ABSTRACT
This chapter explores Fernando Pessoa's understanding of the specific madness he discovers in himself and in William Shakespeare, the uses he puts it to, both in personal terms and creative ones and, finally, its relationship to the genius he ascribes to both men. It is common knowledge that Pessoa diagnosed himself, in psychological terms, as a hystero-neurasthenic. One of Pessoa's longer-lived experiments was with 'sensacionismo', a mutilated version of futurism adapted by himself and Mario de Sa-Carneiro for the home market. Some Portuguese artists agreed that Shakespeare had created Hamlet as a neurotic character. Several of Pessoa's appreciations of Shakespeare's genius therefore mention the inevitable madness he believed such genius entailed. The sane by-products of both men's madness are Shakespeare's dramatic characters and Pessoa's heteronyms; that is, the essence of their literary genius. The poem offers us a vision of the potential cure for neurosis in Alberto Caeiro's passive acceptance of life, and his rejection of introspection or metaphysical speculation.
