Ophelia and Fernando Pessoa

Love Letters of Ophelia Queiroz and Fernando Pessoa 225
Together at Last: Reading the Love Letters of
Ophelia Queuroz and Fernando Pessoa
ANNA M. KLOBUCKA
In the tradition of pessoano criticism, the self-sustaining autobiographic
fiction of Fernando Pessoa's heteronymous drama em gente has been
explored and interpreted, for the most part, as separate and distinct
from the historical daily matter of its author's personal identities as a
member of a large extended family, a free-lance professional and occasional aspiripg entrepreneur, and a politically aware citizen. While Pes-
implicit boundary demarcating
his extratextual existence from his manifold lives in literature (with
soa himself sporadically transgressed the
it
1
A
Alvaro. de Campos as the usual designaled trespasser), he also emphasized it on numerous occasions in his writings, most prominently in his
quasi-testamentary letters to his original critics and future editors, Joio
Gaspar Sim6es and Adolfo Casais Monteiro. Those injunctions were
reinforced later by the general opprobrium placed on biographic criticism by the Portuguese academic and intellectual establishment at the
time when Pessoa's writings attracted the greatest numbers of critical
readers (in the 1970s and 1980s). Nevertheless, one undeniably factual
episode of the poet's life - his romance with Ophelia Queiroz - and one
set of ostensibly non-literary texts associated with it - the correspondence that accompanied the affair - n'ave consistently retained the status
of a legitimate, indeed privileged, object of interpretation for literary
critics. This exceptional status can, to some extent, be related to.the role
the episode has played in the largely subterranean debates on the issue
of Pessoa's sexuality. If, as Darlene Sadlier has predicted, an imminent
construction of a 'convincing "queer" Pessoa' is looming on the hermeneutic horizon, its contrasting critical fiction - 'the "straight" Pessoa of
the love letters to Oph6lia' - has iong been in place, deployable against
any assertions of active erotic deviation that might reach beyond the
safely circumscribed territory of the heteronym Campos's pansexual
exuberance.l Regardless, however, of the historical context of Pessoa's
Cartas d,e amor and
their biographically charged implications, critical
readings of the correspondence have tended to rely on the same disembodied and self-referential paradigms of textuality that have generally
informed discussions of the heteronymous maze of Pessoa's literary
texts. One ongoing effect of this orientation has been the gradual effacement from the scene of textual interpretation of the poet's partner in his
conflicted amorous adventure, an erasure so subtle and yet so effective
that even the recent reinscription of Ophelia's voice and body into the
story of the romance - through the long-delayed publication of her letters to the poet - has not produced any discernible critical reaction. Yet,
bringing 'together at last' the two sets of epistolary texts does not
amount merely to a primary (if necessary) gesture of feminist vindication; it modifies decisively the conditions of reading Pessoa's Ca,rtas de
amor and also, by a problematic but inescapable extension,, of interpreting other discourses of desire and relationship that llow throughout his
textual legacy.
The love letters of Fernando Pessoa to Ophelia Queiroz were published in 1978 in a volume edited by Maria da Graqa Queiroz - Ophelia's
great-niece, who contributed an account of the relationship based on an
interviewwith her auht - and by the critic and writer David Mourlo-Ferreira who supptied an introductory essay.2 The edition documented
-what appears to have been Pessoa's only, extremely hesitant, experimentation with the routine of Portuguese middle-class mating rituals circa
1920 and beyond, offering a rare intimate glimpse into the deceptive
mirrqr chamber of the poet's jealously guarded privacy. Not until almost
twenty years later did it become possible to read Ophelia's letters as well
(to call them 'responses' would be, as I hope to show, a fallacy).3 Theit
author outlived her famous correspondent by many decades, dying in
1991 at the age of ninety; ayear later, the death of Pessoa's sister Henriqueta Madalena - who had remained adamantly opposed to the publication of the entire correspondence - removed the last obstacle to the
revelation of Ophelia's contribution to the epistolary exchange.a A fair
selection was made available by Manuela Nogueira, Henriqueta's daughter, approved (contingent on a number of requested suppressions and
deletions) by the Queiroz family and published in 1996 by Assirio &
Alvim. In a marked contrast - the first of many - to the relatively slim collection of Pessoa's fifty letters, Cartas de amor de Ofelia a Fernando Pessoats
a hefty volume, even though it contains fewer than half of the available
226
Anna M. Klobucka
Love Letters of ophelia eueiroz and Fernando pessoa
zz7
total of 230 letters, forty-six postcards, two telegrams, and various short
notes written by ophelia over the period orrot[nty rwo and
a harf years
insisted forcefully.on reading the letters as ,poetic
texts, engaged.
an 'intertextual give-and-take with the heterorry.rro,., discourse, in
and
/
that her intermittent relarionship with the poetlasied.s
Another obvious contrast emerging from even the most superficial
of
comparative perusals of the two volurnes is that while many tf p.rrou',
letters are brief and crisply practical, ophelia wrote invariably in
a tor_
rential, stream-of-consciousness style, with no apparent editing
or even
forethought. The result, chatty and. repetitive, cunnot help buimake for
somewhat tedious reading, and is surely one reason why
tire publication
of her letters produced no interpretive fervour comparable.to the
out_
pouring of commentary on pessoa's cartas d,e amor Nevertheless, it is
sur_
prising to note. the all but complete lack of critical engagement with
the
Pessoa-ophelia correspondence made whole: arter the initial flurry
of
comments in the Portuguese press following publication of the 1996
vol_
ume, I am awaie ojno single study exploring their epistolary interaction.
The newly expanded store of evid.ence, inevitably u.ra quite dramatically
rearranged by the introduction of ophelia's leiters, has remained.
in a
virtual vacuum of interpretation.
