Fernando Pessoa: the life as pretense, the word as performance

Abstract

This essay takes as its premise, starting from Maurice Blanchot, the power of the literary word not merely as a means but as a reality founded in itself. In this sense, I bring together the notions of heteronymy and performance to propose a key for reading that interprets Pessoa's poetics as a precursor of a practice performatic in the field of poetry prior to its appearance in the theater, which goes beyond the theatricality existing in Portuguese lyric poetry since the Middle Ages. In Fernando Pessoa's poetics, one finds a "factory of writer's myths," myths that I understand here as realities created from the word and fiction. To this end, I propose a dialogue with four main names: Paul Zumthor, Josette Féral, Erika Fischer-Lichte, and Diana Klinger, authors who have delved into the concept of performance in different languages, but always considering this other world created in the instant of the different performative actions.