O “drama em gente” de Fernando Pessoa, das cartas de amor às cartas astrais

Abstract

In classical treatises, epistolary exchange is defined as the dialogue between absent people who, through letters, become present. In this sense, this article proposes to revisit the much explored notion of heteronymy that stands out in the work of Fernando Pessoa, focusing on a very specific point: its effective epistolary appearance and its “cartographic” development. Because it is in letters (to Casais Monteiro) that Pessoa explains the genesis of heteronyms as a process that began precisely as an exchange of letters with non-existent characters. Thus, we are interested in mapping on these lines the poet's own game of constructing there, as the one who writes and explains, the relations at the same time between autobiography and the “direct history” of his depersonalizations. In order to do so, we also move towards some considerations made about his love letters (exchanged with Ofélia Queiroz, in which some heteronyms actually interfere) and his astral writings (which involve, in addition to epistles, the charts he made to himself and for each of its heteronyms).