It is possible to conjecture another expianation for the apparent lack
of interest in revisiting this unique episode of pessoa's life and
work. The
unilateral testimony of Pessoa's letters, which until 19g6 was the
onrv
material available to the poet's critics and biographers, has been
,"bj;;t
to'a very different kind of hermeneutics than the availability of a iull,
bilaterai correspondence might have encouraged.6 Thus, existing interpretations of the poet's letters to ophelia, although to some extent
divergent in their respective emphases, have converged in their main
underlying premisb, articulated originally by the letters' editor: as noted
by MourS"o-Ferreira, had pessoa's letters been found in his archive
of
manuscripts, 'seria bem verosfmil que se vissem atribufdas, se ni.o
propri_
amente a quaiquer uma das suas criag6es heteronimicas ou semi_heie._
onimicas ... pelo menos a um ort6nimo prop6sito de mistific aqio, (they
would have probabiy been attributed, if not ixactly ro any one of his
het_
eronyms or semi-heteronyms ... at ieast to an orthonymous project
of fab_
rication).7 Such reterritorialization of the poet,s real-life letters
to
ophelia as a fitting piece of the heteron;,nnous textu al puzzre did not
remain, however, in the realm of unrealized possibility; Mouri.o-Ferreira
himself initiated the interpretive strain of contextualizing the letters
with
reference to Pessoa's work, linking his amorous epistola- dir.o.r.se
to a
number of heteronymous and orthonymous texts and noting its ,inex_
haus tible' h e rme n eutic p oten tial. B S oon afterwards,
Jos6 Augu-sto seabra
mapped the course that their future interpretation was
to follow:
No que concerne campos, ou qualquer outro heteronimo,
e a relagio
entre a experidncia amorosa de pessoa, as suas cartas e
os
seus poemas, hd
quanto a n6s que explorar, sobretudo, em termos de
migragao intertextual,
os elementos paragramaticamente dispersos
de uma textualidade mriltipla,
nos seus discursos e sujeitos.e
[In what regards campos, or any other heteronym, and the relationship
between Pessoa's amorous experience, his letters and
his poems, I believe
thatwe must explore, above ail, in the context of intertextuar
migration, the
paragrammatically dispersed elements of a multiple
textuality realizec
through its discourses and subjects.]
other critics have followed this exhortation in their own
ways: to
quote one representative comment (by Isabel Allegro
de Magalhdes),
'estas missivas a uma mulher "real"
manifest[am] o card.cter fredomi_
nantemente fictfcio, ou a invenqio textual do amor' (these
misiives to a
'real' woman demonstrate their predominantly fictitious
nature, their
textual invention of love).10Th.,*dirio., of approaching
the poet,s rela_
tionship with ophelia eueir oz and its epistotury ,".o.d
u. u. integrar
episode in Pessoa's riferong enterprise oi urrtoprychograph
ic fingimento
appears to be going strong, to judge by two *..riio.r,
of theiirJ*u.r..
by contributors to the present vot.r-., while Richard
zenith contends
that ophelia 'was a species of counterheteronym, a real-life
character
with whom Pessoa lived a ficlion,' George Monteiro follows
Armand
Guibert in linking the end of the relatio"nship,s first
act to the subse_
quent publication of pessoa's sexually violent English
poem ,Epithala_
mium.'ll These and other readinss may to some extent be
viewed as
oppositional rewritings of the first ambitious narrative
of the romance,
contained inJoio Gaspar Sim6es's lgbl vid,a e obra
d,e FnnanrJo pessoa, rn
which the boldly plotred srory is toid in exclusively biographical
rerms: in
lieu of Gaspar sim6es's oedipal triangle (between ,h".
;;;;il;^;;;',
mother - his true 'fnico amor' fonry rove] and the uniorgivablyirivial
girlfriend, an exemplar of 'banalidade burguesa'
fbourgeois banality] ),
critics since Mourio*Ferreira have woven narratives
oi heteronymous
feigning that substitute sophisticated meta- and intertextual
modes of
relating and explaining for the embarrassingly literal
and overwrought
'.1
t
t
'I.t
,1
I
'i.f
I
,l
-
,
J
.,,1,
,
228
Anna M. Klobucka
Freudianism of Pessoa's original biographer.i2 one crucial if presumably
unintended effect of this reorientation of criticai framing and plotting
away from biography and ever deeper into literature
- has been u piogressive redefinition of the role played by ophelia
eueiroz in her iove
affair with the poet. From a relatively strong and autonomous protagonist of Gaspar sim6es's biographic narrative - stronger yet for being piesented with undisguised and at times frankly misogynous hostility rft.
has evolved into a relatively minor and largely passive character in the
ongoing enterprise of Pessoa's self-fashioning storymaking (it needs to
be noted that Gaspar Sim6es himself pointed future critics in that direction by dubbing the young woman an 'of6lia shai<espeareana,,an identification to which I will return).13
In a concomitant development, encouraged by the vicissitudes of separate and asynchronous publication, the figure of pessoa's correspondent has remained essentially immobilized in the cameo appearance of
her l97B account, which - notwithstanding the prevailingiritical trend
to view Pessoa's agency in the affair as a case o.f fiction-making emplotment of the (amorous) self and other - has generally been takin atface
value, as a straightforwardly factual contribution to documenting the
relationship, with little if any attention paid to its eminently literary qualities. As it turns out, however, on the evidence of ophelia's o*, i.ti..r,
that account is as much a work of narrative recomposition of the historical record as any of the subsequent, self-consciously interpretative, versions of the story as told. by pessoa's critics and biogiaphers. It is
immateriai whether the responsibility for this should. rest wlth Ophelia,s
imperfect recollection of events several decades old, with her conscious
or unconscious effort to refashion her experience in ways more pleasing
and favourable to herself, with her great-niece's ed.itorial initiitive, or,
most likely, with all of the above. It is worth noting, nevertheless, that
ophelia's storywas framed and presented in a highlyoblique and ambiguous fashion already at the time of its original appearance in print while
it is generally assumed that it had been told shortly before the volume's
publication, in effect Mourio-Ferreira refers to it as if it had been registered quite a while before ('em tempos').14 At the same time, editoiial
processing of the account by Maria da Graga
eueiroz is defined variously
as a 'compilaE6o' (compitation), 'recolha' (collection) and ,estruturaqi.o' (structuring), whiie the fact that the story is told in the first person
suggests to the reader an unmediated access to ophelia's own voi...lb
on thejoint testimony of Fernando's letters und oph.lia's account, it
emerged that their love affair had begun in late February 1920, shortly
Love Letters of Ophelia Queiroz and Fernando pessoa ZZg
after the young woman, who was nineteen at the time, started to work as
a typist at the same Lisbon firm where the poet contributed his services
as a commercial correspondent. This is how Ophelia's narrative voice
recounted the crucial episode of the first physical contact between them:
um dia faltou a luz no escrit6rio. o Freitas nio estava e o os6rio, o ,grumete,' tinha safdo afazer um recado. o Fernando foi buscar um candeeiro
de petr5leo, acendeu-o, e p6-lo em cima da minha secret6ria.
