Three Love Letters by Fernando Pessoa

The following love letters were written by Fernando Pessoa to Ophelia Queiroz from 1920 to 1929.


Fernando Pessoa is best known for his heteronyms: invented authors complete with distinct literary styles, influences, histories, and personalities. For more information on the various heteronyms please check out The Prose of Fernando Pessoa, the internet, several collections of poetry, and The Book of Disquiet. For now, I am not interested in focusing on the history, theory, or thinking surrounding the analysis of Pessoa's work (which was done largely in obscurity, the bulk of his writing was unpublished and found in a trunk after his death), rather, I wanted to look at these love letters as a possible literary form. Wait. Not even that. As a literary performance. I'm not sure if I'm making myself clear. These letters are fascinating in that they can hardly be called love letters in the typical fashion. It almost seems that Pessoa is using the love letter as thing to bounce off of. He is at times angry, confused, perverse, self eviscerating, and when he speaks of love it seems as if he were employing a gesture and not expressing an emotion. Richard Zenith writes "[he] sometimes seems to be drunk, often claims to be mad and reads like a man who's groping -- but not for Ophelia Queiroz."

I have typed out three letters from a book called The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa edited and translated by Richard Zenith. This text is reproduced here without permission of the publishers.

I picked three letters from the collection that I liked for various reasons. They are jealous, strange, angry, dramatic, and also fun to read or at least I think so. The first begins following a letter Ophelia wrote Fernando asking him to declare his intentions regarding her. Enjoy.

***

1 March 1920

Ophelia:

You could have shown me your contempt, or at least your supreme indifference, without the see-through masquerade of such a lengthy treatise and without your written "reason," which are as insincere was they are unconvincing. You could have just told me. This way I understand you no less, but it hurts me more.
It's only natural that you're very fond of the young man who's been chasing you, so why should I hold it against you if you prefer him to me? You're entitled to prefer whom you want and are under no obligation, as I see it, to love me. And there's certainly no need (unless it's for your own amusement) to pretend you do.

Those who really love don't write letters that read like lawyers' petitions. Love doesn't examine things so closely, and it doesn't treat others like defendants on trial.

Why can't you be frank with me? Why must you torment a man who never did any harm to you (or to anybody else) and whose sad and solitary life is already a heavy enough burden to bear, without someone adding to it by giving him false hopes and declaring feigned affections? What do you get out of it besides the dubious pleasure of making fun of me?

I realize that all this is comical, and that the most comical part of it is me.

I myself would think it was funny, if I didn't love you so much, and if I had the time to think of anything besides the suffering you enjoy inflicting on me, although I've done nothing to deserve it except love you, which doesn't seem to me like reason enough. At any rate ...
Here's the "written document" you requested. The notary Eugenio Silva can validate my signature.

Fernando Pessoa

5 April 1920

Dear naughty little Baby:

Here I am at home* alone, except for the intellectual who's hanging paper on the walls (as if he could hang it on the floor or ceiling!), and he doesn't count. As promised, I'm going to write my Baby, if only to tell her that she's a very bad girl except in one thing, the art of pretending, and in that she's a master.

By the way --- although I'm writing you, I'm not thinking about you. I'm thinking about how I miss the days when I used to hunt pigeons, which is something you obviously have nothing to do with ...

We had a nice walk today, don't you think? You were in a good mood, I was in a good mood, and the day was in a good mood. (My friend A.A. Crosse was not in a good mood. But his health is okay -- one pound sterling of health for now, which is enough to keep him from catching cold.)
You're probably wondering why my handwriting's so strange. For two reasons. The first is that this paper (all I have at the moment) is extremely smooth, and so my pen glides right over it. The second is that I found, here in the apartment, some splendid Port, a bottle of which I opened, and I've already drunk half. The third reason is that there are only two reasons, and hence no third reason at all. (Alvaro de Campos, Engineer.)

When can we be somewhere together, darling -- just the two of us? My mouth feels odd from having gone so long without any kisses ... Little Baby who sits on my lap! Little Baby who gives me love bites! Little Baby who ... (and then Baby's bad and hits me ...). I called you "body of sweet temptations," and that's what you'll always be, but far away from me.

Come here, Baby. Come over to Nininho.* Come into Nininho's arms. Put your tiny mouth against Nininho's mouth ... Come ... I'm so lonely, so lonely for kisses ...

If only I could be certain that you really miss me. It would at least be some consolation. But you probably think less about me than about that boy who's chasing you, not to mention D.A.F. and the bookkeeper of C.D.&C.!* Naughty, naughty, naughty, naughty ... !!!!

What you need is a good spanking.

So long: I'm going to lay my head down in a bucket, to relax my mind. That's what all great men do, at least all great men who have: 1) a mind, 2) a head, and 3) a bucket in which to stick their head.

A kiss, just one, that lasts as long as the world, from your always very own

Fernando (Nininho)

9 October 1929

Terrible Baby:

I like your letters, which are sweet, and I like you, because you're sweet too. And you're candy, and you're a wasp, and you're honey, which comes from bees and not wasps, and everything's just fine, and Baby should always write me, even when I don't, which is always, and I'm sad, and I'm crazy, and no one likes me, and why should they, and that's exactly right, and everything goes back to the beginning, and I think I'll call you today, and I'd like to kiss you precisely and voraciously on the lips, and to eat your lips and whatever little kisses you're hiding there, and to lean on your shoulder and slide into the softness of your little doves, and to beg your pardon, and the pardon to be make-believe, and to do it over and over and period until I start again, and why do you like a scoundrel and a troll and a fat slob with a face like a gas meter and the expression of someone who's not there but in the toilet next door, and indeed, and finally, and I'm going to stop because I'm insane and I always have been, it's from birth, which is to say ever since I was born, and I wish Baby were my doll so I could do like a child, taking off her clothes, and I've reached the end of the page, and this doesn't seem like it could be written by a human being but it was written by me.

Fernando