“TO BE UNDERSTOOD IS TO PROSTITUTE ONESELF”
— Described as one of the most significant literary figures of the 20th century and greatest poets in the Portuguese language.
NATIONALITY: PORTUGUESE
NOTABLE AWARDS: Queen Victoria Prize (1903); Antero de Quental Award (1934)
BORN: 13 June 1888
DIED: 30 November 1935 (aged 47)
LANGUAGES: Portuguese, English, French
CAUSE OF DEATH: Cirrhosis of the liver
| 13 June 1888 | Pessoa was born in Lisboa, Portugal |
| 1893 | Pessoa’s father passes away; moves to Durban, South Africa. |
| 1905 | Pessoa returns to Portugal |
| 1918 | Poetry collections Antinous and Sonnets are published. |
| 1921 | Poetry collection English Poems is published |
| 1933 | Mensagem is published. |
| 1935 | Pessoa died from cirrhosis of liver. |
An active leader of Portugal’s Modernist movement in the 1910s. He invented several of his own movements, including a Subist-inspired ‘Intersectionalism’ and a strident quasi-Futurist ‘Sensationism’.
Respected in Lisbon as an intellectual and a poet, he regularly published his work in magazines, several of which he helped to found and run, but his literary genius went largely unrecognized until after his death.