Correspondence from Fernando Pessoa to Karl Germer

Apartado 147,

Lisbon

22nd. October, 1930.

Karl Germer, Esq.,

Lietzenseefur 9,

Berlin-Charlottenburg.

Dear Sir:

Just as a curiosity, and as an example of what even a product of spontaneous ignorance can effect in point of "impression", when, whatever its inner lapses, it is rhythmically right (which the translation could not give), I am giving you a translation of the letter I have just received from the Editor of Presenca in acknowledgement of my little poem "The Last Spell".

"My dear Fernando Pessoa: Your poem has impressed me as one of the best pages in your work. I found myself full of ardour to try, again and now, with all the depth I can give it, to understand the meaning of your personality, as realized in your multiple personalities. This poem is, in truth, owing to the resonance which the form communicates to us of some-thing passed in your consciousness—or, better, in your soul—, something perhaps not yet perfectly revealed to me in the three or four times I have read it—a masterpiece of your genius. My enthusiasm was so great when I read it that I at once thought of writing for the forthcoming issue of Presenca, in which it will be published, an interpretive prolongation of your poem. Would that displease you? In it—in the interpretive prolongation—I would try to say intellectually what at the present moment the magic of your poem makes me experience only in musical confusion.—Your great admirer and friend, who thanks you for one of the moments more full of promises that he has ever felt in his life, by the reading of your 'Last Spell'. (sd) Joá Gaspar Simóes."

I cannot, unfortunately, translate my blushes. But I shall be very pleased to take care to have that issue of Presenca sent to the wrong people, which are of course the right people.

Simóes (I am not simply applying the old principle of "tickle me Toby and I'll tickle thee") is the best of our young critics here; the allusion to "trying again" to interpret me refers to an essay on me which he wrote and inserted in his book Temas (it contains essays on Dostoyevsky and Proust, so I am in fair company) and alluded to as in some sense a "provisional" interpretation.

Apologizing for the infliction of this, I am

Yours very sincerely,

Fernando Pessoa

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