ESSE – FACING MIRRORS: FERNANDO PESSOA IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVES

P.I.: Bruno Béu

Description

Resulting from a partnership with the Casa Fernando Pessoa — where his private library is located —, this project has the main objective of contributing to the renewal of the perspectives on the work of Fernando Pessoa, by following a comparative and interdisciplinary approach that, in the nature of the work itself and in its several heteronymic, representational and subjectivation procedures, already regarded as mirrors and projections of a library in fieri, and in the materiality of his private library and the reading itineraries inscribed therein (also composed of multiple crossroads and specularities, also cultural and disciplinary), finds the device that articulates and establishes both its object and methodology.

Taken in its evident relations with the notion of heteronymy (already explored by Pessoa who comes to think, as an organizing title of all his work, that of “Bibliotheca de Cultura Universal” [Universal Culture Library]), this project aims to crossbreed, through the category of author/reader, (a) the materiality of Pessoa’s second ‘archive’, which is its private library and its multiple annotations, (b) his work viewed as a becoming-library, (c) and the contamination produced by the very notion of library (and the one of heteronymy) if applied to the very methodological and disciplinary perspectives about it. One values both the materiality of a library and its annotated volumes, texts and intertexts therein fixed; and the fictional projection of a library in fieri. Two libraries. Pessoa between authors – authors between Pessoa.

The main outputs of this project will be:

• A series of workshops Espólios Pessoa. With presentations by different experts in Pessoa’s work and/or in the scientific areas around which each workshop is more clearly organized, these sessions will take place at Casa Fernando Pessoa, bringing together unique access conditions, made available to the students selected in a call for participation process, to either Pessoa’s Private Library, or, as a result of the partnership with the National Library of Portugal, the totality of Pessoa’s Archive in high definition digital format.
• A cycle of Seminars perCursos Pessoa, which will constitute an intermediate moment of an investigation on a circumscribed set of questions, each seminar culminating in a publication, to be part of a collection titled cadernos Pessoa.

Objectives

• To deepen and contribute to renew the research on Pessoa’s work, not only by reconciling his two existing “archives”, but also by extending the research, through the category of author/reader and the materiality of his private library and reading itineraries inscribed therein, to the multitude of authors and scientific areas present in it;
• To articulate the research of Pessoa-reader, and of the several annotations and texts existent in his private library, with the understanding of the paths and chronologies of his activity as an author. Moreover, to extend this research and the approach of Pessoa’s work to the readings of it made by several authors throughout the 20th century;
• To promote the interlinking of scientific research with the activity of dissemination and postgraduate studies, making available unique conditions, particularly in the workshops, for postgraduate students to contact both with the work of several experts in Pessoa’s work and, in the same place, with his Private Library and Archive.

Team
Bruno Béu
Antonio Cardiello