Poetry Within Pessoa E-Book

Vincenzo Mercolino

• Herausgeber: Babelcube Inc.
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

Pessoa should be read slowly, internally. Savoring the words and thinking the pauses. It is a thin blade that penetrates but that does not hurt.This collection was born by chance after listening to a poem by Fernando Pessoa, ("Elsewhere") on the radio.I was intrigued and then I started to buy some books of this author of the twentieth century.Especially reading his prose, I started to get interested in his "Livro do desassossego" (The Book of Disquiet) whose aphorisms are the source of inspiration for the works presented in this book, born from the meeting of the 'knife' with the heart ...

Leseprobe

Poetry within Pessoa

VINCENZO MERCOLINO

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Translated by Carlos Sousa Mendes 

“Poetry within Pessoa”

Written By VINCENZO MERCOLINO

Copyright © 2016 VINCENZO MERCOLINO

All rights reserved

Distributed by Babelcube, Inc.

www.babelcube.com

Translated by Carlos Sousa Mendes

Cover Design © 2016 © Mauro Rodrigues – licensed Fotolia.com

“Babelcube Books” and “Babelcube” are trademarks of Babelcube Inc.

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Vincenzo Mercolino

Poetry within Pessoa

restlessness poetry

Third edition : September  2012

Cover: © Mauro Rodrigues – licensed Fotolia.com

Direct translation from Italian to English:

Carlos Sousa Mendes

Introduction

I listened for the first time the lines of Fernando Pessoa one evening, while I was returning home from Rome by car.

I was listening to one of my favorite radio stations (Radio Montecarlo: should I write it?), and poetry was presented by the speaker Luisella Berrino following the suggestion of a listener, and it was called "Elsewhere":

Let's go, my child,

away to Elsewhere.

Where days are always mild

and fields are always fair.

Moon shines over those who

vague beyond happy and free.

Weaves light and darkness

of immortality.

There to start to see things,

tell tales so sweet one cannot talk,

Beyond the real, dream songs sing,

by lips one cannot walk.

The time there is a moment of bliss,

life a satisfied thirst,

love like that of a kiss,

when the kiss is like the first.

We don't need a boat, my child,

but our hopes until there,

no rowers, but fantasy and wild,

Oh, let's go Elsewhere!

This poem belongs to a collection, "The Mad Fiddler" that Pessoa wrote, full of Anglo-Saxon literary impetus, after returning from a trip from southern Africa. He had just completed the readings of classic English and American authors such as Poe, Shakespeare and Shelley; personally I think he was also influenced by Edgar L. Masters ( "Spoon River Anthology"), because of a crazy violinist appears in the first sonnet of the book mentioned above.

Well, as soon as I finished listening to the last lines of "Elsewhere", it was as if a thin thread of my existence and poetic reminiscence had reassembled again and tried to reach the source that had resulted in me thanks to the emotional wave generated by listening to that poem.

At this point, the only chance I had to understand this phenomenon was to read as much as possible about Fernando Pessoa: in a short time I became in love to the figure and to the poetry of this great author of the twentieth century in Europe.

Holding out well the ear, the eye and the mind to some of his works (although I have not read them all), inside me it was born something I would describe as "the poetic version of counterpoint", in other words, it is something that gets in harmony with the prose of Pessoa, it summarizes it, it "weeps" from it.

Ranging from "The Book of Disquiet" to "The Anarchist Banker", passing through some collection "general purpose", I found myself catapulted into the feelings and sensations of Lisbon, in its turn of the century streets, artisan workshops, or in the Tagus river. I felt (!) the smell of the old typography, the cold of the writers desk, the inner reflections of a solitary smoker in a rainy day.

I then tried to collect these feelings there from the reading of prose and pour them into poetry.

P.S. - Don't worry, the introduction is over; for more please go to the blog:

http://poetandopessoa.blogspot.com