um pouco antes da hora de saida, atirou-me um bilhetinho para cima da
secreri.ria, que dizia: 'Pego.lhe,que fique.' Eu fiquei, na expectativa. Nessa
altura., jd eu me tinha apercebido do interesse do Fernando por mim e eu,
confesso, tamb6m lhe achava uma certa graqa...
Lembro-me que estava em p6, a vestir o casaco, quando ele entrou no
meu gabinete. sentou-se na minha cadeira, pousou o candeeiro que trazia
na m5.o e, virando para mim, comeQou de repente a declarar-se, como Hamlet se declarou a of6lia: 'oh, querida of6lial meQo mal os meus
careQo de arte para
at6 do
versos;
medir os meus suspiros; mas amo-te em extremo. ohl
riltimo extremo, acredita!'
Fiquei perturbadfssima, como 6 natural, e, sem saber o que havia de
dizer, acabei de vestir o casaco e despedi-me precipitadamente. O Fernando
levantou-se, com o candeeiro na mio, para me acompanh ar at6. a porta.
Mas, de repente, pousou-o sobre a divis6ria da parede: sem eu esperar, agar-
rou-me pela cintura, abragou-me e, sem dizer uma palavra, beiiou-me,
beijou-me, apaixonadamente, como louco ...
Fui para casa, comprometida e confusa. passaram-se dias e como o
Fernando parecia ignorar o que se havia passado entre n6s, resolvi eu
escrever-lhe uma carta, pedindoJhe uma explicaqio. E o que d6 origem d
sua primeira carta-resposta, datada de 1 de Marqo de 1920.
fusim comeqdmos o 'namoro.'16
fone day lights went off at the firm. Freitas wasn't in and os6rio, the
office boy, had left to deliver a message. Fernando found an oil lamp, lit it,
and piaced it on my desk.
A little before closing time he dropped a note on top of my desk; it said:'
'Please stay.' I stayed, full.of anticipation. At that time I had already noticed
that Fernando was interested in me and I confess that I also found him
intriguing.
I rembmber that I was standing up, putting on my coat, when he entered
my office. He sat on my chair, set down the lamp he was carrying, turned to
me, and began suddenly to declare his feelings, just as Hdmlet had
230
Anna M. Klobucka
Love Letters of Ophelia Queiroz and Fernando Pessoa 231
acldressed ophelia: 'o d.ear ophelia, I am ill at these numbers, I have not
art to reckon my groans, but that I love thee best, o most best, believe it.'
I felt extremely agitated, as is only na[ural, and, not knowing what to say,
' I finished putting on my coat and rapidly said good
bye. Fernando got up,
oil lamp in hand, to accompany me to the door. But then, suddenly, he set
the lamp down on top of a low wall and unexpectedly seized me by the
waist, embraced me and, without a word, kissed me, kissed me passionately,
like a madman ...
I went home ashamed and confused. Days went by and since Fernando
made no reference to what had happened between us I decided to wdte
him a letter asking for an explanation. That is what gave origin to his first
letter, the response dated March 1, 1920. And so our'courtship' began.]
This exceedingly dramatic scene, occurring literally on a
d,arkened.
stage, with meticulous marking of the actors' movements (I was standing, he sat down, he stood up), no less meticulously described use of
props (the note, the oil lamp, the coat), and the Hamlet-Ophelia Iove
scene metatheatrically embedded at its climax, has been cited by critics
such as Seabra as one proof among many that Pessoa staged his affair
with ophelia as an episode in the ongoing production of his heteronymous drama
em gente.
statement of his intentions, and that in those intervening weeks their
love affair had gained considerable momentum.l8 In other words, the
nineteen-year-old Ophelia was not such a stern paragon of respectability
as her much later account implies; it was only after several months of
flirting and a fewweeks of physical intimacy (limited, to be sure, to kisses
and embraces at the office) that the young woman became exasperated
with the secret and undefined nature of her workplace romance and
chose to take initiative towards determining its long-term prospects.
