We caught up with the famously reclusive author in his favourite cafe in Lisboa to discuss just how disquieting he is finding it to have his heteronyms speaking simultaneously on different parts of social media.
Readers will be aware that Pessoa has so far created about seventy five characters who speak for themselves in different styles. Some could be said to represent different aspects of an overall personality. He has dubbed them heteronyms.
We met in Cafe Brasiliera where he has now had a statue put up outside to allow his fans to take their selfies without bothering him unduly.
"In the past it was so much easier. Pen and ink on some scraps of paper. I never used to publish anything, just throw it in a cupboard. Now there is stuff out there before I even know."
In some respects Pessoa should be comfortable with the idea of self curation. He's been doing it for decades speaking with different voices at different times. Crucially though he has always considered these voices as parts of an overall personality.
Pessoa continued: "There have always been people trying to psychoanalyse me and saying I have multiple personality disorder. Hey, wake up guys, I’m just self curating. It may be quite an extreme version but I was there first. But as the decades have gone on its become harder and harder. Now I find that I am being curated by the heteronyms."
In other words, different aspects of the personality are promoting themselves and becoming increasingly competitive.
One can appreciate this would be discombobulating. No wonder Pessoa is working his way through a number of strong looking espressos.
Pessoa proceeded to give us some examples of how different characters want to use different media and that they always want to be in control. Too many of them are "bloody poets" he said. And you know how tiresome they can be when they don't feel appreciated.
It’s very draining he said with that kind of fatalism which is so striking in Portuguese. The social media accounts need managing and he was constantly being asked for exclusivity.
He was particularly concerned that given the silent nature of many of the heteronyms and their unwillingness to have any conversations other than internal ones, the apartment was becoming littered with slips of paper left surreptitiously asking him to change things to be benefit of one heteronym. Given his writing style this could have disastrous consequences and could make the task of future editors even more difficult. Not only would they be rooting around his apartment they would have to sort even more wheat and chaff.
At this point Pessoa looked slightly nervous and asked us to make clear that the use of the word chaff was in no way a commentary on the poetic output of the Chevalier de Pas. These aristos were incredibly touchy.
In response to what was intended to be a helpful suggestion he grudgingly accepted that Andre Breton and the surrealists might be prepared to step in to help if required given their expertise with collage.
More generally, though, Pessoa contented himself by pointing out the irony that these adepts in social media felt the need to curry favour by aping his techniques. That seemed to be about the extent of what still passed for authorial control.
The conversation took a darker turn yet at the mere mention of passwords. Your interviewer became seriously concerned that the author looked sufficiently aghast that he might have felt the need to invent another persona on the spot to deal with the stress.
Then there was TikTok and Instagram Reels (ever the modernist, Pessoa is on trend). "The thing is the posts are there and then they’re gone. The heteronyms are asking me as the author what someone else has said and whether they need to comment on it. We've had the most terrible arguments over Instagram Stories. I had in the end I just had to ask everyone to make copious use of tagging."
Pessoa added that this led to some fairly acid asides that if he stopped inventing new characters it would be easier to keep up. New characters are clearly a safety valve of a kind but they do just store up more problems for the future.
The intra-textual commentary by one heteronym on another is clearly particularly sensitive. After all part of the point of being a heteronym is that you can engage in a critique of your fellows. But there have to be some rules. Pessoa said that there had been some deeply unflattering photos on Instagram that had nearly led to voices actually being used. Thankfully it was mostly kept to paper.
A more recent development was that some of the heteronyms were using auto translate. Previously Pessoa had been able to constrain them all to Portuguese but now he even had strange sounding Scots dialects cropping up.
He added, looking momentarily as if he might again feel the need to break into an impromptu bout of fado, that auto translate tends to struggle when applied to a slight Glaswegian accent. He regretted that the engineer had taken that work experience abroad but he had been headstrong. Now he was unintelligible.
Pessoa said that he found himself retreating to the Cafe Brasiliera more and more and pretending that there was poor connectivity. When asked he said he was Anon, Charles Robert Anon (I envisaged him saying this in the style of James Bond).
He still worked best with Bernardo Soares who was an accountant of sorts and approached these issues with a touch less emotion as long as he was allowed to wander around Lisbon and not do much work. The trouble now was that with images circulating everywhere even Soares was complaining the being a flaneur wasn't what it used to be. He might even need to spend more time in the office.
A more recent gambit to try to tamp down the competition was to put everyone on TV. There had been discussions about a version of Keeping Up With The Kardashians. "We thought about calling it (rather grandiloquently in my opinion) "Promenading with Pessoa’s Personas" said Fernando. Sadly it came to nothing.
"The producers felt there that there were just too many of us who were keen precisely on hiding our light under a bushel. But really the escalator pitch was the coup de grace. Frankly there were just too many of us trying to get onto the escalator and it become a physical challenge as much as anything else. I had to stop things before anyone was hurt. Physically. Psychologically though I think there was damage."
At this point he did indeed break out into fado.
There is only so much saudade that anyone can take.
No comments:
Post a Comment