Fernando Pessoa

Portugal
13 Jun 1888 // 30 Nov 1935
Poet

The Dreams Are the Exaltation of Personality

My dreams were of many kinds but they were all manifestations of one state of mind. I now dreamt of myself a Christ, making a sacrifice of myself, redeeming mankind, now a Luther breaking with old conventions, now a Nero steeped in the lust of flesh and of blood. Now I saw myself in an inner hallucination the darling of crowds, applauded, parading through the (...), now the darling of women, tearing them from their homes, from their old homes, now the hatred of all but the darling of good, sacrificing myself for all. Every thing read, everything heard, all seen - each idea from the outside, each (...), each event was the point of departure of a dream. I carne from a circus and I laid at home daring to imagine myself a clown, with lights around me like an arc. I saw soldiers pass in my mental eye and talk with a vision of myself as captain, leading, ordering, victorious. I read of adventurers and from that moment fully became them. I read of criminals and died of committing crimes till I grew frightened at my brain disorder. According to what I saw to what I heard, to what I read, I lived in all classes, in all ages, in all times, passed through all times, tamed all difficulties, was martyr, victorious in more than a million ways.

But erotic, mystic, (...) - all these dreams were rivers tributary to a large me - nay rather they all were portions of a large me: the central point of all these dreams was the exaltation of personality.

Fernando Pessoa, in 'Manuscript'
Search

 

On Anger: "For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind."
Essays
On Destiny: "Our destiny exercises its influence over us even when, as yet, we have not learned its nature: it is our future that lays down the law of our today."
Human, All Too Human
On Friendship: "A crowd is not company; and faces are but a gallery of pictures; and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love."
Essays