The best writer to have ever lived...
...Was a Portuguese fellow by the name of Fernando Pessoa. He had many heteronyms, which is a sort of literary multiple personality, each an amazing and particular author on its own.
His work is really really hard to translate without the colossal loss that accompanies translations of works that are strong and subtle and utilize the deeper intricacies of the language...
Still, he was raised in South Africa and wrote a bit in english as well.
I recently found his 35 sonnets in english on Project Guttemberg.
Here is the link
http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/readfile?fk_files=274171
and here is the first sonnet:
Whether we write or speak or do but look
We are ever unapparent. What we are
Cannot be transfused into word or book.
Our soul from us is infinitely far.
However much we give our thoughts the will
To be our soul and gesture it abroad,
Our hearts are incommunicable still.
In what we show ourselves we are ignored.
The abyss from soul to soul cannot be bridged
By any skill of thought or trick of seeming.
Unto our very selves we are abridged
When we would utter to our thought our being.
We are our dreams of ourselves, souls by gleams,
And each to each other dreams of others’ dreams.
His work is really really hard to translate without the colossal loss that accompanies translations of works that are strong and subtle and utilize the deeper intricacies of the language...
Still, he was raised in South Africa and wrote a bit in english as well.
I recently found his 35 sonnets in english on Project Guttemberg.
Here is the link
http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/readfile?fk_files=274171
and here is the first sonnet:
Whether we write or speak or do but look
We are ever unapparent. What we are
Cannot be transfused into word or book.
Our soul from us is infinitely far.
However much we give our thoughts the will
To be our soul and gesture it abroad,
Our hearts are incommunicable still.
In what we show ourselves we are ignored.
The abyss from soul to soul cannot be bridged
By any skill of thought or trick of seeming.
Unto our very selves we are abridged
When we would utter to our thought our being.
We are our dreams of ourselves, souls by gleams,
And each to each other dreams of others’ dreams.
3 Comments
Don't you mean... "the GRATEst writer to have ever lived"?
No seriously, I'm going to look him up right now.
It would have been, had I posted this after getting punked by soulless aussies...
Start Here:
http://www.disquiet.com/thirteen.html
13 different english translations of the same brilliant poem
And more about the guy himself and his heteronyms at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fernando_Pessoa
Discuss...
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