ABSTRACT

This chapter addresses what remains the less explored aspect of Jose Saramago's engagement with Fernando Pessoa, namely his appropriation and adaptation of the concept and practice of heteronymic creation to a literary project quite dissimilar to Pessoa's own. When assessing Saramago's re-imagining of Ricardo Reis, a useful point of reference and comparison is the description of the heteronym's philosophy of 'epicurismo triste' that Pessoa ascribed to Reis's brother, the literary critic Frederico Reis. In 1989's quasi-autobiographical Historia do Cerco de Lisboa, meanwhile, Saramago builds on these observations, revising Pessoa's proposition of heteronymous literary creation in pursuit of a politically interventionist literary practice. Pessoa's correction of facetious analogy – 'lonely being where even our own selves are not' – reiterates his challenge to Reis to forsake 'self-fakery' and examine the self or selves that he repudiates. Reis's desire to abstract himself from a 'besieging' world is of course also evident in his attraction to sites of passage and impermanence.