Reality and the imaginary in O Guardador de Rebanhos and Humano, demasiado Humano A study on the influence of Friedrich Nietzsche in the work of Alberto Caeiro.

Student: Yuri Lau (0210161) Professor: Michaël Stoker Course: Pessoa on disquiet (200400197) Date: 2nd of May, 2006.

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Reality and the imaginary in O Guardador de Rebanhos and Humano, demasiado Humano -A study on the influence of Friedrich Nietzsche in the work of Alberto Caeiro.

“Si tanto nos gusta estar en plena naturaleza, es porque la naturaleza no se forma una opinión de nosotros.”

-Nietzsche, 2004: 252-53.

Reconhecer a realidade como uma forma da ilusão, e a ilusão como uma forma da realidade, é igualmente necessário e igualmente inútil.

A vida contemplativa, para sequer existir, tem que considerar os acidentes objectivos como presmissas dispersas de uma conclusão

inatingível; mas tem ao mesmo tempo que considerar as contingências do sonho como em certo modo dignas daquela atenção a elas, pela qual

nos tornamos contemplativos.

-Bernardo Soares, Livro do Desassossego; trecho 90.

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Contents

Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 4 Reality and the imaginary in O guardador de Rebanhos and Humano, demasiado Humano .................................................................................................................................. 6 Conclusion .......................................................................................................................... 19 Works Cited ........................................................................................................................ 21

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Introduction One of Pessoa’s heteronyms that is most often compared with Nietzsche’s metaphysical

thoughts on reality and nature is Alberto Caeiro, the grand master that served as an example

for various other heteronyms developed by Pessoa.

In this research paper I intend to focus mainly on the ideas developed by philosopher

Friedrich Nietzsche in Humano, demasiado humano (Mensliches, allzu Mensliches) (first

published in 1878), for in that particular work a strong connection can be drawn with Alberto

Caeiro’s O Guardador de Rebanhos (written in 1914, first published in 1925). I will also try to

incorporate the most important critics that have already investigated the connections

between Pessoa’s work and the thoughts of the German philosopher, and although their

main point of departure is nearly always Caeiro’s poetry, no full study of O Guardador de

Rebanhos was ever conducted in combination with one of Nietzsche’s metaphysical works in

particular. In this investigation I will prove that the ideas on reality and nature that appear

mostly in Humano, demasiado humano, can be found in large parts of O Guardador de Rebanhos.

Furthermore, because of Caeiro’s obvious connection to the metaphysical ideas developed by

Nietzsche, I will be using the studies on his poetry and Caeiro’s notion of nature and reality

to see in which way this is incorporated in his poetic production.

To be able to do this, I will read all poems belonging to the collection of poems in O

Guardador de Rebanhos. The selected poems used in this research will be the one’s that reflect

the Nietzschean way of viewing the world. The most important aspect for this study is the

way in which Nietzsche’s ideas on reality and the imaginary can be traced back in Alberto

Caeiro’s work, and this will also be my main point of departure.

I shall also try to shortly mention the way in which Nietzsche further develops his ideas on

reality in some of his most important philosophical works, to see whether his vision on

reality changes and whether this change can also be encountered in Caeiro’s writings. It goes

without saying that Nietzsche’s influence in general on the literary and critical works written

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by Fernando Pessoa is enormous, and that this connection needs more critical attention in the

future than it has had up to this day.

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Reality and the imaginary in O Guardador de Rebanhos and Humano, demasiado Humano

The work of Fernando Pessoa has often been related to that of the German

philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche1, although there is still a vast amount of research to be done

on this subject. O Guardador de Rebanhos by Alberto Caeiro can, as the following study will try

to demonstrate, be considered as one of Pessoa’s literary works closest to Nietzsche’s

philosophies described in Humano, demasiado humano. Constant similarities can be

encountered in the rhetoric Nietzsche applied to the problem of reality and the visible world,

and the way in which this visible world is sung in the poems by Alberto Caeiro. The latter

poet seems to have given an answer to the ambiguous question Nietzsche proposes in the

fourth chapter of Humano, demasiado humano:

“[…] si nuestro mundo visible es sólo apariencia, como admiten los metafísicos, el arte se encontraría situado bastante cerca del mundo real, porque existen numerosas alegorías entre el mundo de la apariencia y el mundo de la visión onírica del artista; y la diferencia que sigue habiendo eleva incluso el significado del arte a un nivel que supera el significado de la naturaleza, teniendo en cuenta que el arte expresa las formas, los tipos y los modelos constantes de la naturaleza. Ahora bien, estos postulados son falsos; una vez reconocido esto. ¿qué lugar le puede quedar aún al arte de nuestros días?” (Nietzsche, 2004: 146-47).

1 “[…] deve conluir-se que na poesia de Pessoa alguns tópicos nietzscheanos convivem com outros nos antípodas da filosofia de Nietzsche. A nosso ver seria correcto dizer que o seu nietzscheanismo se encontra não tanto nos conteúdos, mas sobretudo na forma, isto é, na própra construção dos heterónimos, na possibilidade da vivência por dentro de personagens que por assim dizer substituem um eu enquanto entidade una que se vê a si próprio como criador de sentido.” (Marques, 2002: 71). Marques (2002: 69) also points out the importance of more studies on this subject, although in his opinion, in future studies there should be even more stress on Pessoa’s ‘poetica’ than anything else: “Um estudo sistemático sobre as relações entre a poética de Pessoa, ou entre a poética de cada uma das suas personagens, e Nietzsche nunca foi empreendida, com nosso conhecimento, apesar de geralmente se aceitar quase que intuitivamente na sua obra a presença diversa do filósofo.”

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The way in which Caeiro subjects to work of art to fit his standards correspond for a

great deal with the explanation of the postulados falsos Nietzsche describes above. For Caeiro

there is nothing behind the visible, and therefore all that can be seen is simply all that’s there;

there is no ‘deeper meaning’ to be found in natural elements, as is confirmed by Lourdes

Belchior (1990: 152): “Não há natureza, não há além nas coisas: as coisas são as coisas. Poesia

“materialista”? Tudo depende do sentido da palavra materialista e valerá talvez a pena fazer,

um dia, uma leitura miniciosa da obra de Caeiro, nesta perspectiva, cotejando-a com os

escritos prosa de Pessoa ortónimo e heterónimo.” The suggestion by Lourdes Belchior that

Caeiro’s poetry might be poesia materialista is one I do not share, simply because in no single

verse by Caeiro a real intend to possess nature and natural elements can be found; Caeiro

simply describes what’s there, without trying to own or consume the objects.

Caeiro, in the poem Se às vezes digo que as flores sorriem, mentions exactly the same

artificiality that is to be found in the writings of what Nietzsche calls artistas. Their subjective

findings and fictitious ways of describing the visible world, what is also experienced as

reality, is in Caeiro’s vision something completely illegitimate:

“Se às vezes digo que as flores sorriem E se eu disser que os rios cantam, Não é porque eu julgue que há sorrisos nas flores E cantos no correr dos rios... É porque assim faço mais sentir aos homens falsos A existência verdadeiramente real das flores e dos rios. […]”2

So these pretexts of sentimentality and emotion that is often prescribed to nature by

other artists, these postulados falsos are in Caeiro’s eyes a necessity for the homens falsos, who,

without the help of this subjective style of writing, wherein their inner emotions are

projected on the elements they describe, could never understand nature or the elements by

simply describing them as nature or elements, and leaving out all the aspects that give

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emotional weight to the words for nature offered by language. In fact, mankind has given all

these extra meanings, outside the pure indicators of objects, to the objects of nature, as

Nietzsche also states: “[…] este mundo se ha ido volviendo poco a poco tan […] terrible y

lleno de sentido profundo y de alma. Ha sido pintado, ciertamente, ¡pero por nosotros! La

inteligencia humana, […], ha hecho que surja esta apariencia y ha proyectado en las cosas sus

concepciones erróneas fundamentales.” (Nietzsche, 2004: 28).

