Fernando Pessoa and the Barão de Teive: fragments of a tragedy

Abstract

Fernando Pessoa is a well-known Portuguese poet of the last century. He created more than one hundred literary figures, namely, the Baron of Teive. Many of the problems posed by this character clearly relates to some of his creator’s concerns. The purpose of this article is to clarify the main questions around this fictional author, especially focused on phenomena such as lucidity, emotion, writing, fragmentation and so on. Author of a significant number of small texts, entitled The Education of the Stoic, Teive cannot only contribute to understand the complexity of Pessoa’s thoughts, but can also be studied as a singular literary figure that deals with what constitutes the human nature.