It is indeed fitting that the correspondence between Pessoa and
ophelia began the way it did, since the two inaugural letters - hers and
his - anticipate and epitomize its further development. Ophelia's opening gambit is a mention of her conversation with an ex-boyfriend who is
' still devoted to her and desires to win her back:
However, the scene reproduced above was, after all,
narrated by Ophelia and written down
- 'collected,' 'compiled,' and
'structured'- by her great-niece: at the very least, it can be observed that
they took the element of Shakespearean inspiration supplied by the poet
and ran with it, constructing'a fully developed work of dramatic fiction
that has, in turn, shaped the scene of critical interpretation of the affair
for decades to come." That the two Queiroz women may have engaged
in something more coinplex than passively reflective acts of recollection
and transcription did not, however, become fully apparent until the publication of Opheiia's letters (to which she had no access since writing and
sending them in the first place, and therefore could not refer to her own
documentation of the relationship, much more detailed and comprehensive than that contained in Pessoa's contribution to the correspondence). For the letters tell a rather different story of the early stages of
the courtship: while confirming that the famous quasi-Shakespearean
love scene with its crucial first kiss did in fact occur - since in one of her
later missives Ophelia refers to an anniversary of the 'performance of
Hamlet' as the 'first time my mouth touched your ,norrth' - they also
revealed that it took place on Z2January 1920, and therefore not d.ays
but well over a month before ophelia wrote to Fernand.o demanding a
Estpu desprezando um rapaz que me ad.ora, que me faria felize que eu sei
muito bem as ideias d'ele para mim ... E diga-me agorafrancamente, sei eu
alguma coisa do Fernandinho?Jd alguma vez me disse as suas ideias, o que
pensa fazer de mim? ... Nao me tenho eu entregado completamente ao meu
Fernandinho? Que recompensa rne dar6? ... Se o Fernandinho nunca pensou em construir famflia, e se nem pensa, peqo-lhe por tudo ... que mo diga
por escrito, que me diga as suas ideias sobre a minha pessoa (e nlo se
esqueqa que tem dito muitas vezes que me ndo ama, que me adora!)le
[I am rejecting
a man who ad.ores me, who would make me happy and
... And tell me frankly now, what do I
know of you, Fernandinho? Have you ever told me your ideas,. what you
plan to do with me? ... Haven't I given myself completely ro my Fernandinho? And how will he recompense me for it? ... Fernandinho, if you never
contemplated starting a family, and if you don't have such plans now, I
implore you ... to tell me in writing what your ideas for me are (and don't
forget that you have told me many times that you don'tjust love me, that
whose plans
for me I know very well
you adore me!)l
Now for Fernandinho's reply:
Para me mostrar o seu desprezo, ou, pelo menos, a sua indiferenqa real, nd.o
era preciso o disfarce transparente de um discurso t6o comprido ...
euem
ama verdadeiramente nio escreve cartas que parecem requerimentos de
advogado. O amor nio estuda tanto as cousas, nem trata os outros como
reus que 6 preciso 'entalar' ... Reconheeo que tudo isso 6 c6mico, e que a
232
Anna M. Klobucka
parte mais c5mica disto tudo sou eu. Eu pr6prio acharia graea, se ndo a
amasse tanto, e se tivesse tempo para pensar em outra cousa
que nlo fosse
no sofrimento que tem prazer em causar-me ...
Ai fica o 'documento escrito' que me pede. Reconhece a minha assinatura
o tabelilo Eugdnio Silva.2o
[You could have shown me your contempt, or at least your supreme indifference, without the see-through masquerade of such a lengthy treatise
...
Those who really love don't write letters that read like lawyers' petitions.
Love doesn't examine things so closely, and it doesn't treat others like
defendants on trial ... I realize that all this is comical, and that the most
comical part of it is me. I myself would think it was funny if I didn't love
you
so much, and if I had the time to think of anything besides the
suffering you
enjoy inflicting on me ...
Here's the 'written document' you requested. The notary Eug6nio
silva can
validate my signature.l 2l
\44rat stands out above all else in this initial exchange is the ,he said,
she said' miscommunication and crossing of purposes between the
two
lovers: ophelia's unexceptional desire to domesticute and normalize
their romance by channelling it into engagement and marriage the
only possible development for a young woman from a respectable, middle-class Portuguese family of her time, as both ophelia and Fernando
knew very well - clashes with the confused and confusing non-sequitur
of
Pessoa's reply, in which we can detectjealousy and injured pride
at being
examined side by side with ophelia's ex-boyfriend, bur also a perplexing
lack of understanding of what was, in the historical time inJ social
milieu they shared, an entirely predictable expectation. In effect, it is
possible to read this exchange as a textbook case of Deborah Tannen,s
linguistic investigations into the'cross-cuitural communication' between
men and women and an apt sample of the distinct ,genderlects' of the
two sexes clashing dialogically in a historically specific time and.
