18+, gender is weird but I round it up to girl (But They/Them is fine too!!) I kinda tag stuff, but not always. If you don't wanna see qsmp content, block the tag Obsessed with poetry and art and music
we're 99.9% sure that portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa was plural.
okay uh disclaimer. we're not a psychology or literature expert by any means. we rarely even read poetry. we only heard of this guy in high school literature class and the thought stuck with us and then we found plausible evidence lmao. also, as a plural system ourselves, we're clearly biased.
and a considerable amount of this post will be sourced from wikipedia. and this is the first time we've made a post like this. please don't come after us I'm just writing this for fun lmao
huge ramble ahead!
who even was that man
Fernando António Nogueira Pessoa (Portuguese: [fɨɾˈnɐ̃du pɨˈsoɐ]; 13 June 1888 – 30 November 1935) was a Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, publisher, and philosopher, described as one of the most significant literary figures of the 20th century and one of the greatest poets in the Portuguese language. He also wrote in and translated from English and French.
yeah that's who the man was. but what really sparked our interest in him during class and made us wonder if he was plural were his...
✨heteronyms✨
y'know pseudonyms? when someone writes under a different name than their own for whatever reason? these are similar, but the catch is that the different names have different personalities, supposed appearances, philosophies, all that shit.
the term was coined by Pessoa himself, and his heteronyms were written as if they were real people. they had detailed careers, histories, etc. he had at least 70, although I vaguely remember some other source estimating it at around 100.
"but eva, these could just be OCs or something!",
he had 3 main ones though, being Alberto Caeiro (known for interpreting the world as-is, without greater meaning or anything, like some sorta anti-poet), Álvaro de Campos (a naval engineer who even had multiple phases in his philosophy) and Ricardo Reis (who wrote with a lot of structure and rationality, and was very pessimistic).
I predict someone typing. to that, I begin my endless copy-paste + ramble about all the things that make us think the heteronyms were headmates.
I'll throw in a section of a letter Pessoa wrote to some other poet (bolding the parts I find relevant because I don't love walls of text lmao)
How do I write in the name of these three? Caeiro, through sheer and unexpected inspiration, without knowing or even suspecting that I'm going to write in his name. Ricardo Reis, after an abstract meditation, which suddenly takes concrete shape in an ode. Campos, when I feel a sudden impulse to write and don't know what. (My semi-heteronym Bernardo Soares, who in many ways resembles Álvaro de Campos, always appears when I'm sleepy or drowsy, so that my qualities of inhibition and rational thought are suspended; his prose is an endless reverie. He's a semi-heteronym because his personality, although not my own, doesn't differ from my own but is a mere mutilation of it. He's me without my rationalism and emotions. His prose is the same as mine, except for certain formal restraint that reason imposes on my own writing, and his Portuguese is exactly the same – whereas Caeiro writes bad Portuguese, Campos writes it reasonably well but with mistakes such as "me myself" instead of "I myself", etc.., and Reis writes better than I, but with a purism I find excessive…)
so not only does he describe writing Caeiro completely unexpectedly, he also gives the same sort of opinion about his heteronyms' writings that we've seen (and experienced) plural folks give about their headmates' typing or drawing styles.
hell, "writes better than I but with a purism I find excessive" is exactly my opinion of lynn when he does our assignments lmao
the semi-heteronym surfacing when Pessoa is sleepy could be some sorta dissociative state that lets a headmate come through, be it straight-up fronting or passive influence... but I'm probably forcing it too much here.
uhhh here's something on the heteronym thing from some guy called richard zenish. I bolded some parts again
For each of his 'voices', Pessoa conceived a highly distinctive poetic idiom and technique, a complex biography, a context of literary influence and polemics and, most arrestingly of all, subtle interrelations and reciprocities of awareness. [...] Pessoa was often unsure who was writing when he wrote, and it's curious that the very first item among the more than 25,000 pieces that make up his archives in the National Library of Lisbon bears the heading A. de C. (?) or B. de D. (or something else).
"okay.... they could still be characters though"
the heteronyms were aware of and sometimes interacted between themselves. wikipedia's list of Pessoa's heteronyms even has the man himself as a heteronym and pupil of Alberto Caeiro, although I don't feel like going after the source for that bit.
dear hypothetical person I'm quoting here, you're entitled to your opinion. but how about we take, say... a more DID/OSDD-y approach to things? because there's things that hint that Fernando Pessoa's plurality could be traumagenic and/or disordered too.
When Pessoa was five, his father, Joaquim de Seabra Pessôa, died of tuberculosis and less than seven months later his younger brother Jorge, aged one, also died (2 January 1889).
(written by himself about himself:) Nothing had ever obliged him to do anything. He had spent his childhood alone. He never joined any group. He never pursued a course of study. He never belonged to a crowd. The circumstances of his life were marked by that strange but rather common phenomenon – perhaps, in fact, it's true for all lives – of being tailored to the image and likeness of his instincts, which tended towards inertia and withdrawal.
(written by a schoolfellow:) For one of his age, he thought much and deeply and in a letter to me once complained of "spiritual and material encumbrances of most especial adverseness".
He took no part in athletic sports of any kind and I think his spare time was spent on reading. We generally considered that he worked far too much and that he would ruin his health by so doing.
so childhood trauma, check...? at the very least this stuff doesn't sound very good for a child's mental health.
Pessoa's earliest heteronym, at the age of six, was Chevalier de Pas. Other childhood heteronyms included Dr. Pancrácio and David Merrick, followed by Charles Robert Anon, a young Englishman who became Pessoa's alter ego.