This coexistence of the ‘false’ and the ‘erroneous’ connected to the visual world in the

majority of writings is also an idea developed by Pessoa himself (recited in Seabra 1990: 405):

“[…] toda a opinião é uma tese, e o mundo, está cheio de opiniões. […] Na realidade do

pensamento humano, essencialmente flutuante e incerto, tanto a opinião primária, como a

que lhe é oposta, são em si mesmas instáveis; não há síntese, pois, nas coisas da certeza,

senão tese e anti-tese apenas. Só os Deuses, talvez, poderão sintetizar.” Therefore, in the

writings of Caeiro, there is no question about a clear opinion or subjective view on things,

and maybe one would be more inclined to think that if his discourse can be placed along the

two extremes outlined above by Pessoa, it should be located at the anti-tese of this spectrum:

“[…] o discurso do Caeiro é um antidiscurso, pondo radicalmente em causa a linguagem e o

pensamento relativamente às coisas, numa espécie de anti-semiótica em que o significante e

o significado se revelam inadequados […]” (Saebra 1990: 406).

Here, in the anti-semiótica Caeiro applies to describe reality, one encounters the same

criticism towards language as is applied by Nietzsche, who claims that “Comparadas entre

elas as diferentes línguas mostram que pelas palavras nunca conseguimos chegar à verdade,

nem a uma expressão adequada: a não ser assim, não existiriam tão numerosas línguas.”

(Nietzsche, recited in Segolim 1990: 248). In this way through language, we can never come

to a truly understanding of reality, and it is in a sense ironic that the only way to establish

this phenomenon is through the technology of the written word, constructed and formed by

that very same language, be it German or Portuguese, just as Segolim (1990: 257) claims later

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on: “Mas tanto Nietzsche quanto Caeiro se defrontam com o mesmo impasse: ambos tentam

proclamar e concretamente alcançar o trespasse da linguagem através da própria linguagem,

superar a escritura na própria escritura.” Just as Walter Ong (1982) pointed out in his book

on writing and consciousness, going against a certain new technological development using

that same particular development to do so, can result to be rather problematic. Ong gives the

example of Plato, who criticised the technology of writing because he was in favour of

orality. He had done so by writing, thus by applying the same technology he was criticizing.

The same ambiguity one finds in the criticism on language and words, developed by Caeiro

and Nietzsche, because “[…] não se pode deixar de ver a palavra como uma máscara que se

sobrepõe à realidade, já que os significantes assumem, arbitrária e convencionalmente,

significados oferecidos, normalmente, como depositários fiéis de verdades acerca do

mundo.” (Segolim 1990: 250).

In Deste modo ou Daquele modo, Caeiro explains the way in which he tries to capture

his feelings without thinking about them, still using words to do so:

“[…] Procuro dizer o que sinto Sem pensar em que o sinto. Procuro encostar as palavras à idéia E não precisar dum corredor Do pensamento para as palavras […]”3

In this view the flow of words is something spontaneous, that doesn’t require a

corredor do pensamento, although one finds a constant search to find the right words for

something that in Caeiro’s vision should not even be nominated. This brings about a

constant paradox between the reality described by Caeiro, and the reality he doesn’t want to

think about, although he is forced to do so by the act of writing, but in this act his awareness

about the fact that words are just words (and should therefore be used in a minimal way, as

objective as possible), as Nietzsche also confirms: “El creador de palabras no era lo bastante

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modesto como para comprender que no estaba haciendo más que dando nombres a las cosas,

y, por el contrario, se figuraba que mediante las palabras expresaba la ciencia suprema de las

cosas; […] (Nietzsche, 2004: 23). This is also the reason why many poets and writers commit

the error of the postulados falsos described above, using language as a way of really knowing

the objects it describes.

