Fernando Pessoa

Pessoa’s family returned to Lisbon from Pretoria after the death of his stepfather and they lived in fifteen different places around the city, moving from one rented room to another due to their financial troubles, from 1905 to 1921.

He died of cirrhosis in 1935, at the age of forty-seven. Pessoa's remains were moved to the Hieronymites Monastery, in Lisbon, where Vasco da Gama, Lu�s de Cam�es, and Alexandre Herculano are also buried, in 1988.

Fernando Pessoa was born in Lisbon, Portugal, to Joaquim de Seabra Pessoa and Maria Madalena Pinheiro Nogueira. His father died of tuberculosis when he was only 2 years old and his mother remarried.

Pessoa sailed with his mother to South Africa to join his step father, who was a military officer from Portugal stationed in Durban. He went to St. Joseph Convent School, later shifting to Durban High School in 1899.

He attended the University of Cape Town for higher studies and because he was so fluent in English language by this time, he won the Queen Victoria Memorial Prize for best paper in English.

In 1904, when Pessoa was merely 16, his first published poem appeared in ‘The Natal Mercury’ under the pseudonym of ‘C. R. Anon’. In the same year his essay ‘Macaulay’ was published in ‘The Durban High School Magazine’.

He returned back to Lisbon in 1905 to study diplomacy. But due to his poor health and unstable political situation in the country, he had to discontinue his studies. He took it as a challenge and self educated himself.

In 1907, he invested money that he received in inheritance by establishing his publishing company ‘Empreza Ibis’ but it got closed down within 3 years. During this time Pessoa got greatly influenced by many writers and poets of the 20th century.

Pessoa took part in "semi-spiritualist sessions" and his interest in spiritualism was aroused in 1914-1915. He got more and more interested in the subject while translating the theosophist books. He used to have experiences as a ‘medium’.

He collaborated with a group of artists and poets in 1915 and started a literary magazine, ‘Orpheu’. The magazine tried to bring modernist literature to Portugal and Pessoa’s work was also published. It got shut down due to funding problems.

Most of Pessoa's poems, whether heteronymic or under his own name appeared in literary magazines. He published his first book of English poems, ‘Antino�s (1918)’, ‘Sonnets (1918)’ and ‘English Poems (1921)’. His work only gained readership after his death.