Alexander Search’s immersion in English and American poets

Abstract

While a student in Durban High School, the young Fernando Pessoa / Charles Robert Anon (afterwards Alexander Search) will make of English and American poetry his first “adverse genre” by borrowing its emotions and simplicity, at the same time intellectualizing a dark questioning of existence. Pessoa’s excursion through Shakespeare, Milton, and the romantics records the depth of his discontent through expressive dark themes. By 1909 these readings fade into the background of Pessoa’s radical skepticism and the dramatization of his intellectual pursuit of the absolute.

Keywords

• fernando pessoa
• search, alexander
• poets, english
• poets, american
• heteronyms
• heterónimos
• intertextuality
• influence (literary, artistic, etc.)