Message is one of the greatest poems in the whole of Portuguese literature. It was also Fernando Pessoaâs only book written in Portuguese to be published during his lifetime. At the time of its release, in October of 1934 (just over a year before the authorâs death), Europe of the Enlightenment and freedom was succumbing to the advance of modern dictatorships, the escalation of expansionary nationalisms and a brand of imperialism based on atheistic materialism which, half a decade later, would trigger the Second World War. It is out of this atmosphere of general European decline, and...