The Lisbon Connection

Nowadays lots of tourists walk around in Lisbon’s Chiado area and the beautiful Rua Garrett. They take a break in cafe ‘A Brasileira’ (Rua Garrett 120) to make pictures near the statue in bronze of the poet Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935), once a regular customer. But who was Fernando Pessoa?

Pessoa was largely unknown in Portugal until after his death in 1935. The man has no idea he’s mobbed by lots of tourists, all day long! Enjoying a coffee we took pictures..

…..5 minutes later….

…….10 minutes later….

….15 minutes later……

‘The best way to travel is to feel’ Pessoa wrote, ’so feel everything in every possible way.’Pessoa was born in Lisbon in a flat in Largo de São Carlos (1888). Apart from his high school years which he spent with his mother and half brothers in South Africa, he lived in Lisbon without a break, without taking public holidays, without travelling abroad.He did so with the help of heteronyms, inventing many lives (and cities) out of his own, spent between the Chiado area, where he lived, the Baixa where he was a commercial translator, and the cafes (like Cafe Martinho da Arcada, Praça do Comércio 37) where he wrote and drank a lot and died in 1935, aged 47.

Casa (house) Fernando Pessoa, Rua Coelho da Rocha, 16, Campo de Ourique. Open from Monday - Saturday 10:00-18:00.

Drawing of Fernando Pessoa, Travessa do Sequiero Lisbon, December 2008.

“Acordar”, poem by Álvaro de Campos, one of Fernando Pessoa’s various ‘heteronyms’ (imaginary characters).

“Acordar da cidade de Lisboa mais tarde do que as outras
Acordar da Rua do Ouro
Acordar do Rossio, as portas dos cafés
Acordar…..
E no meio de tudo a gare, que nunca dorme
Como um coração que tem que pulsar através de vigilia e do sono”

“The waking up of Lisbon, later than other cities
The waking up of Rua do Ouro
The waking up of Rossio Square, at the doors of its cafes
Waking up…..
And in the middle of it all the train station, which never rests
Like a heart that has to beat in both waking and sleeping hours”