Message, one of the greatest poems in the whole of Portuguese literature, was Fernando Pessoas only book written in Portuguese to be published during his lifetime. It is out of an atmosphere of general European decline, and with unwavering focus on his own country in particular, that Pessoa orchestrates his Message: a telling of the great events and protagonists behind the genesis of Portugal, of the golden age of maritime discovery and of subsequent national entropy, all of it predictive and flowing towards the future construction of a new and different empire: the Fifth Empire, which, in...

Poesia. First Anthology offers English-language readers a bilingual edition of the first anthology that was made of Fernando Pessoas poetic work. Edited and introduced by Adolfo Casais Monteiro in the 1940s, it comprises a fine selection of poems as well as several prose texts, including the letter Pessoa addressed to Casais Monteiro explaining the origin of his heteronyms. The book includes a preface by George Monteiro and an essay by Eduardo Lourenco.