35 Sonnets
Very rare first edition of one of Fernando Pessoa’s first books.
A very rare and attractive wide-margined untrimmed copy kept in its original wrappers.
Octavo, (20) pp.
Paperback, original printed covers.
205 x 135 mm.
Pessoa, Fernando. 35 Sonnets.
Monteiro and Co, Lisbon, 1918.
Very rare first edition of one of Fernando Pessoa’s first books.
Very rare first edition of one of Fernando Pessoa’s earliest works, one of the greatest poets of the 20th century.
"He wrote his 35 Sonnets, exceptionally, in English. Pessoa was an occultist and his spiritualism and interest in mediumship permeates the sonnets, which often narrate a kind of paralysis, an agonizing suspension ‘between’ action and inaction, flesh and spirit, language and the incommunicable, or truth and the material world" (Victoria Camblin, www.otdac.org).
Pessoa published only four books during his lifetime: Antinoüs and 35 Sonnets in 1918, English Poems in 1921, and Mensagem in 1934. With the exception of Mensagem, all are extremely rare.
Fernando Pessoa has always been considered one of the best Portuguese poets, but we should not forget that he started his poetic career as an English poet and this astonishing bilingualism throws a new light on one of the greatest poets of our century. Not only did Pessoa write both in English and Portuguese throughout his life, but he always kept in his heart the secret wish to publish his poems written on English and to be considered an English author. That Portuguese “gentleman” who went on reading English books more than anyone else in Portugal, published his first poems in English, in 1918. Those 35 sonnets are remarkable for their close imitation of the Elizabethan style and manner” (Anne Terlinden).
Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935) learned English in his childhood, in Durban (South Africa), where he spent part of his adolescence. This booklet, self-published in a small print run and printed at the height of Futurist ferment, consists of thirty-five sonnets of strict Shakespearean obedience. A slim poetic sheaf published by a Portuguese writer who was first and foremost Anglophone and Anglophile, the 35 Sonnets occupy a unique place in the work of Fernando Pessoa.
Pessoa composed English poems as early as his adolescence under the pseudonym Alexander Search, but it is in the 35 Sonnets that his British “double” reaches maturity.
“During his lifetime, Pessoa published only four booklets, three of them in English: 35 Sonnets (1918), English Poems I-II and English Poems III (1921), and one in Portuguese: Mensagem (1934)” (M.J. De Lancastre).
Rare and valuable copy preserved in the original wrappers, as published, a very rare and desirable condition.
A very rare and attractive wide-margined untrimmed copy kept in its original wrappers, as issued.
