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Correspondence from Fernando Pessoa to Aleister Crowley
Apartado 147, Lisboa
6th. January, 1930.
Carissime Frater,
I thank you very much indeed for your letters of the 11th. And the 22nd. December, particularly so for the second one, and especially for the written addendum to it.
I have just returned to Lisbon, so my "return of post" is inevitably somewhat late, though I am writing immediately.
I shall be in Lisbon, for all practical purposes, during the next three months. Even when I am absent from here, it is only to stay in Evora, which is only four hours away, by train; I can therefore always return to Lisbon at very short notice. The point is that I have that notice in good advance, and, even then, that it do not reach Lisbon just when I have left, so I find it only on my return, which may mean anything up to a fortnight, the purpose of an advance notice being thus nullified.
If, however, any month of these first three of the year will serve your time and intention, I should very much prefer to meet you here in March—at any time within March. I shall not leave Lisbon at all in that month, and I have both the present month and February taken up by matters, of no importance in themselves—either absolutely, or relatively to the present one—, which deliver me over to an extraneous attention which I should not like to be clogged with when listening to you.
Apart from this, astrological
reasons would counsel me to suggest March; and it is indeed
the very lapsing of the direction, which makes January and
February impeding months, that will make March a propitious
one, especially to meet you, the underlying solar direction
(pro.
Furthermore, there is a vague possibility that I may have to go to England in the end of February. If so, I would inform you in full advance and (unless there be some reason cannot foresee for the place of meeting to be Lisbon) you would be spared the trouble of coming to Portugal.
By the middle of February I shall be able fully to inform you about all this.
I shall, of course, tell no one at all about your visit. Was your warning connected with the receipt by you of a booklet (in French) by Raul Leal? He is a friend of mine (so to speak, for I am altogether apart from any sort of friendship and from every sort of intimacy); I translated to him some pages, here and there, of the first volume of your Confessions, and he asked me for the address of the publisher, so as to send you his book to their postal care. He now tells me, on my return to Lisbon, that he has received a letter from you, and is going to write to you a long one "on occult matters". With this, of course, I have no connection, as I have no connection with anything. Please do not take this as a reflection of any kind on Leal, whom I really like and whose splendidly intense metaphysical ability I appreciate. This is a mere statement of fact and, so to speak, a non-juror's note.
I hope to send you in the course of the present month the rectified nativity and directions reckoned from it for the present time. When away from Lisbon I had no ephemerides or data.
I am registering the letter only that I may be surer that it will not be likely to go astray.
Yours fraternally,
Fernando Pessoa.
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) being remarkably attuned to
the circumstance.