At some complex generative level, Pessoa's genius as a polyglot underlies, is mirrored by, his self-dispersal into diverse and contrasting personae. Other masks followed, notably one 'Bernardo Soares'.

None of this triad resembles the metaphysical solitude, the sense of being an occultist medium which characterise Pessoa's 'own' intimate verse. De Campos emerges as a Whitmanesque futurist, a dreamer in drunkenness, the Dionysian singer of what is oceanic and windswept in Lisbon. Reis is a stoic Horatian, a pagan believer in fate, a player with classical myths less original than Caeiro, but more representative of modern symbolism. He is a man magnificently at home in nature, a virtuoso of pre-Christian innocence, almost a Portuguese teacher of Zen. Octavio Paz defines Caeiro as 'everything that Pessoa is not and more'. 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. 'Heteronyms', as Pessoa called and defined them, are something different and exceedingly strange. Pseudonymous writing is not rare in literature or philosophy (Kierkegaard provides a celebrated instance). In one fell swoop, at the typewriter, without hesitation or correction, there appeared the 'Ode Triumphal' by 'Alvaro de Campos' - the Ode of that name and the man with the name he now has.' A fourth individual 'burst impetuously on the scene. But Caeiro had disciples, one of whom, 'Ricardo Reis', contributed further poems. The first set of poems was by one 'Alberto Caeiro' - 'my Master had appeared inside me.' The next six were composed by Pessoa struggling against the 'inexistence' of Caeiro. But Pessoa's case is different and, probably, unique. Other poets, notably Rilke, have experienced such hours of explosive prodigality.

The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa