Together at Last: Reading the Love Letters of Ophelia Queiroz and ...

230 Anna M. Klobuckaacldressed ophelia: 'o d.ear ophelia, I am ill at these numbers, I have notart to reckon my groans, but that I love thee best, o most best, believe it.'I felt extremely agitated, as is only na[ural, and, not knowing what to say,' I finished putting on my coat and rapidly said good bye. Fernando got up,oil lamp in hand, to accompany me to the door. But then, suddenly, he setthe lamp down on top of a low wall and unexpectedly seized me by thewaist, embraced me and, without a word, kissed me, kissed me passionately,like a madman ...I went home ashamed and confused. Days went by and since Fernandomade no reference to what had happened between us I decided to wdtehim a letter asking for an explanation. That is what gave origin to his firstletter, the response dated March 1, 1920. And so our'courtship' began.]This exceedingly dramatic scene, occurring literally on a d,arkened.stage, with meticulous marking of the actors' movements (I was standing,he sat down, he stood up), no less meticulously described use ofprops (the note, the oil lamp, the coat), and the Hamlet-Ophelia Iovescene metatheatrically embedded at its climax, has been cited by criticssuch as Seabra as one proof among many that Pessoa staged his affairwith ophelia as an episode in the ongoing production of his heteronymousdrama em gente. However, the scene reproduced above was, after all,narrated by Ophelia and written down - 'collected,' 'compiled,' and'structured'- by her great-niece: at the very least, it can be observed thatthey took the element of Shakespearean inspiration supplied by the poetand ran with it, constructing'a fully developed work of dramatic fictionthat has, in turn, shaped the scene of critical interpretation of the affairfor decades to come." That the two Queiroz women may have engagedin something more coinplex than passively reflective acts of recollectionand transcription did not, however, become fully apparent until the publicationof Opheiia's letters (to which she had no access since writing andsending them in the first place, and therefore could not refer to her owndocumentation of the relationship, much more detailed and comprehensivethan that contained in Pessoa's contribution to the correspondence).For the letters tell a rather different story of the early stages ofthe courtship: while confirming that the famous quasi-Shakespeareanlove scene with its crucial first kiss did in fact occur - since in one of herlater missives Ophelia refers to an anniversary of the 'performance ofHamlet' as the 'first time my mouth touched your ,norrth' - they alsorevealed that it took place on Z2January 1920, and therefore not d.aysbut well over a month before ophelia wrote to Fernand.o demanding aLove Letters of Ophelia Queiroz and Fernando Pessoa 231statement of his intentions, and that in those intervening weeks theirlove affair had gained considerable momentum.l8 In other words, thenineteen-year-old Ophelia was not such a stern paragon of respectabilityas her much later account implies; it was only after several months offlirting and a fewweeks of physical intimacy (limited, to be sure, to kissesand embraces at the office) that the young woman became exasperatedwith the secret and undefined nature of her workplace romance andchose to take initiative towards determining its long-term prospects.It is indeed fitting that the correspondence between Pessoa andophelia began the way it did, since the two inaugural letters - hers andhis - anticipate and epitomize its further development. Ophelia's openinggambit is a mention of her conversation with an ex-boyfriend who is' still devoted to her and desires to win her back:Estpu desprezando um rapaz que me ad.ora, que me faria felize que eu seimuito bem as ideias d'ele para mim ... E diga-me agorafrancamente, sei eualguma coisa do Fernandinho?Jd alguma vez me disse as suas ideias, o quepensa fazer de mim? ... Nao me tenho eu entregado completamente ao meuFernandinho? Que recompensa rne dar6? ... Se o Fernandinho nunca pensouem construir famflia, e se nem pensa, peqo-lhe por tudo ... que mo digapor escrito, que me diga as suas ideias sobre a minha pessoa (e nlo seesqueqa que tem dito muitas vezes que me ndo ama, que me adora!)le[I am rejecting a man who ad.ores me, who would make me happy andwhose plans for me I know very well ... And tell me frankly now, what do Iknow of you, Fernandinho? Have you ever told me your ideas,. what youplan to do with me? ... Haven't I given myself completely ro my Fernandinho?And how will he recompense me for it? ... Fernandinho, if you nevercontemplated starting a family, and if you don't have such plans now, Iimplore you ... to tell me in writing what your ideas for me are (and don'tforget that you have told me many times that you don'tjust love me, thatyou adore me!)lNow for Fernandinho's reply:Para me mostrar o seu desprezo, ou, pelo menos, a sua indiferenqa real, nd.oera preciso o disfarce transparente de um discurso t6o comprido ... euemama verdadeiramente nio escreve cartas que parecem requerimentos deadvogado. O amor nio estuda tanto as cousas, nem trata os outros comoreus que 6 preciso 'entalar' ... Reconheeo que tudo isso 6 c6mico, e que a

