The book Critical Lives: Fernando Pessoa, by CultureLab member Bartholomew Ryan, has just been published by Reaktion Books. The book launch will take place on November 8th at 6:30 PM at Livraria da Travessa (Rua da Escola Politécnica, 46, Lisbon). There will be a conversation between Pessoa specialist Antonio Cardiello and the author about this philosophical biography of Fernando Pessoa. This will be followed by live music, performed by Giulia Gallina and Mariana Costa singing songs by Zeca Afonso, Caetano Veloso and The Loafing Heroes — who have all brought Pessoa words into song.

ABOUT THE BOOK

As a young man, Fernando Pessoa wrote ‘be plural like the universe.’ Staying true to this, he went on to invent more than one hundred fictional alter-egos, which he called heteronyms. This biography, probing Pessoa’s experience and imagination of reality, navigates the poet’s early days in Lisbon and South Africa, reveals a philosopher-poet and pioneer of Portuguese modernism, and delves into the birth of Pessoa’s heteronymic universe. Bartholomew Ryan traverses Pessoa’s writings on evolving radical politics and his messianic dream of an empire of poets, his ventures into esoteric realms and his expertise in astrology. The book unravels Pessoa’s real and imaginary relationships, and explores his unfinished prose masterpiece, The Book of Disquiet. This is a compelling, timely exploration of Pessoa’s profound and innovative ideas, including his revolutionary concepts of identity and self-multiplicity.

Critical Lives: Fernando Pessoa
Ryan, B.
ISBN 9781789149340

Order here.