The main topic of Pessoa’s Faust, what seems to make its central character ache with anxiety, is Existence, the brute fact that there is something, that there is a universe outside ready for us to perceive it and to whose perception we are doomed. It is on that fundamental mystery that Faust often questions himself and it is from that mystery that all the other equally abhorring mysteries originate. This is the unavoidable suggestion that there is something beyond the thing he is, that an outward universe exists, implying that there is also the thing which causes it (God), the thing which denies it (Death) and the thing against which its exteriority is established (Self). Thus, contrary to what is often suggested, it is not in Faust’s severe inner world that the origin of his troubles resides. Rather, what defines Faust, and what later on would proscribe him, is the faculty of perception itself. Although he gets himself entangled in endless thoughts and constantly engages himself in metaphysical speculation, it is when he opens his eyes and comes face to face with the outer world that the inner motion of his thoughts begins. In this particular aspect, Faust is no different from Caeiro. The main purpose of this essay is to show to what extent this is possible.