Caeiro is involved in a constant battle to overcome this problem of language, as

Segolim (1990: 256) also reaffirms:

“É esta ‘apredizagem de desaprender’, essa antilenguagem ou verdadeira linguagem, onde as estrelas e flores são chamadas estrelas e flores porque são apenas estrelas e flores, única possibilidade que nos resta de arrancar a máscara sígnica que tudo encobre, impedindo-nos de conhecer o mundo na única e pura verdade de sua existência; […] ‘estou aí, logo existo, e a natureza existe porque está aí.’”

This is the only possible way for Alberto Caeiro to describe reality and nature not

thinking about the thoughts that occur when looking at it. The act of looking in itself is the

most important aspect, and one should forget the thoughts that rise afterwards, for they only

blur ones vision, seems to be the message found in Caeiro’s poems: “A visão ocupa, pois, um

lugar primordial quando a objectividade reproduz as coisas como um espelho que não

pensa. Pensar seria errar, e errar é estar cego e surdo.” (Coelho, 1971: 319). Jorge de Sena

(1981: 121) also reaffirms the importance of vision and the visual in Caeiro’s writings:

“Donde decorrerá que a verdade em poesia, aquela verdade não perturbada pelos factores

ocasionais, e aquela verdade é visão, […].” One of the clearest examples of the way in which

Caeiro view the world and thus uses his vision, is found in O meu olhar:

“[…] Creio no mundo como num malmequer, Porque o vejo. Mas não penso nele Porque pensar é não compreender ... O Mundo não se fez para pensarmos nele (Pensar é estar doente dos olhos) Mas para olharmos para ele e estarmos de acordo...

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[…]”4

In this poem Caeiro literally connects thinking to a sickness or a failure of sight

(pensar é estar doente dos olhos), and this failure is precise provoked by thinking about the

visual. He believes the world or reality he sees without thinking about it (porque o vejo), and

therefore accepts everything that the eye can consume as something to believe in but not to

think about. In this sense he is applying what Nietzsche calls ‘vagueness’ in order to be more

precise: “Lo mismo que para embellecer se requieren sombras, se necesita ‘vaguedad’ para

precisar. El arte hace soportable el espectáculo de la vida al cubrirla con un velo de confusión

mental.” (Nietzsche, 2004: 114). Another important poem by Caeiro that reemphazises the

importance of the visual and reality, can be found in O que nós vemos:

“O que nós vemos das cousas são as cousas. Por que veríamos nós uma cousa se houvesse outra? Por que é que ver e ouvir seria iludirmo-nos Se ver e ouvir são ver e ouvir?

O essencial é saber ver, Saber ver sem estar a pensar, Saber ver quando se vê, E nem pensar quando se vê Nem ver quando se pensa.

[…]”

O que nós vemos das cousas são as cousas. Other poets, especially the ones that Caeiro

refuses, would use too much clarification in the way they describe the visual as being more

than just the words provided by language to describe it. According to Saebra, the poetry

written by Caeiro therefore floats on these contradictions of vagueness and absolute clarity,

in order to succeed the maximum effect on the reader: “De contradição em contradição, de

aporia em aporia, Caeiro não faz mais do que multiplicar, apesar dos difarces, as figuras de

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palavra e as figuras de pensamento, numa série infinita, a tal ponto que, […] “o grau zéro”

da poesia […] é simultaneamente o seu “grau ómega.” (Saebra 1990: 406).

In a certain way Caeiro’s view on reality is one that can be considered more ‘pure’ or

‘down to earth’, at least in the way he describes it, especially because he annihilates every

connection to thoughts and therefore uses the words in their linguistic essence. Nietzsche

also claimed that “[…] un sentimiento es profundo en la medida que consideremos que lo

son los pensamientos que lo acompañaron. No obstante, el pensamiento profundo puede

estar muy lejos de la realidad, como sucede, por ejemplo, con todo pensamiento metafísico;

[…]” (Nietzsche, 2004: 27). This is practically the same Caeiro stated in the poem stated

above: pensar é estar doente dos olhos; the imminent visual reality is the only reality possible.

