| The Education of the Stoic: The Only Manuscript of the Baron of Teive Contributor(s): Pessoa, Fernando (Author), Tabucchi, Antonio (Contribution by), Zenith, Richard (Translator) |
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ISBN: 1878972405 ISBN-13: 9781878972408 Publisher: Exact Change OUR PRICE: $12.56 Product Type: Paperback Published: November 2004 Annotation: The rediscovery in the 1990s of the Portuguese writer Fernando Pessoa (1888 -- 1935) is reminiscent of the rediscovery of Kafka in the 1950s. Like Kafka, Pessoa left his work in disarray, much of it to be published only posthumously. And Pessoa has become a literary icon of post-modernism, as Kafka was of modernism. Pessoa is best known for his unique practice of writing under "heteronyms, " distinct personalities whom he supplied with differing tastes, literary influences, even horoscopes. Pessoa was a multitude of writers. Exact Change's edition of Pessoa's major prose work, The Book of Disquiet, has been one of our bestsellers, and extensive articles on Pessoa have now appeared in the New York Times Book Review, New York Review of Books, Los Angeles Times Book Review, Voice Literary Supplement, and Washington Post. The Book of Disquiet even showed up in an ad for bn.com, as one of Susan Sontag's "Favorite 20th Century Books in Translation." And the discovery continues. In 1999, translator Richard Zenith made a new find in the Pessoa archive in Lisbon: a group of prose writings by a previously unknown heteronym, the "Baron of Teive." Zenith edited the Portuguese volume of these writings, which were received as a crucial piece of the puzzle that is Pessoa's oeuvre. The Education of the Stoic is the unique work left by the Baron of Teive, who, after destroying his previous literary attempts and before destroying himself, explains "the impossibility of producing superior art." It is the dark companion piece to The Book of Disquiet. This is its first complete publication in English. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Fiction | Literary |
| Dewey: FIC |
| Physical Information: 0.31" H x 6.08" W x 8.06" (0.29 lbs) 128 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Pessoa's trenchant complement to The Book of Disquiet "I transferred to Teive my speculations on certainty, which lunatics have in greater abundance than anyone." Portuguese author Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935) was a multitude of writers: his works were composed by "heteronyms," alter egos with distinct biographies, ideologies, influences, even horoscopes. The Education of the Stoic is the only work left by the Baron of Teive, who, having destroyed all his previous attempts at literary creation, and about to destroy himself, explains "the impossibility of producing superior art." The baron's manuscript is found in a hotel-room drawer--not unlike editor and translator Richard Zenith's own discovery, while conducting research in the Pessoa archives, of a small black notebook whose contents had never been transcribed. In it he found the missing pieces of this short but trenchant complement to Pessoa's major prose work, The Book of Disquiet. Pessoa himself noted that despite their dialectical differences, the middle-class author of The Book of Disquiet (assistant bookkeeper Bernardo Soares) and the aristocrat Teive, "are two instances of the very same phenomenon--an inability to adapt to real life." "There are in Pessoa echoes of Beckett's exquisite boredom; the dark imaginings of Baudelaire (whom he loved); Melville's evasive confidence man; the dreamscapes of Borges" -Voice Literary Supplement "The humorist who never smiles and makes our blood run cold, the inventor of other poets and self-destroyer, the author of paradoxes clear as water, and like water, dizzying, the mysterious one who doesn't cultivate mystery, mysterious as the moon at noon, the taciturn ghost of the Portuguese midday--who is Pessoa?" -Octavio Paz |