place.22
The question of marriage would remain at the forefront of further
correspondence, although Pessoa himself made only rare, mostly indi-
rect references to their possible future life together, while Ophelia
seized
every opportunity to attempt to extract a more binding declaration,
going as far as to sign some of her letters 'ophelia
eueiroz pessoa' (fol_
lowed by 'I wish' in parentheses) and sending Fernand.o postcards
of
babies she would describe as 'o nosso Fernandinho pequenino
de aigum
dia' (our future little Fernandinho). she also attempted to transflrm
Love Letters of Ophelia Queiroz and Fernando Pessoa 233
her metaphysics of wishful thinking into a politics of faits accomplis by
suggesting that she might tell her sister Fernando had already asked for
her hand in marriage in order to dispose her family more favourably
towards their continuing courtship..Pessoa, with very rare exceptions,
tended to ignore those and other hints: to give but one example, when
Ophelia wrote him repeatedly and at considerable length about a conveniently priced and located apartment that had become available for rent,
he chose to ignore her at first implied and eventually explicit message that it would be perfect for the fwo of thern - and answered only her
originally stated query about its precise distance from the street in which
he was then living with his mother and sister.23
The recurrently foregrounded question of marriage that forms the
sustaining backbone of the correspondence (expressing itself through
insistent redundancy in Ophelia's letters and through elliptical circumnavigation in Fernando's) allows us to posit, in addition to the overt
Shakespearean parallel, another fictional model that may be taken as a
correlative of their epistolary relationship. The Pickwick Papers - Pessoa's
all-time favourite work of narrative fiction - and other early novels by
Dickens launched the archetypal pattern of Victorian fiction by making
the 'happily-ever-after' of their often multiple conjugal denouements the
cornerstone on which 'a protective alliance of domestic harmony and a
refuge from the world.'s evils' is founded .24Yet, at the same time, the contrasting gynephobic and utopian homosocial dimension of The Pichwich
Papns - an aspect of the novel to which Pessoa was highly sensitive, as
noted in the introduction to the present volume - generates resistance
against the coercive social and moral authority of the marriage plot. In an
analogous fashion, resistance against Ophelia's conjugal designs is
embodied, within hers and Fernando's epistolary dialogue, by recurrent
evocations of the queerest of Pessoa's heteronyms. Ophelia's unwavering
dislike of Avaro de Campos and his presumable aversion towards her
(affirmed, albeit occasionally also denied, by Pessoa) form one of the leit
motifs of the correspondence and, without explicitly intersecting with
references to marriage, produce nevertheless a pattern of triangular
negotiation of purposes and desires. Ophelia generally rebuts Alvaro's
encroachments, declaring, for instance, that she will not voluntarily
receive.him in her and Fernando's home .25 On one occasion, however,
she appears sufficiently resigned to the inevitability of Campos's interventions in her relationship with Fernando as to assent to the vision of
their future cohabitation as a m6nage i trois: 'eu hei-de gostar muito de
viver com o meu Fernandinho, com o Sr. Eng. A. C. e tudo, e alienado e
234
Anna M. Klobucka
tudo, o que vem a ser o mesme, porque o meu amor quando estd. alienado 6 por causa do sr. Eng. que lhe fazsubir a febre a bOo' (I'm going to
like very much to live with my Fernandinho, with Mr. Engineer,q..c. ind
all, with you crazy and all, which is really the same thirrg, because when
my love goes mad it's Mr. campos who is bringing your fever up to 50
degrees).26 Avaro's and. Fernandinho's shared fevJrish mad.ness figures
more prominently in the second phase of the reiationship, with Campos
often dictating his creator's letters to Ophelia (when notwriting to hei in
his own name), calling her on the phone in Fernando's stead., or coming
along on their streetcar rides. Campos's prominent role in the affair and.
the ambiguous whimsicality of the three protagonists' relations echo in
the lastpoem signed by the heteron;,rm, the much-quoted ,Todas as cartas
de amor sio ridfculas' (All Love Letters Are Ridiculous).27 It ha, been
generally taken for granted by the critics that the poem comments indirectly on Pessoa's epistolary relationship with ophelia; if so, Campos's
testamentary reflection on the inherent ridiculousness of love and amorous discourse gives him the last word in the discursive chain initiated by
the above-quoted Dickensian confrontation of ophelia's and Fernand.o's
inaugural letters, with the desired, end.lessly deferred marriage proposai
at its inflamed centre.
The juxtaposition of ophelia's firsr missive and Fernando,s reply also
helps illuminate in more general terms the rearrangement of the scene
of interpretation of Pessoa's Cartas d,e amoras a result of the publication
of ophelia's side of the exchange. As I have already noted.-, given the
absence of the matching other half of the epistolary dialogrr", p.rrou,,
letters were derached by their commentators from their prigmatic context of referentially rooted dialogic communication and viewed as monologic literary expression, becoming an object of formalist hermeneutics
and freewheeling critical improvisation, which their fragmentary form,
elliptic elusiveness, and referential ambiguity und.eniably encouraged.
By contrast, to read them against Ophelia's letters is to replace this tiberally open-ended discursive scene with one defined by diaiogicjostling of
meanings allied with compering pragmatic purposes; it is to balance
their aesthetic qualities against semiotic demands of material discourse
analysis and historrcrzed patterns of gendered (mis)communication.
I will resist the temptation to revisit mockingly earlier readings of Cartas de amo'r from a perspective privileged by a hindsight thar, iinot perfect, is at least vastly improved by the access to ophelia's contribution to
the exchange. Nonetheless, I find it worthwhile to cite one example of a
conspicuous misreading in order to illustrate the kind of effects that the
Love Letters of Ophelia Queiroz and Fernando Pessoa 235
interpretive framing of Pessqa's letters in the unilateral context of his life
and writing has tended to produce. In his critical commentary on Cartas
de amor, MourS.o-Ferreira elaborated at length on what, in his analysis, is
'o tema... fundamental' of the poet's correspondence with Ophelia: 'the
theme of childhood sought.after or recovered through love.'28 Among
his close readings of individual letters we find an interpretation of number thirteen, written after the return of Pessoa's mother to Lisbon from
South Africa, where she had lived since 1896, and therefore, according
to the critic, reflecting a clash of two distinct, and possibly antagonistic,
infantilized identities: on the one hand, the familiar 'menino da sua
mie' (his mother's boy), on the other, Ophelia's beloved 'Nininho.'The
relevant passage is worth quoting in its entirety:
primeira carta escrita depois dessa instalaglo Ida famflia na casa da rua
Coelho da Rocha] ... ei-lo que significativamente toma certa 'dist6ncia' em
relaq6o a Oph6lia, detendo-se e comprazendo-se numa recordaqio muito
sua, e que e, presumivelmente, uma recordaqao de inf6.ncia: 'Sabes? Estoute escrevendo mas nd,o estou pensando em ti. Estou pensando nas saudades
Na
que tenho do meu tempo da caga aos pombos; e isto 6 uma coisa, como tu
nio tens nada...' (original emphases).
