Pessoa's earliest
heteronym, created at the age of six, was Chevalier de Pas, a fictitious knight who served as the imaginary addressee of his childhood letters. Other childhood heteronyms included the poet Dr. Pancrácio and short story writer David Merrick, followed by Charles Robert Anon, a young Englishman who became Pessoa's
alter ego. After the
5 October 1910 revolution and its subsequently patriotic atmosphere, Pessoa created another alter ego,
Álvaro de Campos, supposedly a Portuguese naval and mechanical engineer, who was born in
Tavira, hometown of Pessoa's ancestors, and graduated in
Glasgow. Translator and literary critic Richard Zenith notes that Pessoa eventually established at least seventy-two heteronyms. According to Pessoa himself, Zenith says, there were three main heteronyms:
Alberto Caeiro, Álvaro de Campos, and
Ricardo Reis. Pessoa's
heteronyms differ from pen names, as they possess distinct biographies, temperaments, philosophies, appearances, writing styles, and even signatures. Thus,
heteronyms often disagree on various topics as well as argue and discuss with each other about literature, aesthetics, philosophy, and so on. Regarding the heteronyms, Pessoa wrote:
Pessoa's heteronyms, pseudonyms, and characters Alberto Caeiro Alberto Caeiro was the first heteronym which Pessoa considered to be great or seminal. Through that heteronym, Pessoa wrote exclusively poetry. According to an anthology edited by Jerónimo Pizarro and Patricio Ferrari titled
The Collected Works of Alberto Caeiro, "This imaginary author was a shepherd who spent most of his life in the countryside, had almost no education, and was ignorant of most literature." Critics note that Caeiro's poems demonstrate wide-eyed childlike wonder at nature.
Octavio Paz, in translating his work, refers to him as an "innocent poet". Specifically, Paz observes Caeiro's willingness to accept reality as such rather than attempting to dress it up in what other poets would consider to be aesthetic. Rather than using poetry as an interpretative and transformative device, Paz argues, Caeiro simply wrote poetry as such. In other words, Caeiro's method is
phenomenological as opposed to
aesthetic. Such a philosophy makes Caeiro contrast greatly with his creator, Pessoa, who was deferential to modernism and thus interrogates the world around him rather than merely experience it. Pessoa regarded him as follows: "He sees things with the eyes only, not with the mind. He does not let any thoughts arise when he looks at a flower ... the only thing a stone tells him is that it has nothing at all to tell him ... this way of looking at a stone may be described as the totally unpoetic way of looking at it. The stupendous fact about Caeiro is that out of this sentiment, or rather, absence of sentiment, he makes poetry." The critic Jane M. Sheets notes that the creation of Caeiro was a necessary precursor to the later heteronyms to follow by providing a universalizing poetic vision from which others could be derived. While Caeiro was a short-lived heteronym in Pessoa's career, it established several tenets which would inevitably appear in the works of Campos, Reis, and Pessoa's own work.
Ricardo Reis ''. In a letter to William Bentley, Pessoa wrote that "a
knowledge of the language would be indispensable, for instance, to appraise the 'Odes' of
Ricardo Reis, whose Portuguese would draw upon him the blessing of
António Vieira, as his stile and diction that of
Horace (he has been called, admirably I believe, 'a Greek Horace who writes in Portuguese')". Reis, both a character and a heteronym of Fernando Pessoa himself, sums up his philosophy of life in his own words, admonishing, "See life from a distance. Never question it. There's nothing it can tell you." Like Caeiro, whom he admires, Reis defers from questioning life. He prides himself as a modern pagan who urges one to seize the day and accept fate with tranquility. "Wise is the one who does not seek. The seeker will find in all things the abyss, and doubt in himself."
Álvaro de Campos Álvaro de Campos manifests, in a way, as a hyperbolic version of Pessoa himself. Of the three heteronyms he is the one who feels most strongly, his motto being 'to feel everything in every way.' 'The best way to travel,' he wrote, 'is to feel.' As such, his poetry is the most emotionally intense and varied, constantly juggling two fundamental impulses: on the one hand a feverish desire to be and feel everything and everyone, declaring that 'in every corner of my soul stands an altar to a different god' (alluding to
Walt Whitman's desire to '
contain multitudes'), on the other, a wish for a state of isolation and a sense of nothingness. As a result, his mood and principles varied between violent, dynamic exultation, as he fervently wishes to experience the entirety of the universe in himself, in all manners possible (a particularly distinctive trait in this state being his
futuristic leanings, including the expression of great enthusiasm as to the meaning of city life and its components) and a state of nostalgic melancholy, where life is viewed as, essentially, empty. One of the poet's constant preoccupations, as part of his dichotomous character, is that of identity: he does not know who he is, or rather, fails at achieving an ideal identity. Wanting to be everything, and inevitably failing, he despairs. Unlike Caeiro, who asks nothing of life, he asks too much. In his poetic meditation 'Tobacco Shop' he asks: ==Summaries of selected works==