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DIX AND PIZARRO

Steffen Dix is Research Fellow at the Institute of Social

Science, University of Lisbon; Jernimo Pizarro is Research
Fellow at the Linguistics Centre, University of Lisbon.

is a joint imprint
of the Modern Humanities
Research Association and
Maney Publishing. Titles
range from medieval texts to
contemporary cinema and
form a widely comparative
view of the modern
humanities.
LEGENDA

PORTUGUESE MODERNISMS

For a more encompassing and stimulating picture of Modernism

seen as a movement of the 20th century, a broad spectrum
of work across many countries we must explore not only its
external diversity but also its internal plurality. Portuguese
Modernism manifested itself both in visual art and in literature.
But at the same time it is important to acknowledge the
centrality of Modernisms contribution to this time of profound
cultural change. Indeed, the socio-cultural transformations
marking the early twentieth century in Portugal still endure
today. This volume provides a critical guide for students and
teachers, contributed by an array of scholars with unparalleled
knowledge of the period, its artists and its writers.

Portuguese Modernisms
Multiple Perspectives on
Literature and the Visual Arts
Edited by Steffen Dix and
Jernimo Pizarro

cover illustration: Detail from Ttulo desconhecido

(Coty) (c.1917), by Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso (1887
1918); collage; 94 76 cm. The editors and publisher
gratefully acknowledge the permission granted by the
Foundation Calouste Gulbenkian to reproduce this collage
at the cover.

Modern Humanities Research Association and Maney Publishing

C H A P TER 2

Fernando Pessoa:
Not One but Multiple isms
Jernimo Pizarro
Acronyms and isms proliferated in the twentieth century. The latter had their golden
age during the first decades of the last century and began to be commemorated with
the recent centenary of Italian futurism. In coming years we may see celebrations to
commemorate a hundred years of certain manifestations of German expressionism,
English imagism and the many other artistic isms that emerged before, during and
after the First World War in different countries of the world. In Portugal, two
short-lived magazines that attracted criticism and censorship, Orpheu and Portugal
Futurista respectively, were the main vehicles for disseminating national and foreign
isms. Orpheu started out with texts of a more decadent and post-symbolist tendency
and a propensity for exile, but quickly took on a more challenging, vanguardist
orientation. All this between the first and second numbers, and within the space
of three months, because the magazine which was quarterly changed its
directors between January and April of 1915, and the third number was only
published (partially) in 1983, once a set of page proofs had been located.1 The
covers of the only two numbers of the magazine illustrate very well the change of
direction, and the cover of the second may bring to mind the first number of Blast,
the publication dedicated to English vorticism (see Figs 2.1 and 2.2).
Orpheu was the platform for various isms, but above all the platform for the
isms created by Fernando Pessoa, between 1914 when he gives life to Alberto
Caeiro, Ricardo Reis and lvaro de Campos and 1915, when he writes numerous
newspaper articles, sociological ref lections, parts of the Book of Disquietude and some
inf lammatory letters, many of which he never gets round to sending (for example,
a letter to Mr Marinetti,2 and another entitled Letter to a stupid hero,3 addressed
to a twenty-four-year-old lieutenant who had been imprisoned and had declared in
favour of the Republic at the time of his heroic return to Portugal). In his evocation
of the modernist moment of Orpheu, Jos de Almada Negreiros, who was one of
its main contributors and who delivered the first futurist lecture in 1917, in Lisbon,
recalls precisely, that:
Uma caracterstica do Orpheu (a qual chegou a ser hilariante) era a de
perpassar por uma srie infindvel de ismos. E tanto mais infindvel quanto no
Orpheu era o encontro de letras e pintura, cada uma com a sua srie infindvel
de ismos [...]

Pessoa: Not One, but Multiple

isms

25

Fig. 2.1. Orpheu 1 ( JanuaryMarch 1915). 25 cm. Front cover designed by Jos Pacheco.
Fig. 2.2. Orpheu 2 (AprilJune 1915). 25 cm. New kind of front cover: fixed design
with a normal typographical aspect.
Enquanto que a guia no tinha seno um ismo, o saudosismo, o Orpheu
tinha trs ismos criaes suas por Fernando Pessoa: o palismo, interseccionismo,
sensacionismo, alm dos ismos que estavam j generalizados mundialmente e os
criados de novo.4
[One characteristic of Orpheu (often quite hilarious) was to go through
an interminable series of isms. All the more so because Orpheu was where
literature met painting, each bringing their own interminable series of isms
[...]
While the guia only had one ism, saudosism,5 Orpheu had three isms,
created by Fernando Pessoa: paulism, intersectionism, sensationism, as well as
the isms that were already commonly accepted and those that had been newly
coined.]