sabes, com que tu
[In the first letter written after the settling (of his family into the apartment
discances himself from
Ophelia, taking time to delight in a recollection very much his own, which
on Rua Coelho da Rocha) ... he significantly
is presumably a memory preserved
from childhood: 'By the way - although
you, I'm not thinhing altout you.I'm thinking about how I miss
the days when I used to hunt pigeons, which is something you obviously have
nothing to do with ...'l2e
I am writing
If this mention of a 'hunt for pigeons' had, in fact, constituted a reference to Pessoa's childhood memories, it would be difficult to disagree
that it was 'a recollection very much his own.' However, Ophelia's relentiessly detailed epistolary flow reveals on several occasions that in the lovers' private vocabulary 'pombos' designated, quite unambiguously and
precisely, the young woman's breasts. Pessoa's comment translates therefore into a coy, teasing antiphrasis - 'what I'm thinking about doesn't
concern you' meaning its exact opposite, 'what I'm thinking about has
everything to do with you' - a figure of discourse so alien to his literary
expression that the possibility of reading it as such eludes MourS.o-Ferreira entirely, as it does another critic (Seabra), who chooses the same
236
Anna M. I(obucka
Love Letters of Ophelia Queiroz and Fernando Pessoa 227
passage to support his contention that the relationship
berween
Fernando and ophelia was imbued with negativity.3, opheiia,
uf .o*
trast, understood Fernando's implied meaning perfectiy
and followed up
in her reply with an antiphrastii comment of her own, referring
to pes_
soa's coterie of heteronyms and, among them, to ,aquele
sujeito L. -"i,"
mau, muito feio, e muito rabino que se chama Fernindo'
lthat very bad,
ugly, and naughty one named Fernando): 'd.esse e
que eu nio gosto nad.a,
mas mesmo nada ...' (him I don't rike at a[, reaily
not at ail ..1).ut
Another discursive feature of pessoa,s Certas d,e amorthut.riti.s
have
found perplexing, given its conspicuous contrast to the generally
mature
and rhetorically controlled expression of his other
writings, is the wealth
of diminutives that grace his letters to ophelia, their
bebhzinhos,
amorzinhos, anjinhos, querid.inho.s, and", last but not ieast, -urry
beijinhos (not to
mention beijdes, beijocos, beijocas, and, beijninzinhos). Here, tot,
alleged rry_
listic incongruence disappears if insteid of reading pessoa's
love letters
against his poetry literary prose, or even epistolary
Jir.o,r.r. of non-amo_
rous nature, we reinsert them into the dialogic context
that produced.
them, given that a prodigious use of diminutirls stands
out as one of the
most salient features of ophelia's epistolary expression.
To illustrate:
sim, filhinho, o teu bebezinho tem estado
tiste
e coitadinho do Nininho
tambem tem tadol Tem Fernandinho? E 6 por ni.o ver
e seu bebezinho?! Eu
aclrei tanta graQa ao meu querido pieguinhas! Mas
que maridinho tao
pieguinhas que eu vou ter! E o
-e., menino pequenino!! se o beb6 ni.o
fosse beb6 andava com o Nininho ao colo, mas
assim s5 se assen ta no coh
para ouvir hist6rias mas que hist6rias, hist6rias de beiiinhos
nlo 6 meu feio?
[Yes, my child, your lirtle baby has been sad and poor little Nininho
has been
too! Haven't you Fernandinho? And that,s because he
hasn,t seen his little
baby?! I thought my goofy darring was so cute! what
a goofy littre husband
I'rn going to have! He's my riny lirtle boy! If baby wereri'r a
baby she would
carry Nininho in her arms, but because she is shejust
sits on his lap to listen
to his stories, but what great stories, kissing stories, right
my noneypie?132
This modest iliustration of ophelia's exuberant deployrnent
of dimin-
utives seryes also to bring into play another leit
motii of existing critical
commentary on Pessoa's cartas de amor. the presumable
infantilizing
thrust of Fernando's attitude toward.s ophelL. Be it in
Mour6o-Fer-
reira's essay, in Robert Br6chon's biography of the
poet, or in yvette centeno's tellingly titled arricle, 'oph6lia-B6b6zinho
t' o horror do sexo,
(Baby ophelia, or the Horror of sex), the emphasis is on the poet's initiative in metamorphosing the young woman into an innocent, asexual
infant, along with his own concomitant regression into the imaginary
paradise of cnLildhood.33 However, as ophelia's letters demonstrate on
countless occasions, the discourse of infantile masquerade they both
adopted for their exchange was, at the very least, a two-way street. In
effect, it is ophelia who far more energetically than Fernando spins out
elaborate constructions of their mutual infantilization; at the same time,
her flights of fancy make it clear that her copious use of diminutives, a
predilection for baby talk, and imagining her beloved Fernandinho
and/or herself as children are not in the least incompatible with adult that is, sexualized - patterns of amorous engagement, as her wordplay
between 'ao colo' (in my arms) and 'no colo' (on your lap) in the above
It is Ophelia who sends Fernando numerous postcards featuring, alternatively, amorous adult couples and
passage neatly demonstrates.
chubby.babies and toddlers, with such hybrid configurations as two small
children kissing (identified as representing little Fernando and
ophelia) and a mother with a small boy (labeled as 'Fernandinho'). It is
ophelia's imagination that engenders a seamless continuum between
infantile masks she makes herself and her lover wear throughout their
romance and the child as a reproductive signifier of their future sexual
union. To assume, as has invariably been the case, that ophelia was
merely a willing follower in what Br6chon has called 'o jogo de infantilidade perversa que lhe imp6e o seu excdntrico namorado' (the game of
perverse infantilization imposed on her by her eccentric lover) is of
course consistent with extrapolating all interpretive constructs of the
relationship from the unilateral, monologic evid.ence of pessoa's letters.34 Such an assumption rests additionally on the evid.ence of obvious
intellectual inequality between the correspondents; as Br6chon also
ophelia should not be viewed as a portuguese
stresses, Fernando and
counterpart to Flaubert and Louise Colet. Yet it ignores the commonsensicai recognition that, in the matter of lovers' talk and in spite of her
young age, Ophelia was likely more experienced and uninhibited than
Fernando: unlike him, at least she had already had a boyfriend. The ease
and exuberance with which she deploys her considerable repertoire of
baby talk, diminutive endearments, and imaginary scenarios of sexualized children's play are only on rare occasions matched by her correspondent's epistolary discourse, occasions puzzling nevertheless for the
interpreters of Pessoa's Cartas de amorand for which they have attempted
to account by articulating explanations ranging from infantile regres-
Love Letters of Ophelia Queiroz and Fernando Pessoa ' 239
238 Anna M. Klobuck
sion.as a refuge from sex to suggestions of paedophilia (to which even
the thirty-year-old ophelia of the affair's second stage remains subject in
Br6chon's imagination). Here as elsewhere, reading Pessoa's letters in a
dialogic counterpoint with Ophelia's yields effects that are quite distinct
from - if not necessarily incompatible with - those produced by reading
them as part and parcel of his mass of heteronyrnous writing. It is to be
5
hoped that such a split framing of this much-dissected hermeneutic
object can make it a more meaningfully relevant component of the
increasingly variegated scenario in which Pessoa's drama em genteis recurrently being restaged in contemporary critical discourse.35
NOTES
6
1 Darlene
Sadlier, An Introd,uction to Femand.o Pessoa: Mod,emism and, the Parad,oxes
of Authorshzp (Gainesville: Universiry Press of Florida, 1gg8), 133.
