A Life That Could Contain Every Kind of Greatness: Stirner meets Pessoa

Federico Campagna — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 15:54:39 +0000

“I belong to a generation – assuming that this generation includes others beside me – that lost its faith in the gods of the old religion as well as in the gods of modern unreligions. I reject Jehovah as I reject Humanity. For me, Christ and progress are both myths from the same world. I don’t believe in the Virgin Mary, and I don’t believe in electricity.”^{^[1]}

“Whenever I arrived at a certainty, I remembered that those with the greatest certainties are lunatics.”^{^[2]}

These opening words are part of the literary legacy of a man that never existed, the Baron of Teive. One of the several lifetime incarnations of Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa, the Baron of Teive is possibly his most dangerous heteronym. In his book The Education of the Stoic, the fictional Baron of Teive collects the last thoughts of a life that has come to an end, crashing against the willful edge of suicide.

“Since I wasn’t able to leave a succession of beautiful lies, I want to leave the smidgen of truth that the falsehood of everything lets us suppose we can tell. [...] These pages are not my confession; they’re my definition.”^{^[3]}

through europe - theraphy

A Life That Could Contain Every Kind of Greatness: Stirner meets Pessoa