In O Gauradador de Rebanhos Caeiro also uses irony to achieve the complete

dissociation of the object from the world of thoughts. A good example can be found in Li

hoje:

“[…] Os poetas místicos são filósofos doentes, E os filósofos são homens doidos. Porque os poetas místicos dizem que as flores sentem E dizem que as pedras têm alma E que os rios têm êxtases ao luar. Mas flores, se sentissem, não eram flores, Eram gente; E se as pedras tivessem alma, eram coisas vivas, Não eram pedras; E se os rios tivessem êxtases ao luar, Os rios seriam homens doentes. […]”5

These mystic poets that Caeiro criticizes here, attribute emotional and invisible

elements to the directly visible, and that’s the main reason for Caeiro to satirize their way of

writing. The way in which Caeiro criticizes their view on the world can be directly connected

to a purely logic rhetoric, also developed by Nietzsche in Humano, demasiado humano: “La

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lógica se basa también en postulados que no tienen correspondencia alguna en el mundo

real: por ejemplo, en el postulado de la igualdad de las cosas, de la identidad de una cosa

consigo misma en diferentes momentos; pero esta ciencia surgió de la creencia opuesta (que

existían ciertamente cosas de este género en el mundo real). (Nietzsche, 2004: 23). Here the

philosopher speaks again of the so-called postulados falsos, wherein an object, usually non-

dynamic, would have different ways of being and different states of ‘consciousness’ or

‘spirit’. Such a view on objects of which we can only visually confirm that they exist and of

which we only know the outside, is heavily criticized by Nietzsche as well as by Caeiro,

because of the fact that this is just a reflection of ones inner self, projected on the object in

question. Therefore the world, in the view of many other poets, is rich with feelings and

emotions, but also Nietzsche signals this interpretation of the world and its reality as

something to look at with irony: “Quizás reconozcamos entonces que la cosa en sí es digna

de una risa homérica, ya que parecía ser mucho, incluso serlo todo, pero en realidad ‘es’ algo

vacío, especialmente algo vacío de sentido.” (Nietzsche, 2004: 29). And in Caeiro’s view this

emptiness is always ‘filled’ up with words, and therefore he tries to bring reality back to its

essence. According to Segolim (1990: 252) Fernando Pessoa’s poetry in general is “[uma]

tentativa de promover uma utópica reconciliação da palavra com o real.”, and as has been

shown above this is certainly the case in the majority of the writings of heteronym Alberto

Caeiro.

There exists a philosophical law of the essence of object, also cited by Nietzsche in

Humano, demasiado humano, -although he doesn’t specify on the origin of the citation-, that

claims that in the human mind, there is a deep necessity to recognize every single object in

nature as an object identical to itself, to recognize it in its essence so that it will always

remain similar to itself as a substance.6 It is precisely this law that Alberto Caeiro applies

6 Free translation of the following quotation used by Nietzsche (2004: 30): “La Ley general originaria del sujeto cognoscente consiste en la necesidad interior de reconocer todo objeto en sí, en su esencia própia, como un objeto idéntico a sí mismo que por lo tanto, existe por sí mismo y que en el fondo permanece siempre semejante a sí mismo e inmóvil; en suma, como una sustancia.”

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when describing nature and reality. One of the clearest examples of this kind, where the poet

eliminates every possible mystery or metaphysical and non-visual element that could be

attached to objects, is O mistério das cousas:

O mistério das cousas, onde está ele? Onde está ele que não aparece Pelo menos a mostrar-nos que é mistério? Que sabe o rio disso e que sabe a árvore? E eu, que não sou mais do que eles, que sei disso? Sempre que olho para as cousas e penso no que os homens pensam delas, Rio como um regato que soa fresco numa pedra. Porque o único sentido oculto das cousas É elas não terem sentido oculto nenhum, É mais estranho do que todas as estranhezas E do que os sonhos de todos os poetas E os pensamentos de todos os filósofos, Que as cousas sejam realmente o que parecem ser E não haja nada que compreender.7

In this poem Caeiro touches this fundamental problem that has always been

connected to nature and objects: that of the mysteries that an object could contain. As has also

occurred in the preceding examples, a mystery is not something perceptible for the human

eye, so, in Caeiro’s poem there can be no question whatsoever about mystery: não aparece,

therefore elas não terem sentido oculto nenhum. And again the paradox applied by Caeiro is that

the fact that these elements bare no mystery at all, that’s what their mystery consists of.

