Here is the fourth in a series of volumes by Fernando Pessoa’s celebrated “heteronyms”, a coterie of writers that Pessoa created and conceived as distinct personalities, each with a unique literary style. Ricardo Reis was imagined as a melancholic doctor “with a darkish complexion”, a self-taught Hellenist who exiled himself in Brazil because he was a monarchist. In a 1914 letter to Pessoa, the writer Mário Sá-Carneiro described Reis’s odes as “admirable”, “a marvel of impersonality”, praising the way he “achieved a Horatian, classical novelty”. Based on the definitive Tinta-da-China edition, published in Lisbon in 2016, this bilingual collection includes an illuminating introduction by Pessoa scholar Jerónimo Pizarro, facsimiles of original manuscripts and prose excerpts written by Ricardo Reis on art, on life and on the writings of Pessoa’s other heteronyms. Magnificently translated by Margaret Jull Costa and Patricio Ferrari, The Complete Works of Ricardo Reis is a must-have collection by one of Pessoa’s most refined heteronyms.
