How Ricardo
Reis was born in Fernando
Pessoa's soul, what does
Frederico Reis [Ricardo's
brother], think about his
brother, and how Ricardo
Reis see and defends his ideas
Dr. Ricardo Reis was born inside
my soul on January 29, 1914,
around 11 o'clock at night. I'd
been listening to a lenghtly
discussion the day before on the
excesses of modern art,
especially concerning its
construction. According to my
way of feeling things without
feeling them, I let myself be
carried away on a wave of that
momentory reaction. When I
became aware of what I was
thinking, I saw that I'd created
a neoclassical theory and that
was in the process of developing
it. I found it beautiful and
thought it might be interesting
to elaborate upon the theory,
based on principles I neither
approve nor accept as my own. It
occured to me to turn the theory
into a «scientific»
neoclassicism... to protest
against modern romanticism as
against the neoclassicism of
[Charles] Maurras...
(Fernando
Pessoa, from
«Ricardo
Reis - His Life»)
~
The whole philosophy behind the
work of Ricard Reis can be
summed up as sad Epicurism. We
will try to capsulate this. Each
of us - the poet believes -
ought to live his own life,
isolating himself from others
and searching, to the extent
that he takes these things to
heart, for what gives him joy
and pleasure. He should neither
seek violent pleasures nor flee
painful sensations as they are
not extreme...This is the
doctrine the poet offers
temporarily. As long as the
barbarians (Christians) dominate,
this should be the pagan stance.
Once the barbarian empire
disappears (if it does), the
pagan perspective can be
different. For the time being,
it cannot be otherwise.
(Frederico
Reis [Ricardo's brother], from
«The Sad
Epicurism of R. Reis»)
I would say, however, that
poetry is music made with ideas,
and therefore, with words.
Consider what it is to make
music with ideas instead of
emotions. With emotion, one only
makes music. With emotions that
veer toward ideas, accumulating
and using them in an effort to
define them, one makes song.
With ideas alone, containing
nothing more of the emotions
than what necessarily intrinsic
to the idea, one makes poetry...the
colder the poetry, the truer it
is... A poem is a projection of
an idea in words, by way of an
emotion. Emotion is not the
basis of poetry; it is merely
the means by which the idea
reduces itself to words...
(Ricardo
Reis, debating with Álvaro de
Campos) from the book «Poems
of Fernando Pessoa»,
translated and edited by Edwin
Honig and Susan M. Brown, City
Lights
~
Read Ricardo Reis "Odes"}
