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Correspondence from Fernando Pessoa to Karl Germer
Apartado 147, Lisbon
20th. October, 1930.
Karl Germer, Esq., Lietzensseufer 9, Berlin-Charlottenburg.
Dear Sir:
Since my last letters, which were of the 12th. And the 13th., I have little news to give, but some of it is interesting. I have not yet received any letter from Mr. [August Ferreira] Gomes (an alcoholic postcard from the French frontier is doubly discounted); I am therefore still unable to give you his Paris address, supposing he is intending to indulge in one. As soon as I hear from him, I shall communicate with you.
Please thank Miss Jaeger [Hanni Jaeger] in my name for her very natural and expressive letter which I received on Saturday. I cannot get for her—at least as yet—the letter Mr. Crowley wrote because it is part of the "case" and must be retained by the Police. I am not writing directly to Miss Jaeger because there is in this country an intermittent Postal Censorship and certainly an envelope addressed to her would attract attention, as her name—having been prominent in the first Portuguese daily and the first Portuguese non-daily—would attract attention and this might lead to my having all my letters opened and all letters to me opened too. Really, in so far as this sad case is concerned, I have no reason to mind my letters being opened, since there is nothing in them—nor could there be—in any way open to suspicion, censure or censorship. But the principle might extend to other letters—on far different matters—which I write and receive and I would not like that to happen.
I have just been informed that certain Catholic persons not unconnected with official circles have been highly incensed by this case—first, because, of course, they can make nothing of it; second, because they have taken the spiritual trouble to scent the Satanic in it. One of these people was kind enough to suggest that, "whatever may have happened", it would not be amiss "to trouble that Pessoa a bit", just as a "side-line", inasmuch as, apart from other past malpractices, which I must have committed in trance, I had actually turned up at the Criminal Investigation, the first time I went there, with a Satanic book. This, alas!, is true. The grimoire in question was Raphiel's Ephemris, that well-known compendium of Infernal Necromancy. It was this magical work which permitted me to divine that the Sun entered Libra at 6.36 p.m. on the 23rd. September. Hincillae lacrymae . . .
Just to please people like these (I always like pleasing these people in this way), I have sent to the one really interesting Portuguese literary paper—it is a small monthly called Presnca, published in Coimbra—a little poem I wrote the other day (on the 15th., as a matter of fact). I am sending you, as a curiosity, a copy of the Potuguese text and a literal English translation, just to show the meaning. Seriously, now, I do not know exactly what I was writing when I wrote that thing, but I certainly wrote it straight off, acting as an intellectual medium for the imaginary weird priestess of my own devising. The poem, which is severely classical in tone, is probably all nonsense, since I am quite ignorant of the inner language of the subject; yet, just as it issued out of me, just so it went down and went off. If only for that casual verse about "the holy infernal powers". I should like to see it printed. The Coimbra boys will certainly print it; my only fear is that is should have got to them too late for their immediate use.
There is just one other thing to tell you. The English detective, who was commissioned to handle this matter (see my letter of the 13th.), hopes to conclude his investigation to-day. This I heard yesterday from the friend of mine who very kindly keeps me informed, in a general way, of the other man's activities. I am also informed that a good number of days were spent by the investigator in tracking down a certain taxi, connected (I cannot imagine how) with the Crowley case. He has tracked it down at last, after a long and weary process of elimination, and I am told that the upshot of that is so startling that it will add, so to speak, a fourth dimension to the problem. In these ensuing days the man will write his re-port, and I am asking my intermediary friend that he suggest to the detective—unless some professional reason counters the possibility of his agreement—that he publish the result of his investigation, especially if it be so interesting as I am thus vaguely told it is.
I shall keep you informed of everything I know and may interest you.
Very sincerely yours,
Fernando Pessoa
P.S.—As to the capitalization: the man I am going to speak to is returning to Lisbon at the very end of the month.
[Included with letter]: Translation (line by line) from the Portuguese.
THE LAST SPELL
I have repeated the old incantation And the great Goddess has denied herself to the eyes. I have repeated, in the pauses of the ample wind, The prayers whose soul is a fertile being. Nothing has the abyss given me or the heavens shown. Only the wind returns to where I am, whole and alone. And everything sleeps in the confused world.
Othertime my power entranced the bushes And my evocation lifted out of the ground Concentrated presences from those that scattered Sleep in the natural form of things. Othertime my voice happened. Fairies and elfs, if I called, I saw, And the leaves of the forest were shining.
My wand, with which out of will I spoke to essential existences, No longer knows my reality. No longer, if I trace the circle, is there anything. The alien wind murmurs dead sighs, And to the moonlight that rises above the thickets I am no more than the woods or the road.
The gift is lost from me with which I was loved. I no longer make myself become the form and end of life To so many who, because I sought them, sought me. Already, beach, the sea of arms does not flood me. Nor do I see myself erect before the greeted sun, Or, lost in magical ecstasy, In the moonlight, at the mouth of the deep cave.
No longer do the sacred infernal powers Who, sleeping without gods or fate, Are equal to the substance of things, Hear my voice or their own names. The music has departed from my hymn. My astral fury is no longer divine Nor my thought body any longer a god.
And the far-off deities of the black well, Whom, so many times, pale, I evoked, With the rage of loving in turbulence, Unevoked to-day stand before me. As, without loving them, I called them, Now, that I do not love, I have them; and I know That my sold being they will consume.
But thou, Sun, whose gold was my prey, Thou, Moon, whose silver I converted, If ye no longer can give me that beauty Which I so often had because I willed it, At least my ended being divide— My essential being be lost in its own self, Only my body without me remain soul and being!
Let my last magic convert me Into a statue of myself in a living body! Let who I am die, but what I made myself and existed, An anonymous presence that is kissed, Flesh of my abstract captive love, By the death of me in which I live again; And such as I was, being nothing, may I be!
Fernando Pessoa
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