It was in the light of eros that Eduardo Lourenço read “Conselho” [Advice], the last poem published by Fernando Pessoa. After examining the interpretation delineated with verve by the brilliant critic, who argued that some sort of sexual anxiety prompted the poet to counsel “a well-guarded double self” as a strategy of self-concealment, this paper will propose a rather different understanding of the secret self kept hidden from other people’s gaze by the “showy” garden that the poet cultivates.