232 Anna M. Klobuckaparte mais c5mica disto tudo sou eu. Eu pr6prio acharia graea, se ndo aamasse tanto, e se tivesse tempo para pensar em outra cousa que nlo fosseno sofrimento que tem prazer em causar-me ...Ai fica o 'documento escrito' que me pede. Reconhece a minha assinaturao tabelilo Eugdnio Silva.2o[You could have shown me your contempt, or at least your supreme indifference,without the see-through masquerade of such a lengthy treatise ...Those who really love don't write letters that read like lawyers' petitions.Love doesn't examine things so closely, and it doesn't treat others likedefendants on trial ... I realize that all this is comical, and that the mostcomical part of it is me. I myself would think it was funny if I didn't love youso much, and if I had the time to think of anything besides the suffering youenjoy inflicting on me ...Here's the 'written document' you requested. The notary Eug6nio silva canvalidate my signature.l 2l\44rat stands out above all else in this initial exchange is the ,he said,she said' miscommunication and crossing of purposes between the twolovers: ophelia's unexceptional desire to domesticute and normalizetheir romance by channelling it into engagement and marriage - theonly possible development for a young woman from a respectable, middle-classPortuguese family of her time, as both ophelia and Fernandoknew very well - clashes with the confused and confusing non-sequitur ofPessoa's reply, in which we can detectjealousy and injured pride at beingexamined side by side with ophelia's ex-boyfriend, bur also a perplexinglack of understanding of what was, in the historical time inJ socialmilieu they shared, an entirely predictable expectation. In effect, it ispossible to read this exchange as a textbook case of Deborah Tannen,slinguistic investigations into the'cross-cuitural communication' betweenmen and women and an apt sample of the distinct ,genderlects' of thetwo sexes clashing dialogically in a historically specific time and. place.22The question of marriage would remain at the forefront of furthercorrespondence, although Pessoa himself made only rare, mostly indirectreferences to their possible future life together, while Ophelia seizedevery opportunity to attempt to extract a more binding declaration,going as far as to sign some of her letters 'ophelia eueirozpessoa' (fol_lowed by 'I wish' in parentheses) and sending Fernand.o postcards ofbabies she would describe as 'o nosso Fernandinho pequenino de aigumdia' (our future little Fernandinho). she also attempted to transflrmLove Letters of Ophelia Queiroz and Fernando Pessoa 233her metaphysics of wishful thinking into a politics of faits accomplis bysuggesting that she might tell her sister Fernando had already asked forher hand in marriage in order to dispose her family more favourablytowards their continuing courtship..Pessoa, with very rare exceptions,tended to ignore those and other hints: to give but one example, whenOphelia wrote him repeatedly and at considerable length about a convenientlypriced and located apartment that had become available for rent,he chose to ignore her at first implied and eventually explicit message -that it would be perfect for the fwo of thern - and answered only heroriginally stated query about its precise distance from the street in whichhe was then living with his mother and sister.23The recurrently foregrounded question of marriage that forms thesustaining backbone of the correspondence (expressing itself throughinsistent redundancy in Ophelia's letters and through elliptical circumnavigationin Fernando's) allows us to posit, in addition to the overtShakespearean parallel, another fictional model that may be taken as acorrelative of their epistolary relationship. The Pickwick Papers - Pessoa'sall-time favourite work of narrative fiction - and other early novels byDickens launched the archetypal pattern of Victorian fiction by makingthe 'happily-ever-after' of their often multiple conjugal denouements thecornerstone on which 'a protective alliance of domestic harmony and arefuge from the world.'s evils' is founded .24Yet, at the same time, the contrastinggynephobic and utopian homosocial dimension of The PichwichPapns - an aspect of the novel to which Pessoa was highly sensitive, asnoted in the introduction to the present volume - generates resistanceagainst the coercive social and moral authority of the marriage plot. In ananalogous fashion, resistance against Ophelia's conjugal designs isembodied, within hers and Fernando's epistolary dialogue, by recurrentevocations of the queerest of Pessoa's heteronyms. Ophelia's unwaveringdislike of Avaro de Campos and his presumable aversion towards her(affirmed, albeit occasionally also denied, by Pessoa) form one of the leitmotifs of the correspondence and, without explicitly intersecting withreferences to marriage, produce nevertheless a pattern of triangularnegotiation of purposes and desires. Ophelia generally rebuts Alvaro'sencroachments, declaring, for instance, that she will not voluntarilyreceive.him in her and Fernando's home .25 On one occasion, however,she appears sufficiently resigned to the inevitability of Campos's interventionsin her relationship with Fernando as to assent to the vision oftheir future cohabitation as a m6nage i trois: 'eu hei-de gostar muito deviver com o meu Fernandinho, com o Sr. Eng. A. C. e tudo, e alienado e

