TEAARS

Meeting in Tavira, Portugal

(28 September to 3 October 2015)

lvaro de Campos
walking tour in Tavira

0 Departure: Escola Secundria Dr. Jorge Augusto Correias Library

TRIUMPHAL ODE
By the painful light of the factorys huge electric lamps
I write in a fever.
I write gnashing my teeth, rabid for the beauty of all this,
For this beauty completely unknown to the ancients.
O wheels, O gears, eternal r-r-r-r-r-r-r!
Bridled convulsiveness of raging mechanisms!
Raging in me and outside me,
Through all my dissected nerves,
Through all the papillae of everything I feel with!
My lips are parched, O great modern noises,
From hearing you at too close a range,
And my head burns with the desire to proclaim you
In an explosive song telling my every sensation,
An explosiveness contemporaneous with you, O machines!
Gaping deliriously at the engines as at a tropical landscape
--Great human tropics of iron and fire and energy-I sing, I sing the present, and the past and future too,
Because the present is all the past and all the future:
Plato and Virgil exist in the machines and electric lights
For the simple reason that Virgil and Plato once existed and were human,
And bits of an Alexander the Great from perhaps the fiftieth century
As well as atoms that will seethe in the brain of a 100th-century Aeschylus
Go round these transmission belts and pistons and flywheels,
Roaring, grinding, thumping, humming, rattling,
Caressing my body all over with one caress of my soul.
If I could express my whole being like an engine!
If I could be complete like a machine!
If I could go triumphantly through life like the latest model car!
If at least I could inject all this into my physical being,
Rip myself wide open, and become pervious
To all the perfumes from the oils and hot coals
Of this stupendous, artificial and insatiable black flora!
[...]
London, 1914 June
[first published in Orpheu, 1, March 1915]
Translated by Richard Zenith
[You may read the rest of the poem at: http://www.jorgecolombo.com/lr/lr_poems.htm]
2

1- Largo de Santo Amaro

(Opposite Taviras Railway Station)

NOTES ON TAVIRA
Ive finally arrived at the town of my childhood.
I got out of the train, recalled, looked, saw, compared.
(All this took the time of a tired gaze).
Everything is old where I once was young.
[...]
I stop before this view, and what I see is I.
In past times here I foresaw I would be splendid at the age of 40 - Master of
the world Its at 41 that I get out of the train [indolently?].
What did I achieve? Nothing.
Nothing, as matter of fact, have I really achieved.
I bring my tediousness and my physical breakdown as my suitcase gets
heavier...
Suddenly I go forward very confident, resolutely.
All my hesitation has gone off
This town of my childhood is after all a foreign city.
[...]
Im a stranger, a tourist, a passer-by.
Its clear: thats what I am.
Even inside of me, my God, even inside of me.
8-12- 1931

Translated from: lvaro de Campos (Fernando Pessoa),

Poesia, Assrio & Alvim, ed. Teresa Rita Lopes, 2002

2 Restaurant A ver Tavira

(Opposite Taviras Castle)

THE HOURS PASSAGE

I bring it inside my heart,

As in a safe that you cant close as its full,
All the places where Ive been,
All the parts I arrived at,
All the landscapes I looked at from the windows or the scuttles,
Or from the poop decks, dreaming,
And all that which is so much, is few for what I want.
[]
To feel everything in every way,
To have all the opinions,
To be sincere contradicting yourself every minute,
To get on your own nerves with complete freedom of mind,
And to love the things just like God.
[]
I travelled to more lands than those I touched
I saw more landscapes than those I stared my eyes upon...
I experienced more sensations than all the sensations I felt,
Because, although I felt a lot, Ive always missed what to feel
And life has always hurt me, it was never enough, and I was unhappy.
22-5-1916

Translated from: lvaro de Campos (Fernando Pessoa),

Poesia, Assrio & Alvim, ed. Teresa Rita Lopes, 2002
4

3 Casa lvaro de Campos

OH, MARGARIDA

Oh, Margarida,
If I gave you my life
What would you do with it?
Painting by Costa Pinheiro, Fernando
Get my earrings out of hock,
Pessoa - heteronyms, 1978, oil on canvas,
150X 200 cm.
Marry me a blind man,
And move with him to Estrela.
But, Margarida,
If I gave you my life
What would your mother say?
(She knows me so well.)
That there are plenty of fools in the world,
And you were just one more.
And, Margarida,
If I gave you my life
In the sense of dying?
Id go to your funeral,
But Id think it was wrong
To love without living.
But, Margarida,
If this giving-you-my-life
Was only poetry?
In that case, pal, no deal.
Youd be wasting your time.
We dont believe in that here.
communicated by the Naval Engineer Mr. lvaro de Campos while in an
alcoholic stupor.
10/1/1927
[Fernando Pessoa: lvaro de Campos, Shorter Poems and Fragments at:
http://de-campos.blogspot.pt/2006/03/lvaro-de-campos-shorter-poems-and.html]

3 Casa lvaro de Campos

ALL LOVE LETTERS

All love-letters are

Ridiculous.
They wouldnt be love-letters if they werent
Ridiculous.
Ive also written love-letters in my time,
Like the others,
Ridiculous.
Love-letters, if love there is,
Have to be
Ridiculous.
But, in the end,
Only creatures who never wrote
Love-letters
Theyre whats
Ridiculous.
Oh, for the time when I wrote
Without even thinking
Those love-letters that were
Ridiculous.
The truth is, today
My memories
Of these love-letters
Are whats really
Ridiculous.
(All extravagant words,
Like all extravagant sentiments,
Are naturally
Ridiculous.)
21/10/1935
[Campos last poem, written nine days before Pessoa died on November 30, 1935; in the last stanza, extravagant
translates esdrxulas, which means extravagant, eccentric, overblown and proparoxytone, dactylic.]

[Fernando Pessoa: lvaro de Campos, Shorter Poems and Fragments at:

http://de-campos.blogspot.pt/2006/03/lvaro-de-campos-shorter-poems-and.html]
6

4 Casa Andr Pilarte

[Caf do Quinito]

IM TIRED OF INTELLIGENCE
Im tired of intelligence.
Thinking is bad to emotions.
A big reaction appears.
Sudden tears, and all the dead aunts make tea again
In the ancient house of the old farm.
Stop, this heart of mine!
Be quiet, my fictitious hope!
I wish I have never been but the little boy I was...
My sleepiness, good, just because I was sleepy, and not to forget ideas!
My horizon of backyard and beach!
My end before beginning!
Im tired of intelligence.
If at least with it could we realize something!
But I only notice a deep tiredness, as fall in a cup
Those things that are there in the wine and smooth it .
18-6-1930

Translated from: lvaro de Campos (Fernando Pessoa),

Poesia, Assrio & Alvim, ed. Teresa Rita Lopes, 2002

5- Rua Borda Dgua de Aguiar

(Caixa de Crdito Agrcola)

MARITIME ODE

[]
Ah! The remote beaches, the docks glimpsed from far away,
Then the beaches looming up, the docks seen from close by.
The mystery of every departure and every arrival,
The sad instability, the incomprehensibility
Of this impossible universe
Felt in the skin more intensely at every seafaring moment.
The absurd gulping sobs our souls pour out
Over the expanses of various seas with isles, in the distance,
Over far-off islands coasts left behind as we pass,
Over ports grown clearer with their homes and their people,
As the ship approaches.
[...]

[First published in Orpheu, 2, April - June 1915]

Translated from: lvaro de Campos (Fernando

Pessoa), Poesia, Assrio & Alvim, ed. Teresa
Rita Lopes, 2002
8