Always Astonished: Selected Prose     by Fernando Pessoa, Translated by E Honig Original language: Portuguese Country: Portugal   Published by Subterranean Co Pub. Date: December 1988 Format: Paperback, 160 pages Dimensions: 0.44 x 7.99 x 5.52 in. ISBN: 0872862283 List Price: $12.95, £8.23 Buy online from Amazon.co.uk for £8.23 Buy online from Amazon.com for $12.95 Published by City Lights Pub. Date: 1989 Pub. Place: UK Format: Paperback List Price: £7.99 Not available for ordering Published by City Lights Pub. Date: 1989 Pub. Place: USA Format: Paperback Not available for ordering

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A valuable, accessible little collection of varied pieces from His Supreme Quirkiness, Fernando Pessoa. Pessoa published little in his lifetime but amassed a great pile of writings which have only recently been published in various forms. A selection like this is a valid enough way to get something of this curious genius of ‘self-reflexivity’ across to a wider public.

Always Astonished includes little essays by Pessoa ‘explaining’ his famous heteronyms (the invented alter egos he created to write different flavours of poetry and criticism), a long letter to the Italian Futurist supremo Marinetti detailing his objections and affiliations to Futurism as well as his only completed short story The Anarchist Banker.

The title Always Astonished however is taken from a collection of extracts from his journal and focuses mainly on moments of awareness and self-awakening; passages where Pessoa takes his exploration of his own individual human consciousness — and by extension that of us all — to fascinatingly observed heights; an achievement which prompts the adjective we always come to with Pessoa; unique. Unique, unique, unique.

‘Anyone who is in any way a poet knows very well how much easier it is to write a good poem (if good poems lie in the man’s power) about a woman who interests him very much than about a woman he is deeply in love with. The best sort of love poem is generally written about an abstract woman.

A great emotion is too selfish; it takes into itself all the blood of the spirit, and the congestion leaves the hands too cold to write. Three sorts of emotions produce great poetry-strong but quick emotions, seized upon for art as soon as they have passed; strong and deep emotions in their remembrance a long time after; and false emotions, that is to say, emotions felt in the intellect. Not insincerity, yet a translated sincerity is the basis of all art.’ p53