These are many isms, and more, as Almada underlines, than those embraced by A
guia, the main Porto literary magazine and the mouthpiece for the Portuguese
Renaissance movement. In 1915, in Portugal, the real focus of artistic modernity
was the magazine Orpheu, which did not arise out of a feeling of saudade or nostal
gia (hence the term saudosismo) nor a kind of traditionalist nationalism (like that
of the Portuguese Renaissance movement), but out of a yearning for Europa (the
title suggested in 1914) in other words, a burning desire to be in harmony with
the most modern artistic manifestations of Europe and, through Europe, with the
rest of the world.

26

Jernimo Pizarro

In this study, I shall focus on the three isms cited by Almada Negreiros: paulism,
intersectionism and sensationism. Pessoa also created atlantism and neo-paganism
(see volume x of the critical edition of Fernando Pessoa, Sensacionismo e Outros
Ismos, 2009), two less artistic isms that I shall not consider here because they are
less germane to a discussion of the meeting of literature and painting. On the one
hand, atlantism is Pessoas most prophetic ism: between 1915 and 1918 he outlined
an atlantic conception of life, inspired by Walt Whitman, which looked forward
to Iberian cultural hegemony and a new maritime expansion, spiritual yet rooted
in Iberia. In a page that contains a fragment entitled Iberia and dates from around
1918, Pessoa wrote, significantly: Todo o portuguez que no sebastianista
um traidor [Any Portuguese who does not believe in King Sebastians return is
a traitor].6 On the other hand, neo-paganism is Pessoas most philosophical ism;
aware of the desacralization of the modern world, he invented a new conception
of the ancient world in the sphere of literature and entrusted a semi-heteronym,
Antnio Mora, with the dissemination of this Portuguese neo-pagan current, or
rather, theoretical ref lection on pagan elements in the works of Alberto Caeiro
and Ricardo Reis. As Steffen Dix observes, at the beginning of the twentieth
century there was a new return to the ancient gods, encouraged by the death of
God and by the work of Friedrich Nietzsche, a return which would explain, in
part, the presence of antiquity in the works of various modern painters, writers
and composers.7 Therefore, of the isms created by Pessoa himself multiple and
the medium of other authorial figures8 I am interested by three in particular:
paulism, intersectionism and sensationism. The last-mentioned, which is the main
ism, will receive most attention.
First of all, however, I must point out the following: in the years in which he was
creating and developing his multiple isms (191317), perhaps the most productive
years of his life, Pessoa also wrote socio-political texts, took an even stronger inter
est in astrology and discovered theosophy. For this reason, anyone reading Pessoas
production from those years parts of which are included in many volumes of
his works will probably retain the same impression as the editors of a recent
anthology on modernism: that the very notion of literature is permeable, it inter
sects with another kind of practices and ref lections. Quoting from the preface: Our
selection and presentation of texts reveals a (previously unavailable) broad literary
perspective. At the same time, however, the very concept of literature seems to
fade in and out of other disciplines such as the visual arts, philosophy, and social
and political theory.9 Paulism, intersectionism and sensationism are more or less
literary approaches, but they are approaches in which literature and the visual arts
enter into a dialogue, have a philosophical dimension and cannot avoid issues per
taining to the arts and the place of the artist in society, because they coexist, in time
and sometimes in space, with all kinds of writing about the most varied topics and
matters. Another question which greatly interested Pessoa during these years, and
which goes some way towards explaining the origins of his heteronyms, is the Shake
speareBacon question, that is, the question of who wrote Shakespeares works.10
I begin with the most f leeting of Pessoas isms, paulism, sketched out in the first
critical articles that Pessoa published on new Portuguese poetry in the magazine

