Walking with Fernando and Friends

Loyalty... A will, a decision, a resolution of the soul.” Night train to Lisbon —Amadeus
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Reading about the life of Fernando Pessoa, we might be tempted to believe he was a solitary soul, a man without friends. In a way, that was true. From childhood, he spent much of his time alone and often preferred the company of imagined companions. With them, he created projects and games—writing poetry, even hand-producing little newsletters to share with family and anyone willing to read them.
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He was well regarded by students and teachers alike, yet there remained something set apart about him—a quiet distance, a self-contained world.

Pessoa in conversation—less alone than we imagine.

Fernando was deeply attached to his family. The loss of his father to tuberculosis when he was only four, followed by the death of his younger brother just months later, must have marked him profoundly. Still, he remained close to his mother.

Not long after, she remarried—a kind man she met on a streetcar—and moved to Durban, South Africa, where he had been appointed consul. For Fernando, this departure was a rupture. He followed later, accompanied by a beloved uncle, and spent his formative years in Durban with his mother, stepfather, and their growing family.

By all accounts, he adapted well and maintained good relationships there. After his stepfather’s death, he returned to Lisbon, once again among extended family—sisters, aunts, uncles—who remained important presences in his life. His nieces and nephews, in particular, delighted in his playful humor.

His adult relationships were few but meaningful. The most significant was his friendship with Mário de Sá-Carneiro, whose early death by suicide left a lasting wound. There was also his tender, largely platonic love for Ofélia Queiroz—a relationship he ultimately ended, believing it incompatible with his vocation as a poet.

One might even say that Álvaro de Campos, his most forceful heteronym, intervened—declaring such a life could not be sustained.
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Yet the connection lingered. After Pessoa’s death, Ofélia married, but she would later say that he was the only man she ever truly loved. She once told friends that the first time she saw him, he seemed to be walking on air.

The many lives of one mind

Pessoa’s social life did not follow conventional patterns. He worked as a translator and correspondent in business offices, getting along well with colleagues, but not forming deep social bonds there. Instead, he gathered with writers and artists, contributing to projects such as the journal Orpheu.

They met in Lisbon cafés like A Brasileira and Martinho da Arcada. Those who knew him described him as soft-spoken and reserved, yet when he spoke, he was often uncannily precise—almost always right.

His biographer, Richard Zenith, writes that what astonishes us is Pessoa’s ability to live so much of his emotional and mental life on an imagined, literary plane—to “depersonalize” his inner world into multiple selves.
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In The Book of Disquiet, Pessoa writes:
“I’m the naked stage where various actors act out various plays.”

Alone… or accompanied?

In The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis, José Saramago imagines conversations between Pessoa—now dead—and his heteronym Ricardo Reis.

They stroll through Lisbon, speaking as friends might, often pausing at the Miradouro de Santa Catarina beneath the looming figure of Adamastor. No one else sees Pessoa. Only his shadow appears to others.

Still, the conversations continue—measured, thoughtful, companionable.

So perhaps Pessoa was not without friends. They were simply not always visible to the passerby.

I imagine his walks were not so different from my own: a weaving of observation, reflection, memory, and imagined futures. The more I try to know the “real” Pessoa, the more elusive he becomes.

Even Zenith’s remarkable biography reveals only one version--his Pessoa.

We each carry our own.

A conversation continues...

And I am content to walk beside him in my mind…
sometimes in Lisbon, sometimes far from it.

Friendship has many ways of revealing itself.
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Loyalty is one.
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