Richard Zenith Livres

For many thousands of readers Fernando Pessoa's The Book of Disquiet is almost a way of life. Ironic, haunting and melancholy, this completely unclassifiable work is the masterpiece of one of the twentieth century's most enigmatic writers. Richard Zenith's Pessoa at last allows us to understand this extraordinary figure. Some eighty-five years after his premature death in Lisbon, where he left over 25,000 manuscript sheets in a wooden trunk, Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935) can now be celebrated as one of the great modern poets. Setting the story of his life against the nationalistic currents of European history, Zenith charts the heights of Pessoa's explosive imagination and literary genius. Much of Pessoa's charm and strangeness came from his writing under a variety of names that he used not only to conceal his identity but also to write in wildly varied styles with different imagined personalities. Zenith traces the back stories of virtually all of these invented others, called 'heteronyms', demonstrating how they were projections, spin-offs or metamorphoses of Pessoa himself. Zenith's monumental work confirms the power of Pessoa's words to speak prophetically to the disconnectedness of modern life. It is also a wonderful book about Lisbon, the city which Pessoa reinvented and through which his different selves wandered.

"Like Richard Ellmann's James Joyce, Richard Zenith's Pessoa immortalizes the life of one of the twentieth century's greatest writers. Eighty-five years after his wrenching death in a cramped Lisbon apartment, where he left more than 25,000 manuscript sheets in a wooden trunk, Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935) remains one of the most enigmatic and underappreciated poets of the twentieth century. Celebrated for writing in dozens of different poetic voices, known as heteronyms, Pessoa has finally found his definitive biographer in renowned translator Richard Zenith. Setting the story of Pessoa's life against the nationalistic currents of early twentieth-century European history, Zenith charts the depths of Pessoa's explosive imagination and literary genius. Much as José Saramago brought one of Pessoa's heteronyms to life in The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis, Zenith traces the backstories of virtually all of Pessoa's imagined personalities, demonstrating how they were projections, spin-offs, or metamorphoses of Pessoa himself. Nothing less than a literary masterpiece, Zenith's monumental work confirms the power of Pessoa's words to speak prophetically to the disconnectedness of modern life"-- Provided by publisher

Against a backdrop of rural Portuguese poverty, a handful of magical characters are living out their destiny- Jose, a shepherd, who is visited by a devil whispering violent words in his ear; Moises and Elias, Siamese twins joined at the tip of their little fingers; Gabriel, a wise man, who is over one hundred years old; and an unnamed character who sits writing alone in a windowless room. The characters are universal, and they are all at the mercy of fate - their lives are pulled in different directions and sometimes even suffocated and snuffed out ...