36

Jernimo Pizarro

mentor, with the Lusitanian spirit, and the expression of Portuguese genius. In
one of his notebooks, Pessoa makes a clear distinction between the two isms. It is
worth quoting at length:
As differenas entre o saudosismo e o sensacionismo indicam-se em poucas
palavras:
(1) O saudosismo subordina a arte a uma preoccupao patriotica e religiosa;
o sensacionismo pe a arte acima de tudo.
(2) O saudosismo proclama como verdadeira uma determinada doutrina, ou
viso esthetica; o sensacionismo proclama verdadeiras todas as doutrinas e vises
estheticas classicas, romanticas, symbolistas, futuristas ; exige-lhes apenas
que sejam doutrinas estheticas, vises artisticas.
(3) O saudosismo apoia-se no s numa religio, mas tambem numa
metaphysica. O sensacionismo apoia-se em todas as metaphysicas.
(4) O saudosismo tem perante as cousas uma attitude moral; o sensacionismo
apenas uma attitude esthetica. Por ex[emplo] uma arvore, para o saud[osis]ta
uma irm sua; para o sen[sacionis]ta , ou no , conforme lhe convenha ao que
quer dizer.
(5) O saudosismo e o sensacionismo teem de commum o julgarem-se inter
pretadores da alma nacional, Mas o saudosismo suppe que a alma essencial
mente mystica; o sensacionismo que ella essencialmente cosmopolita, synthetica
e pag.
(6) O saud[osismo] procura fundir o paganismo e o Ch[ristianis]mo. O
sens[acionismo] pe de parte o Ch[ristianis]mo; procura apenas trascendentalizar
o paganismo.52
[The differences between saudosismo and sensationism can be indicated in a
few words:
(1) Saudosismo subordinates art to a concern with patriotism and religion;
sensationism sets art above all things.
(2) Saudosismo proclaims a specific doctrine or aesthetic vision to be true;
sensationism proclaims all doctrines and aesthetic visions classical, romantic,
symbolist, futurist to be true; it only demands that they should be aesthetic
doctrines, artistic visions.
(3) Saudosismo is based not only on a religion but also on a metaphysics.
Sensationism is based on all metaphysics.
(4) Saudosismo adopts a moral attitude to things; sensationism only takes an
aesthetic attitude. For example a tree, for the saudosista is his sister, for the
sensationist it is or is not, depending on how it matches what he wants to say.
(5) Saudosismo and sensationism have in common their belief that they are
interpreters of the national soul. But saudosismo presupposes that the soul is
essentially mystical; sensationism presupposes that it is essentially cosmopolitan,
synthetic and pagan.
(6) Saudosismo seeks to blend paganism and Christianity. Sensationism sets
Christianity aside, it seeks only to transcendentalize paganism.]

The main symbol of the whole modernist adventure culminating in sensationism,

whose foundations are summed up in these six points, was precisely the magazine
Orpheu. It aimed to place art above all else, to accept all aesthetic doctrines (hence
its eclectic character), not to privilege a single vision of the world or transmit moral
doctrines, to be national and cosmopolitan, ancient and modern, at the same time,
and, in a epocha singular [singular age],53 in which the decadence of the Church

Pessoa: Not One, but Multiple

isms

37

of Rome was apparent, to transcendentalize paganism, in other words, ancient

polytheism, feeling everything in all ways and with different souls.54
Orpheu acabou. Orpheu continua [Orpheu has ended. Orpheu continues].55 Thus
ends the evocation of Orpheu, written by Pessoa, in 1935, the year of his death.
Historians usually associate an artistic ism with one or more outstanding figures:
cubism, with Braque and Picasso; futurism with Marinetti; saudosismo with Teixeira
de Pascoaes; vorticism with Lewis; suprematism with Malevich; simultaneism with
the Delaunays; dadaism with Tristan Tzara; surrealism with Andr Breton and
so on. Pessoa, who was various poets and prose writers, would have to be linked
with at least five isms, which after 1917, following the suicide of S-Carneiro, and
the deaths of Santa-Rita Pintor and Amadeu de Souza-Cardoso, practically died
out. Pessoa created not one, but multiple isms.
Appendix (Technique of Feeling)
Of the texts that Pessoa wrote directly in English, it is this one that gives us the
best idea of what a segment of The Book of Disquietude would have been like had it
been written in that language. It is a kind of dreamers handbook, inf luenced by the
theorization of two isms: intersectionism and sensationism. It can be dated to c. 1915.
I located and read it anew (BNP/E3, 15B3-14 and 15) after receiving an opportune
indication of Nuno Ribeiro, whom I very much thank.
[15B3-14]
Technique of Feeling
The art of feeling just for the sake of feeling is the one which is essential to the ideler.
To know how to receive impressions so that they cause you the greatest pleasure
possible, or, when they occasion pain, cause the least possible pain, or, when giving pain or
discomfort, can be forced to yield some compensating pleasure this is the object of this
course.
Do not specialize in certain elements of individuality.56 Specialize, if you like, in an
attitude of individuality; but that attitude must include all possible moods or impressions.
The cultivation of selfishness is absurd, for it limits pleasure; a complete individuality, even
if sel[f ]-centred, should know how to feel in also a self-uncentred way. Pity, indignation,
fello[w]-feeling can give pleasure; we curtail our pleasures when we limit our individuality,
and to exclude the social feelings is to curtail our individuality.
Literature on the subject:
O[scar] W[ilde] Intentions, but Wilde is too preoccupied with contradicting, to be
quite at his intellectual ease.
Live completely, though you live only for yourself; feel completely, though you feel only
to feel, and neither to think, nor to act. There is an art of compassion, by which pleasure
can be extracted from pitying others, just as there is an art of gourmandise, by which
First Law: Never abstain. It is not the use of c[oc]aine which is immoral, but the abuse
of cocaine. (???) If you smoke ten cigarettes a day, being a smoker each cigarette will taste
better than each does when you smoke a hundred. Cultivate the taste first; then cultivate
its limitation. The limit defines; a country is a country not only by having its territory, but
also by not having the territory of other nations. A nation is defined by its frontier, and its
frontier not only marks what the country is, but also what it is not.
Cultivate non-abstention in the natural things; but neither abuse the natural things, nor
indulge in unnatural ones, the [e]ssence of which is abuse.

