Fernando Pessoa Biography

Fernando António Nogueira Pessoa was a noted literary figure of the 20th century Portugal and is known to be the greatest poet of the Portuguese language. He was a multi-talented literary personality involved with writing, literary criticism, publishing, translating, and practicing astrology and occult all his life. Pessoa was born in Portugal but spent most of his youth in South Africa with his mother and his stepfather. He went to University of Cape Town and fell in love with the English language, the language in which he exhibited a lot of command and fluency. He shifted back to Portugal in 1905 and his literary journey started from there. He translated commercial and literary material for various magazines and started his own publishing house on two different occasions. Pessoa was a unique writer who used to write under heteronyms and had at least 72 heteronyms apart from ‘Fernando Pessoa’. He preferred writing like this as it gave him a chance to write outside his own personality and create something exceptional. He was also interested in practicing spirituality and occultism and was known to be a medium (one who purportedly mediates communication between spirits of the dead and other human beings) and wrote down his experiences as a medium in many of his writings. He also practiced astrology and used to charge for making horoscopes. Most of his work was only published after he died and while he was still alive, he got an opportunity to get only one book published in Portuguese, "Mensagem".