There is no mystery, and in a certain way by taking all occult ness and mysteries away,

Caeiro reflects the thought of Nietzsche when it comes to representation of reality, for

example, in a work of art:

“Lo que se encuentra tan rico de sentido, lo que resulta tan profundo, tan maravilloso, tan preñado de dicha y de infortunio no es el mundo como una cosa en sí, sino el mundo como representación (como error). Este resultado conduce a una filosofía de negación lógica del mundo, que lo mismo puede ir unida a la afirmación práctica del mundo como a lo contrario.”(Nietzsche, 2004: 39).

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Caeiro wants to eliminate these representational errors, using the same medium to do

so, namely poetry, and this aspect is what makes his statements appear paradoxical to the

reader.

In one of Nietzsche’s other works, Beyond Good and Evil (Jenseits von Gut und Böse,

1886), he also explains that mankind is fundamentally urged to apply its drives and passions

to all reality, therefore this is the only reality people can really experience.8 Departing from

this principle, it seems clear that Caeiro wants to strip reality of this aspect of the human

senses, to leave only the visual. In No entardecer, he writes very clearly against the human

senses and the way of observation and explanation they directly evoke in the observer of

reality:

“[…] Ah, os sentidos, os doentes que vêem e ouvem! Fôssemos nós como devíamos ser E não haveria em nós necessidade de ilusão ... Bastar-nos-ia sentir com clareza e vida E nem repararmos para que há sentidos ... […]”9

In this particular case it almost seems that Caeiro contradicts himself, because, isn’t

he in fact also just an observer of nature and reality, using his eyes to guide his pen? But no,

right after os doentes que vêem e ouvem, -a point where many readers will instantly perceive

the paradoxical argument Caeiro is about to make, mainly because he only witnesses and

acknowledges reality as such because he sees it-, he immediately makes the reader

understand that by doentes he means the observers that keep on philosophising and thinking

para que há sentidos. Marques (2002: 70) also confirms that within Caeiro’s poetry “[…] é

iniludível um conjunto de ideias chave do filósofo [Nietzsche]: o sim à vida e a aceitação sem

8 “Granted that nothing is ‘given’ as real except our world of desires and passions, that we can rise or sink to no other ‘reality’ than the ‘reality’ of our drives -for thinking is only the relationship of these drives to one another- : is it not permitted to make the expiriment and ask the question whether this which is given does not suffice for an understanding even of the so-called mechanical (or ‘material’) world? (Nietzsche, 1990: 66). 9 http://www.secrel.com.br/JPOESIA/fp246.html

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remorsos do momento presente, a temporalidade como um ciclo que reactualiza tudo aquilo

que é essencialmente humano.”

The moment at hand is always the most important one in Caeiro’s poems; there are

no reflections on the past or the future, an attempt is made to capture the present without

committing the error of thinking. This is also probably the reason why Caeiro doesn’t use

rhyme in his poems; this would seriously distract the attention from the present happening

and would ask for a constructed ness and artificiality that is absolutely unwanted by Caeiro.

Nietzsche explains with rigor why bad poets are in search of rhyme, and how they will

attempt to apply every possible means to make their work gain in concordance, so that in

fact they will not have a formulated a new and powerful idea, but have thus mislead

themselves, because they were in fact only looking to find rhyme.10 In Não me importo com as

rimas Caeiro explains that he does so for practically the same reasons:

“Não me importo com as rimas. Raras vezes Há duas árvores iguais, uma ao lado da outra. Penso e escrevo como as flores têm cor Mas com menos perfeição no meu modo de exprimir-me Porque me falta a simplicidade divina De ser todo só o meu exterior […]”

Everything has to be looked at an seen as if it were so for the first time, and only in this way

Caeiro can come close to grasping the present and the external reality. In fact, what is

implied here by Caeiro is that he wishes only to be his exterior, and thus would like to erase

everything that has to do with his inner self.