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Jernimo Pizarro

The difficulty is to define natural things. Why is wine natural and cocaine unnatural?
The point of reference is the acceptation of mankind; wine is human, cocaine is special.
Mankind everywhere where it is natural and uncorrupted is wine-drinking; not section of
mankind except degen[e]rates is cocaine-taking. Cocaine is a substitute; wine is not.57
The minority differs from the majority not in essence, but in attributes; not in the
things it does, but in the manner of doing them. This manner is obtained by choice in
the natural things, which is an intellectual act; and by peculiarity in the manner of taking
natural things, which is a sentimental act. The act itself is common to all men; all men
drink wine in the same way. It is not aristocratic to drink wine through the nose.
In drinking wine, the member of the minority differs from the member of the majority,
in two ways: in the wine which he drinks, and in the intellect behind the drinking. He
chooses a better, a choicer wine; and he has a different manner of putting his intelligence
into his palate. Complexity of emotion belongs to simple things. It is fools who choose
complex things. A complex thing is sought be the aristocracy of the people. Taking cocaine
is like overdressing.58
The popular vices are excess
The way to spoil pleasure is to seek for it where it is not. To strive to get from drinking
petrol the pleasure that should be got from drinking brandy is a foolish thing, because
petrol does not resemble brandy.
The art of intersecting sensations. This is a peculiarly difficult thing to do we[l]l, and not
every succeeds in it. Of course it is impossible to concentrate attention on two things at a
time, and it is a highly injurious thing to attempt if our training59 is directed to the active
intellect, or to the will. But if we are cultivating feeling, it does no harm.
We all know that most agreeable of mental states, when sleep is not yet cast off, and yet
we have not yet awaked. The mind is still plunged in the dream it had in sleep, but it feels
already around it the slow murmur and vague shadow of real things. This is the most natural
state of intersected sensations; neither the subjective, nor the objective, consciousness being
fully active, they seem to divide our mind between them, each penetrating 60 the other.
This is the type of intellectual and emotional state which is to be cultivated.
In full waking, however, this can only be done by heightening the power of subjective
consciousness: this is the real day-dreaming. How can the power s[ubjective] c[onsciousness]
be heightened without shutting off o[bjective] consc[ious]ness? And how can this state of
mind be cultivated without eventually drying the roots of either or of each and thus
inducing a morbid mental state by which pleasure itself will diminish and the capacity for
pleasure be made weaker?
A parallel cultivation of the objective and of the subjective consciousness can do this. In
the first place, learn how to be acutely conscious of external things, even

Notes to Chapter 2
1. Orpheu 3 (Porto: Nova Renascena, 1983); cf. Orpheu: revista trimestral de literatura, facsimile of the
Lisbon edition: Typografia do Commercio, 1915; includes issue number 3 in page proofs (Lisbon:
Contexto, 1989).
2. Jernimo Pizarro, Pessoa e Monsieur Marinetti, Estudos Italianos em Portugal, 4 (2009), 7788.
3. Fernando Pessoa, Carta a um Heri Estpido, ed. by Jernimo Pizarro (Lisbon: tica, 2010).
4. Jos de Almada Negreiros, Orpheu, 19151965 (Lisbon: tica, 1965), p. 24.
5. Broadly translated as nostalgia.
6. In the Pessoa arquive: BNP/E3, 9738r. In full, Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal, Esplio
[Arquive], no. 3, cota [classification] 9738 rosto [recto].
7. Steffen Dix, Neopaganismo, in Dicionrio de Fernando Pessoa e do Modernismo Portugus, coord.
by Fernando Cabral Martins (Lisbon: Caminho, 2008), pp. 52326 (p. 524).
8. For Eugnio Lisboa, O modernismo caracteriza-se precisamente por uma necessidade de multi