2 The existence of the relationship
and of its epistolary record had, of course,
been public knowledge since carlos Queiroz, ophelia's nephew and pessoa's
friend, commented on them in a radio broadcast (later published in a booklet) a few days after the poet's untimely death. see carlos eueiroz, Homenagem a Femando Pessoa: Com os excerptos das suas cartas
d,e
amor e um retrato de
Almad,a (Coimbra: Presenqa, 1936).
3 I will
generally follow the usage prevalent in Portuguese cultural discourse,
which is to refer to Fernando Pessoa as 'Pessoa' and to ophelia eueiroz as
'Ophelia' (or, in
'
a modernized fashion, as
'Of6lia'), since the discursive con-
vention on which it rests is not predominantly sexist but takes into account
the relative originality of a person's given and last name (thus 'Pessoa' is used
since it less common than 'Fernando,' whereas 'ophelia,' an unusual first
name, is preferred as more original than 'Queiroz').I will, however, attempt
to correct the gendered bias that is also operative in this usage (since women
are never referred to by their last name alone) by employing the poet's given
name on suitable occasions.
4 Although it is not entirely clear whether such
a bias was among the reasons
for the delayed publication of Ophelia's letters, it
is worth noting that the history of women's epistolary writing registers a strong tradition of resistance
against making a female writer's private discourse public: 'To publish a
woman's letters ... was in some way to violate her personal integrity.' Elizabeth
C. Goldsmith,
eruLure,
e
Introduction to Writi,ng the Femal.e Voi,ce:
Essays
m Epistotary Lit-
d. Elizabeth C. Goldsmith (Boston: Northeastern University Press,
1989), vii.
7
On the combined evidence of Fernando's letters and Ophelia's retrospective
account (as presented in the 1978 volume), the first stage of their relationship was assumed to have lasted eight months, from late February lg20 to late
November of the same year, and its second instalmentjustfour months, from
September 1929 toJanuary 1930. As Ophelia's letters show, however; their allimportant first kiss (vividly if imprecisely recollected in her account)
occurred in effect on Z2January 7920, while their exchange of flirty notes at
the office where they both worked had been taking place as early as November 1919. More dramatically, it can be ascertained that the second phase of
the romance lasted at least ayear and a half, till the spring of 1931; the last
published letter in which Ophelia still showers her 'Nininho'with terms of
endearment and expresses expectations for a common future dates from 29
March 1931.
In fact, the commentary most attentive to the two-way dynamic of the
exchange is probably a note byJorge de Sena, written in 1977 and therefore
before any of the correspondence, save for brief excerpts from Pessoa's letters, was published atall; Sena based his remarks on a paper by Alexandrino
Severino, which remains unpublished. SeeJorge de Sena, Fernand,o Pessoa e C
Heter6nima (Lisbon: Ediqoes 70, 7984), 427 .
David Mourd.o-Ferreira, 'Sobre as "Cartas d.e amor" de Fernando Pessoa,' in
Cartas de Amor de Fnnando Pessoa, ed. Mourdo-Ferreira and Maria da Graqa
Queiroz, 3rd ed. (Lisbon: Aliiru,1994) ,183-4, Unless orherwise attributed,
all translations are my own.
8 Mourdo-Ferreira'Sobre as "Cartas de amor,"' 214.
9 Jos6 Augusto Seabra, 'Amor e Fingimento (Sobre as "Cartas de amor" d.e
Fernando Pessoa),' PnsonaS (July 1979) :78,84. Reprinted in his O Hetsrotexto
pessoano (Lisbon: Dinaliwo, 1985) ,61-76.
10 Isabel Allegro de Mahalhies, 'O gesto, e nio as mios: Fernando Pessoa e a
figuraqlo do feminino; uma gramdtica da mulher evanescente,' in Capelas
im,perJ'eitas (Lisbon: Horizonte, 2002), 115. In an essay posted on the internet,
Janise de Sousa Paiva takes this critical direction to an extreme bordering on
self-parody by stating that '[o] espago ocupado por Oph6lia 6 um nio
espaqo' (the space occupied by Ophelia is a non-space) and that the poet's
.
missives are in effect 'cartas de amor entre Fernando Pessoa e Fernando
Pessoa' (love letters between Fernando Pessoa and Fernando Pessoa). 'A
Heteronimia nas cartas de amor de Fernando Pessoa,' http://victorian
.fortunecity. com/statue / 44 / Nteteronimianascartasdefernando. htm.
20July 2004.
11 In an earlier publication, Monteiro had suggested a connecLion between the
development of Pessoa's romance and the discourse of his letters to Ophelia
240 Anna M. Klobuck
Love Le tters of Ophelia Queiroz and Fernando pessoa Z4l
and Edgar Allan Poe's short story 'Ligeia' (which pessoa glossed in a poem).
