An Inquiry Into Pessoa’s Writing Byheteronyms

This article intends to comprehend and analyse Fernando Pessoa’s poems,techniques and his great ideology by exploring his writing by heteronyms.Which made Pessoa larruping and absorbing was that he created a series of heteronyms with different personality,experiences and ideologies,and he also created their writings with different styles.The four main heteronyms were Alberto Caeiro,Alvaro de Campos,Ricardo Reis and Bernardo Soares.The particularity of writing by heteronyms was that the heteronyms were not only different from pen names and relaters in tradition,but also different from the characters in the dramatic monologue poetries or the masks in the mask poetries.The most important point was the heteronyms were some fictive authors but not characters or relaters in the texts,and they were also independent from the real author and different from him on personality and style.Pessoa’s writing by heteronyms was very abundant.He created a mass of heteronyms and weaved different births and experiences for them,and also made them so much different from each other in personality,characteristic,ideology and the style of works.While these heteronyms were not isolated but kept close relationship with each other,for they(especially the four main heteronyms) alway communicated with each other or criticized someone’s works and they form a heteronyms’ system.More over,other heteronyms were almost affected by Alberto Caeiro and they canonized him hierophant;they all shared the mutual wisdom from Caeiro so that they founded a secret spiritual relationship and an unity. There were profound poetics meanings about Pessoa’s writing by heteronyms.First,it broke the real astrict from writing by individual experiences and made poetry writing become a way to invent and create beyond the limited individual experiences.Second,it broadened the verge of poetry and bring more possibility and space to poetry writing.Finally and the more important significance was that the heteronyms and their works made a profound observation and a brave explore to the modern civilization and the spiritual condition of modern peoplel.