Thinking the 20th century as a cartography of documents is the philosophical task of Alain Badiou that, from the 90s, in the course of Colloquium of Cerisy (1997), is establishing a complex dialogue with Pessoa's work. For Badiou, thinking the century means pointing out the singularities of contemporary thought both in historical and hermeneutic terms. Fernando Pessoa, according to Badiou, can be interpreted not only as one of the fundamental witnesses to the exceptional creative debut (between 1890 and 1914) called Age of Poets, but also as new inventor of the idea of poetry “which has the task of naming the century”. The work of Fernando Pessoa gives to Poetry tremendous efforts to rethink the whole century. Badiou still recognizes as the philosophical reflection of the 20th century is far from being in tune with Pessoa’s poetry that, in a special challenge to contemporary thought, is subject to his shapes and sizes.
