Pedro Sepúlveda is an associate professor in the Department of Portuguese Studies at NOVA FCSH and a researcher at IELT. His work is in the fields of Modern Literature and Textual Criticism, with a particular focus on Fernando Pessoa and Portuguese literary modernism. He recently published the essay Ostensivo e Reservado, Leituras de Pessoa (IN, 2024) and edited the volumes of Eduardo Lourenço Pessoa Revisitado, Crítica Pessoana I (1949–1982) and O Lugar do Anjo, Crítica Pessoana II (1983–2017), published by Gulbenkian. He coordinates the research project Estranhar Pessoa (estranharpessoa.com) and is co-editor of the Digital Edition of Fernando Pessoa: Projects and Publications (pessoadigital.pt).
Eduardo Lourenço finds in Pessoa an unsolvable conflict between opposing ontological realities, none of which can prevail over the other: reality and fiction, authenticity and pretence, totality and fragment, knowledge and ignorance, and love and its absence. This conflict refers not only to a tragic dimension in Pessoa’s work, but also, for Lourenço, to a deeply romantic one, revealing, alongside the lament for the failure of what is longed for, an unlimited desire for the fulfilment of human experience.
Going through various texts by the essayist, with a special focus on essays that deal with a particular topic of his work (love, fiction, theatre, travel, the sea or time), this article aims to outline and problematise the recurring image in Lourenço’s essays of a tragic and romantic Pessoa.