10 “Lo mismo que los malos poetas buscan, al llegar a la segunda parte del verso, la idea y la función de la rima, los hombres, asaltados por una crecente preocupación en la segunda parte de su vida, suelen buscar los actos, las actitudes y las situaciones que encajen con los de su vida pasada, de modo que todo ofrezca externamente una armónica concordancia; pero entonces su vida ya no está determinada cada vez por una nueva idea poderosa, la cual es sustuida, en cambio, por la intención de encontrar la rima.” (Nietzsche, 2004: 267).

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Something that perhaps may remain obvious from the past examples, is that one can

only criticize the internal world by knowing that it exists (criticizing it already reaffirms its

existence), and so the wish for solely exteriorization remains a wish, founded on the

knowledge of the impossibility of such a desire. Nietzsche also wrote on the difficulty of the

detachment of the senses from mind and reason: “Realmente, todos nuestros sentidos, por el

hecho de buscar ante todo la razón y, por consiguiente, lo que ‘significa esto’ y no ya lo que

‘es’, se encuentran un tanto embotados; […]” (Nietzsche, 2004: 139).

Despite this fact, however, Caeiro comes close to fully externalizing the way in which he

views nature and reality, capturing only that which is seen by his eye, without applying any

thoughts or philosophies to it. According to Jorge de Sena one of the most important aspects

to understand the work of Caeiro is “[…] o problema da realidade da transcendência, e um

pragmatismo trágico que reconhece a existência indispensável das ficções lógicas (e pode

comprazer-se por isso mesmo nelas) como jogo vital em relação ao ‘puramente imaginado’ do

absoluto e imutável’, e como condição de fuga ao silêncio e à morte.” (de Sena, 1981: 122-23).

All these aspects can be traced back in the work of Alberto Caeiro, where on of the most

important aspects are the visual senses, untouched by thought.

Nietzsche comes to the following conclusion with respect to Caeiro’s way of viewing the

world and its reality: “Ahora bien, sentirse como humanidad (y no sólo como individuo

prodigado), al igual que las flores aisladas que la naturaleza prodiga, constituye un

sentimiento superior a todos los sentimientos. Pero ¿quién es capaz de eso? Solamente un

poeta: y los poetas saben consolarse siempre.”(Nietzsche, 2004: 42). This would mean that

Caeiro, because of his detachment towards thought and descriptive, sentimental or mystical

poetry, constitutes a feeling far greater than all other feelings, so that in a sense o que nós

vemos do Alberto Caeiro, ou o que parece ser o Alberto Caeiro, não é o Alberto Caeiro.

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Conclusion

In the whole of Pessoa’s literary production, and especially in the writings of Alberto Caeiro,

there exists an extreme tension between two extremes, namely between reality and the

simulating of reality. By describing reality one is already simulating it by trying to capture a

situation or an object in the linguistic network constructed by words, which is, in its essence,

a simulated reality. Caeiro’s writings however, are the abstraction of this simulation; in these

he doesn’t simulate, but only describes the absolutely visible, without any further information

that could be interpreted as subjective or emotional.

In this study I have focused mainly on the visual aspects of Caeiro’s work O Guardador de

Rebanhos, to compare these to the idea’s formulated by Nietzsche in Humano, demasiado

humano. By adjusting ones view on reality to the minds eye, one is already falsifying this

reality, and this reality will no longer be representative as such. There exists a great

difference in the reality consumed with the eye and the reality that is written down

afterwards, and Caeiro as well as Nietzsche acknowledge the linguistic falsity that occurs

when applying too many ‘words derived from the mind’. Representing reality has to be done

without thinking about it, for thinking kills the visual. In order to capture the absolutely

visual and instantaneous, ‘the present moment’, so to speak, Caeiro doesn’t make use of

rhyme, because the search of rhyme will only destroy the spontaneity of the moment,

something in which Nietzsche also agrees with, albeit on a more metaphysical level.

