifestyle :-)

I won't read NYT, but I do recommend the Book of Disquiet to anyone with a soul

Why is a paywalled NYT article being highlighted on HN?

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