One Voice, Multiple Voices

If you purchase any of Pessoa’s collected works it will include poetry by a number of his heteronyms. The most famous of these are Alberto Caeiro, Alvaro de Campos, Ricardo Reis and Bernardo Soares. I think it’s fair to say that had he been alive now, he might have been diagnosed with some form of multiple personality disorder. But at the time he was seen as an eccentric genius. So what is interesting about one person writing under a number of different names? He’s hardly the only person to have done it. Well, each of the personalities writes in a different style, and in some cases a different language. Each character has his own personality, moral compass, outlook on life, writing style. Some wrote novels, others concentrated on poetry. Some wrote joyously, others controversially. Some wrote spiritually, others austerely. What I’m trying to say, is that each character wrote as if they were an entirely different person, not one writing as others. These weren’t pen names, he was that person whilst he was writing as them. Their characters inhabited his body. <a href="https://medium.com/wordscapes/one-voice-multiple-voices-eb1bb1bf1530">Website</a>