The results can be found in most of Caeiro’s poems, for they contain a large amount of

paradoxical sentences to confuse the reader, so it seems, but in fact this is the only way in

which Caeiro can address his readers. The majority of the situations and objects described by

Caeiro are mainly described in a way by which Caeiro explains how not to describe them.

These paradoxes make Caeiro’s poetry stronger and more powerful, and it is surprising to

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see in what way one encounters similarities, -even in some paradoxes-, between him and the

writings by Friedrich Nietzsche.

Although many scholars have investigated the interrelationship between Pessoa’s work and

that of Nietzsche, a large part of this relationship still remains an object for future study.

Most critics up till now have focused on the specific relationship between Alberto Caeiro’s

poetry and its relation to Nietzsche, but in stead of doing a close reading of one of Caeiro’s

works and comparing this to one of Nietzsche’s philosophical works, studies have remained

focused mostly on the linguistic aspects a comparison offers, in stead of looking more at the

representation of reality and nature. It will be necessary to conduct various research projects

for Pessoa’s other works, to point out the influence of the German philosopher on Pessoa in

general, because the connections are there. However, the complex nature of Pessoa’s work as

a whole is much too diverse to be considered as ‘one’, therefore it will be necessary for future

investigation to look at the specific interconnections that every independent literary work

offers, and compare these with the idea’s brought forward by Nietzsche in various

philosophical works. Especially in the field of religion and paganism, the large majority of

these interconnections still remain untouched by literary studies, as does the most important

work by Pessoa in prose, O Livro do Desassossego, which remains an object to study in a

Nietzschean framework.

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Works Cited Ameriks, Karl and Desmond M. Clarke. (1997). Introduction to Nietzsche’s Daybreak. Nietzsche, Friedrich: Daybreak, thoughts on the prejudices of morality. Cambrigde: Cambrigde university press: vii-xlii. Caeiro, Alberto. (sem data). O Guardador de Rebanhos. Online version, visited on 29th of April 2006: http://www.secrel.com.br/JPOESIA/alberrr.html . Coelho, António Pina. (1968). Os fundamentos filosóficos da obra de Fernando Pessoa. Vol. 1 & 2, Lisboa: Editorial Verbo. Lourdes Belchior, Maria de. (1990). Deus e Deuses na Poesia de Fernando Pessoa e Heterónimos. Actas do IV congresso international de estudos pessoanos; secção brasileira. Vol. 2. Lisboa: Fundação Eng. António de Almeida: 147-157. Marques, António. (2002). Observações sobre a recepção de Nietzsche em Portugal: de Pessoa aos nossos dias. Enrahonar, Vol. 35: 67-75. Nietzsche, Friedrich. (2004). Humano, demasiado humano. Buenos Aires: Gradifco. Nietzsche, Friedrich. (1990). Beyond good and Evil. Hollingsdale, R. J. (Trans.). London: Penguin Books. Seabra, José Augusto. (1990). Poética e filosofia em Fernando Pessoa. Actas do IV congresso international de estudos pessoanos; secção brasileira. Vol. 1. Lisboa: Fundação Eng. António de Almeida: 401-409. Segolim, Fernando. (1990). Caeiro e Nietzsche: Da crítica da linguagem à anti-filosofia e à anti-poesia. Actas do IV congresso international de estudos pessoanos; secção brasileira. Vol. 1. Lisboa: Fundação Eng. António de Almeida: 247-259. Sena, Jorge de. (1981). Fernando Pessoa & Ca Heterónima; Estudos Coligidos 1940-1978. Vol. 1 & 2, Lisboa: Edições 70. Zenith, Richard (Ed.). (1998). Soares, Bernardo: Livro do Desassossego. Lisboa: Assírio & Alvim.