Give me more wine, because life is nothing.
— Fernando Pessoa
Ah, Pessoa... what’s not to love? This quietly brilliant, melancholic soul who spent his days in a dull office job, then slipping away into the night to write poetry that cracks open your mind and heart.
There’s something so moving about the image of him alone in his little room, the surrounding darkness, the world asleep, while he poured entire universes onto the page.
Pessoa was a strange man who not only rejected society and the world at large but also rejected the notion of a singular, unified identity, suggesting instead that the self is fluid, multifaceted, and often contradictory.
“I've always rejected being understood. To be understood is to prostitute oneself. I prefer to be taken seriously for what I'm not, remaining humanly unknown, with naturalness and all due respect.”