Photo: Brian Morris
Photo: Brian Morris
The photos of the poem were kindly contributed by Brian Morris - thanks Brian!
Niterói CityPoem: Mar Português (Portuguese Sea), Fernando Pessoa
Fortaleza de Santa Cruz (Fort Santa Cruz) was one of three forts that guarded the entrance to Guanabara Bay in the mid-eighteenth century. It is located a narrow headland on the eastern side of the entrance to the bay. The French and Portuguese fought many battles from this strategic location.
This poem on tiles by Fernando Pessoa can be found at the top of Fort Santa Cruz in Jurujuba. These photos were taken in Niterói, which is within the state Rio de Janeiro, directly across the Bay of Guanabara from historic downtown Rio de Janeiro (the city).
Portuguese Sea
Salt-laden sea, how much of all your salt
Is tears of Portugal!
For us to cross you, how many sons have kept
Vigil in vain, and mothers wept!
Lived as old maids how many brides-to-be
Till death, that you might be ours, sea!
Was it worth? It is worth while, all,
If the soul is not small.
Whoever means to sail beyond the Cape
Must double sorrow - no escape.
Peril and abyss has God to the sea given
And yet made it the mirror of heaven
About the author
Fernando António Nogueira de Seabra Pessoa (1888 in Lisbon, Portugal - 1935 in the same city) was a poet and writer. Critic Harold Bloom referred to him in the book The Western Canon as the most representative poet of the twentieth century, along with Pablo Neruda.
He worked under many heteronyms, each representing different styles of writing. The most important ones were Alberto Caeiro, seeing things with his eyes only; Ricardo Reis, observing life from a distance; and Álvaro de Campos, feeling everything in every way. And he published under his own name.
Like Álvaro de Campos, Pessoa-himself was afflicted with an acute identity crisis. Pessoa-himself has been described as indecisive and doubt plagued, as restless. Like Campos he can be melancholic, weary, resigned. The strength of Pessoa-himself's poetry rests in his ability to suggest a sense of loss; of sorrow for what can never be.
A constant theme in Pessoa's poetry is Tedio, or Tedium. The dictionary defines this word simply as 'a condition of being tedious; tediousness or boredom.' This definition does not sufficiently encompass the peculiar brand of tedium experienced by Pessoa-himself. His is more than simple boredom: it is from a world of weariness and disgust with life; a sense of the finality of failure; of the impossibility of having anything to want.
'The impossibility of having anything to want': this is Tedio for Pessoa-himself. It is one thing to have nothing to do or want, but to be deprived even of this...is tedium. Kierkegaard tells how if asked to choose between the two; between a perpetual state of boredom, or eternal bodily pain; he would choose--eternal bodily pain. Pessoa-himself, it would seem, would concur with the melancholy Dane.
> More about Pessoa on WikiPedia
Text in Portuguese
MAR PORTUGUÊS
Ó mar salgado, quanto do teu sal
São lágrimas de Portugal!
Por te cruzarmos, quantas mães choraram,
Quantos filhos em vão rezaram!
Quantas noivas ficaram por casar
Para que fosses nosso, ó mar!
Valeu a pena? Tudo vale a pena
Se a alma não é pequena.
Quem quere passar além do Bojador
Tem que passar além da dor.
Deus ao mar o perigo e o abismo deu,
Mas nele é que espelhou o céu.
Fernando Pessoa, 1922
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