'Oph6lia's Levers' in Selzcted Proceedings olthe 35,h Annual Mounta,in
rian Novel,' in Portra'ih of Marriage in Literature, ed. Anne c. Hargrove and
Maurine Magliocco (Macomb:western Illinois Universiry 1gB4), 68.
25 Cartas de amor de Ofili,a,27}.
See his
Interstate.Foreign Language Confnence, ed. Ram6n Fernd.ndez Rubio (Greenville, SC: Furman Universiry 1987), 245-54. For another conrriburion ro
reading the relationship as a case of fictional emplotment intentionally engineered by Pessoa, see Antonio Thbucchi, 'IJm Fausto Mangas-de-alpaca: as
"Cartas de amor" de Pessoa' in Pessoana mtnima (Lisbon: Imprensa NacionalCasa da Moeda, 1984), 51-9.
12 Joao Gaspar sim6es, vi.da e obra
d.e
26
Fsrnand,o pessoa,4th ed, (Amadora: Ber-
29
l6
r0.
d,e
amor de tr'ernando Pessoa,23-6.
The responsibility for endowing the youngest offspring of the
eueiroz family
with a Shakespearean nalne - rindoubtedly a source of attraction for Pessoa,
whose in[ense and lifelong interest in Shakespeare and the character of
Hamletis well documented - also lies with one of the family's women: as
Ophelia recounts in the 1985 interview, her oldest sisterJoaquina was reading
Hamletatthe time of the girl's birth. Ophelia's own predilection and talent
for theatrical self-dramatizatsonis attested to vividly in the same testimony.
18 Cartas de Amor de Otblia a Fnnando Pessoa, ed. Manuela Nogueira and Maria da
Conceiqao Azevedo (Lisbon: Assirio & Alvim, 1996), bg.
19 Cartas de amor de Ofdlia,33-4.
2l
22
(Setected
from
prose,lBB).
3l
Cartas de amor de Ofdlia, 71.
32
cartas de amor de ofdlia, 92. My English translarion of this passage is at besr
approximate. I have not accounted for Ophelia's spelling distortions that
33 Robert Br6chon, Estranho estrangeiro: (/ma biografia
L7
20
Fetnando Pessoa,198-9. English translation of the quote
mimic baby talk ('tiste'for'triste' and 'tado'for 'estado'); herwordplayjuxtaposing 'ao colo' and 'no colo' is likewise untranslatable. It is worth noting
that she consistently displays a predilection fbr antiphrastic terms of endearment, such as 'feio' (literally, 'ugly') and, elsewhere, ,preto' (literally,
'black').
first-person responses to Maria da Graqa's interview questions. See Maria da
Graqa Queiroz, 'ophelia Queiroz: o mist6rio de uma pepsoa,'
Jom,al d,e Letras,
Artes e ldeias,12-18 November 1985.
Carl;as
de
letter is by Richard Zenith
30 Seabra, 'Amor e Fingimento,' 81.
15 An even more patent case of testimonial ambiguity may be found in a text
published in 1985, in which Maria da Graga eueiroz freely alternares
between her own third-person recollections of her great-aunt and Ophelia's
.
Cartas de amor
Pessoa's
pessoa,
Pessoa's
death. See Fernando Pessoa (Alvaro de campos), poesia, ed. Teresa Rita
Lopes (Lisbon: Assirio & Alvim, 2002), bb0-1.
28 Mourao-Ferreira, in Cartas de amor d,e Fsm,and,o pessoa,IgZ.
trand, 1981),493.
13 Gaspar Sim6es, Vi.da e obra de Fernando Pessoa, 492.
14 Mourio-Ferreira, 'Nota pr6via,' in cartas de amor d,e Femando
Cartas de amar de Ofelia,233.
27 Dated 21 October 1935 and therefore a little over a month before
d.e
Fernando
Pessoa,
trans.
Maria Abreu and Pedro Tamen (Lisbon: euetzal, 1996); yvette centeno,
'oph6lia-B6b6zinho ou o horror do sexo,' col6quio/Letras 4g (May 1979):
1l-
19.
34 Brecho n, Estranho estrangeiro, 375.
35 Another long-overdue critical undertaking, which is however beyond the
scope of the Present essay, would be a comparative reading of Pessoa's most
significant epistolary texs (such as, in additi on to Ca,rtas rJe amrn; his muchdiscussed epistles to Gaspar Simoes and Casais Monteiro, his f'ew surviving letters to M6rio de Sd.-Carneiro, etc.) as a diversified but fundamentally coexten-
Cartas de amor d,e Fenxand,o Pessoa,4g-50.
'fhe Selccted Prose of lremando Pessoa, ed. and trans. Richard Zenith (NewYork:
Grove, 2001 ), 1 29-30.
Deborah Tannen, YouJust Don't (Jndsrstand,: Wom.en and, Mm i.n Conaersati.on
in heteronymous discursive performance, in which heteronymy
clearly and recurrently emerges as a living experiment in enacting and confronting alteriry both within the writing self and between the self and the
interpellated, (non-)corresponding other. (I am grateful to Mark sabine for
this suggesrion.)
sive exercise
(NewYork: william Morrow, 1gg0) ,lB,42.Interestingly, one of Fernando's
own devices for deflecting Ophelia's continuing insistence on introducing
him to her family was an invocation of properly cultural difference: he
refused the invitation to her home on the grounds of his 'educaqio
estrangeira' (foreign education) . Cartas de amor fu Of6lia,77.
23 cartas cle amor d,e ofelia,8l, BB; cartas d,e amor de Femand,o pes;oa, g6.
24 Barbara Weiss, 'The Dilemma of Happily Ever After: Marriage and the Victoi
L
I
i
I
t
,
I
I
{
F.
f
t,
l:'
'n,f,{