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Correspondence from Fernando Pessoa to Israel Regardie
Apartado 147 Lisbon
30th. October, 1930.
Care Frater:
Thank you very much for your letter of the 27th. And for the cutting from the Oxford Mail. I hope that, knowing my great interest, you will always let me know anything that is happening in the matter.
In so far as Portugal is concerned, there will not be, nor need there be, any further developments. Once the matter was dealt with prominently in the Diário de Notifias which is doubly the foremost daily in the country (it is a sort of Portuguese Times plus Daily Mail), and afterwards in the Notícias Ilustrado (which is the foremost non-daily in Portugal), the local work is complete, and nothing more could be expected or obtained.
As a direct development if this, based on the fact that Mr. [Augusto] Ferreira Gomes, who found the letter and cigarette-case, is now in Paris, it is purposed to continue the work there; the first steps have already been taken by Mr. Gomes and I think that shortly something will be obtained. It is not, of course, a matter so simple (in a sense) as in Portugal; for here, though opposition of all sorts arose out of all corners, yet we know the counter-moves and had the exact notion of the height of the obstacles, being therefore able to fit the height of the jump to theirs. Paris, of course, is variously different.
The main point, however, will emerge in a fortnight or three weeks from now. It will, I think, be impossible to get it all ready before that. It comes to this:
All newspaper publicity is quite good as far as it goes, but it does not go very far, unless the subject is one which keeps on being dealt with in the papers. Then it automatically becomes a sort of serial publicity. You can see this very clearly in the way in which authors, who are violently written up on the first books, gradually lapse form our very memory of their names if the same publicity be not equally projected on their subsequent works. So the logical conclusion is this—to get publicity done by book. Newspapers are good, indeed they are indispensable, to give the book a basis—I mean in a case of this kind; they are the raw matter. It would, indeed, be impossible to write a book on the Crowley case unless there were the elements supplied by, and the justification by printed news in, the papers published in the place where the suicide, murder or disappearance took place. But once this basis exists, the book can safely be written. And it should be written. And it is the culmination of the matter. If there be more books than one, the better.
Now, apart from the official British detectives (or something of the sort) who have been investigating the Crowley Case—one almost certainly in Portugal and one quite certainly in Paris (he went to the office of the illustrated weekly Détective and bought the 2nd. May 1929 issue, which contains an article on 666)—there has been under special commissioning elements because he was here dealing with another investigation, a certain other English detective who has carried his investigations very far and has arrived at some startling conclusions.
He has received authority to write a book on the subject, and it is this book which will concentrate the whole matter; it will be, apart from this, and unless I am seriously mistaken, a complete example of how a detective investigation should be carried on in real life. In point of the investigation itself, the book will resemble Freeman Wills Croft's detective novels, which have so wide public in the English-speaking countries. But this will be more severely logical, and it will have the added virtue of dealing with reality.
The book will contain, among other things, (1) the complete examination of an alibi, (2) the gradual discovery of the truth in this very serious matter, (3) the culmination of the whole case in a murder, which, however, is not Crowley's, and this makes it all the more complex. There is, of course, no doubt about this murder. It is a public matter.
The author of the book—which, I am informed, is complete as to details and written in part—hopes, as I have said, to have it completely written in about a fortnight. It takes longer than it seemed at first. But the essential point is that it be absolutely logical and impressive. I hope it will be—more lucid and direct than the present letter, which, being written in a hurry for the Sud-Express post, is hardly a self-testimony of clear-mindedness In the writer.
The author will probably either attack the problem of publication by sending MS. to a literary agency, he is uncertain which; or perhaps it can safely be sent direct to Collins, who specialize in crime (I mean in crime stories), own The Crime Club and have the complete organization for the distribution of a book of this sort. The one point is to have the book accepted somewhere (by some publisher wholly independent of any connection with 666, and as Collins a publisher as possible) without loss of time. There is no point in losing time. Perhaps you can make some suggestion which might be conducive to the sureness and quickness of this effect.
I am sending a copy of this letter to Mr. Karl Germer, for I know he will be interested in its contents.
With best wishes, I am
Yours fraternally,
Fernando Pessoa
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