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Fernão and Fernando: Two Great Travelers

2012; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 10; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/pan.2012.0005

1565-3668

José Blanco,

Cultural, Media, and Literary Studies

This paper attempts to draw a parallel between Fernão Mendes Pinto, the sixteenth-century adventurer, explorer and writer who spent twenty-one years travelling in the Middle and Far East, and Fernando Pessoa, the twentieth-century poet who spent his working life at the desks of commercial firms in downtown Lisbon. In Pinto’s case, the voyage was the actual physical movement from one place to another, through dangers and adventures, while in Pessoa the voyage was an immobile journey through the inner self. It is argued that Pinto’s book Peregrinação and Pessoa’s book Livro do desassossego can be read as entering a dialogue with each other.