An ibis that flew too close to the sun

Abstract

The following is a chapter from Pessoa: A Biography, forthcoming in July 2021 from Liveright/Norton. It covers the rise and fall of the Empreza Ibis, discussing a little-known poem by Pessoa that suggests the enterprise was doomed to fail as well as his literary reaction to that failure: he began writing the English sonnets that attempted to compete with and perhaps surpass Shakespeare. For the readers of Pessoa Plural, the chapter has been enhanced with facsimile documents from the Pessoa Archive, thanks to the collaboration of the journal’s editors.

Keywords

• pessoa, fernando
• guedes, vicente
• shakespeare, william
• printing presses
• publishers and publishing
• sonnets, english
• business failures
• empreza ibis