"I can remember what I believe was my first heteronym, or rather, my first nonexistent acquaintance — a certain Chevalier de Pas — through whom I wrote letters to myself when I was six years old, and whose not entirely hazy figure still has a claim on the part of my affections that borders on nostalgia. I have a less vivid memory of another figure . . . who was a kind of rival to the Chevalier de Pas.
Such things occur to all children ? Undoubtedly — or perhaps. But I lived them so intensely that I live them still; their memory is so strong that I have to remind myself that they weren’t real."
oh I just found some spiritual stuff too
the appearance of the first heteronym was after his family members died so that's one thing... and like, that's not just one childhood heteronym but at least four. and well, to me they sound a bit too vivid for your average imaginary friend.
Pessoa's interest in spiritualism was truly awakened in the second half of 1915, while translating theosophist books. This was further deepened in the end of March 1916, when he suddenly started having experiences where he believed he became a medium, having experimented with automatic writing.
[...] Besides automatic writing, Pessoa stated also that he had "astral" or "etherial visions" and was able to see "magnetic auras" similar to radiographic images.
[...] Mediumship exerted a strong influence in Pessoa's writings, who felt "sometimes suddenly being owned by something else" or having a "very curious sensation" in the right arm, which was "lifted into the air" without his will. Looking in the mirror, Pessoa saw several times what appeared to be the heteronyms: his "face fading out" and being replaced by the one of "a bearded man", or another one, four men in total.
........
man, this wikipedia article is extensive and full of stuff that supports our silly little theory, huh.
yeah, so he attributed it to spiritual reasons which is fair and valid, but... "owned by something else" all of a sudden? the thing with the right arm sounding a lot like partial possession in tulpamancy? seeing his heteronyms' faces in the mirror?
yeahhhh.
(I'm guessing the magnetic aura thing could be some sorta derealization, contributing to the he-was-a-dissociative-system hypothesis, but that's yet another stretch on my part.)
(plus, spiritual plurality is a thing.)
oh! this thing he wrote sounds a lot like it too.
"This tendency to create around me another world . . . began in me as a young adult, when a witty remark that was completely out of keeping with who I am or think I am would sometimes and for some unknown reason occur to me, and I would immediately, spontaneously say it as if it came from some friend of mine whose name I would invent, along with biographical details, and whose figure — physiognomy, stature, dress and gestures — I would immediately see before me."
let's just do a quick google..
am I biased? yes, very much so. but y'know. you can see I have my reasons.
to see if any people with more qualifications than we have think the same about Fernando Pessoa possibly being plural lmao.
...oh, yes. contrary to what we thought a couple years ago when we had that class about the guy, other people have indeed thought the same. and written about it.
keywords "fernando pessoa mpd" give us:
this paper from 2012 (in portuguese) that... well, I *think* it claims he had mpd but it's very convoluted and abstract about it
this little... forum post? from 2009 that quotes a dead link :v
this one seems kinda cool. it regards Pessoa's positive approach to his heteronym-having as a creative condion called Pessoa Syndrome, and later mentions some Multiple Personality Order (not disorder). don't love some of its wording about mental disorders and madness... it's good to see someone consider healthy multiplicity as a thing that exists, though. it also claims Pessoa became someone with multiple personalities through his heteronymic writing, which is yet another possible origin I hadn't considered before for some fucking reason.
this one cites a dissociative process
this one straight up calls it "subject plurality"!
conclusion ig. I'm pretending to be organized here.
other keywords (like "fernando pessoa dissociative") provide some more results :0 but I've been writing this post for far too long now and would rather not read through more odd wording lmao
it really surprises me that wikipedia doesn't mention the possibility at all from what I've read and ctrl+F'ed. I thought we were being a conspiracy theorist about it but then I found even more stuff to back us up, including other people's analyses. so that's nice.
and I think this kind of thing, of plurals of the past, should be talked about more in the community. it's really interesting to say the least.
"Sol and Spica: An Anxious Student's Guide to Finding Life in the Universe"
Aka "I was told I could do whatever I wanted for this class assignment as long as it related to astrobiology, and I got a little silly with it." I am so tired. Please enjoy.
Congratulations to pactw being the first straight CC to ever be creating AUs for his gay roleplay minecraft relationship soon he will be doing fanarts be prepared /hj
My latest comic for The Nib was written by my friend Mike Thompson- it’s his first published comics work!
The Nib has been a steady source of income and a huge support to me and many other indie cartoonists for years. They publish amazing work, but will be cut loose by their financial backer in July. You can read the official post about it from editor Matt Bors here. They are still running their kickstarter-funded print magazine, but have to put digital publishing on hiatus until they figure out their next steps. If you’ve been thinking about supporting their membership program, now would be a good time. They have levels from $2 to $40 per month. I really don’t want this to be my last Nib piece!
you know what, THIS is how you address historical queer folks of all stripes in a respectful way. you refer to them the way they chose to be referred to, and you say “it’s impossible to know how they would’ve identified in today’s society, but they’re part of our history regardless”.
Lemony Snicket's Advice on Writing a Nice Thank-You Note
1. Do not start with the thank you.
2. Start with any other sentence. If you first say, “Thank you for the nice sweater,” you can’t imagine what to write next. Say, “It was so wonderful to come home from school to find this nice sweater. Thank you for thinking of me on Arbor Day.”
3. Then you’re done.
I recommend learning how to write a very good thank-you note. A child who can write a nice thank-you note can turn into a cocaine dealer five years later and be remembered as the child who wrote nice thank-you notes.
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