Fernando Pessoa described his triumphal day, March 8, 1914, as the epiphanic moment of creation of his master Alberto Caeiro. Whereas philologists have underlined the fictional nature of this description, based on features of the manuscripts left by the author, several interpretations aim to preserve the importance of its meaning, by separating the poetic from the factual dimension. The present essay seeks to analyse, in a dialogue with critical literature and providing a revision of material data from the manuscripts, the several narratives by the author on the triumphal day, conceiving them as variations on a theme. Renouncing both the idea of an imaginative construct by Pessoa and of its perfect correspondence to facts, the article proposes to analyse the descriptions of this epiphany as literary modulations of a real event, whose meaning is decisive for an understanding of the foundations of the work.