234 Anna M. Klobuckatudo, o que vem a ser o mesme, porque o meu amor quando estd. alienado6 por causa do sr. Eng. que lhe fazsubir a febre a bOo' (I'm going tolike very much to live with my Fernandinho, with Mr. Engineer,q..c. indall, with you crazy and all, which is really the same thirrg, because whenmy love goes mad it's Mr. campos who is bringing your fever up to 50degrees).26 Avaro's and. Fernandinho's shared fevJrish mad.ness figuresmore prominently in the second phase of the reiationship, with Camposoften dictating his creator's letters to Ophelia (when notwriting to hei inhis own name), calling her on the phone in Fernando's stead., or comingalong on their streetcar rides. Campos's prominent role in the affair and.the ambiguous whimsicality of the three protagonists' relations echo inthe lastpoem signed by the heteron;,rm, the much-quoted ,Todas as cartasde amor sio ridfculas' (All Love Letters Are Ridiculous).27 It ha, beengenerally taken for granted by the critics that the poem comments indirectlyon Pessoa's epistolary relationship with ophelia; if so, Campos'stestamentary reflection on the inherent ridiculousness of love and amorousdiscourse gives him the last word in the discursive chain initiated bythe above-quoted Dickensian confrontation of ophelia's and Fernand.o'sinaugural letters, with the desired, end.lessly deferred marriage proposaiat its inflamed centre.The juxtaposition of ophelia's firsr missive and Fernando,s reply alsohelps illuminate in more general terms the rearrangement of the sceneof interpretation of Pessoa's Cartas d,e amoras a result of the publicationof ophelia's side of the exchange. As I have already noted.-, given theabsence of the matching other half of the epistolary dialogrr", p.rrou,,letters were derached by their commentators from their prigmatic contextof referentially rooted dialogic communication and viewed as monologicliterary expression, becoming an object of formalist hermeneuticsand freewheeling critical improvisation, which their fragmentary form,elliptic elusiveness, and referential ambiguity und.eniably encouraged.By contrast, to read them against Ophelia's letters is to replace this tiberallyopen-ended discursive scene with one defined by diaiogicjostling ofmeanings allied with compering pragmatic purposes; it is to balancetheir aesthetic qualities against semiotic demands of material discourseanalysis and historrcrzed patterns of gendered (mis)communication.I will resist the temptation to revisit mockingly earlier readings of Cartasde amo'r from a perspective privileged by a hindsight thar, iinot perfect,is at least vastly improved by the access to ophelia's contribution tothe exchange. Nonetheless, I find it worthwhile to cite one example of aconspicuous misreading in order to illustrate the kind of effects that theLove Letters of Ophelia Queiroz and Fernando Pessoa 235interpretive framing of Pessqa's letters in the unilateral context of his lifeand writing has tended to produce. In his critical commentary on Cartasde amor, MourS.o-Ferreira elaborated at length on what, in his analysis, is'o tema... fundamental' of the poet's correspondence with Ophelia: 'thetheme of childhood sought.after or recovered through love.'28 Amonghis close readings of individual letters we find an interpretation of numberthirteen, written after the return of Pessoa's mother to Lisbon fromSouth Africa, where she had lived since 1896, and therefore, accordingto the critic, reflecting a clash of two distinct, and possibly antagonistic,infantilized identities: on the one hand, the familiar 'menino da suamie' (his mother's boy), on the other, Ophelia's beloved 'Nininho.'Therelevant passage is worth quoting in its entirety:Na primeira carta escrita depois dessa instalaglo Ida famflia na casa da ruaCoelho da Rocha] ... ei-lo que significativamente toma certa 'dist6ncia' emrelaq6o a Oph6lia, detendo-se e comprazendo-se numa recordaqio muitosua, e que e, presumivelmente, uma recordaqao de inf6.ncia: 'Sabes? Estouteescrevendo mas nd,o estou pensando em ti. Estou pensando nas saudadesque tenho do meu tempo da caga aos pombos; e isto 6 uma coisa, como tusabes, com que tu nio tens nada...' (original emphases).[In the first letter written after the settling (of his family into the apartmenton Rua Coelho da Rocha) ... he significantly discances himself fromOphelia, taking time to delight in a recollection very much his own, whichis presumably a memory preserved from childhood: 'By the way - althoughI am writing you, I'm not thinhing altout you.I'm thinking about how I missthe days when I used to hunt pigeons, which is something you obviously havenothing to do with ...'l2eIf this mention of a 'hunt for pigeons' had, in fact, constituted a referenceto Pessoa's childhood memories, it would be difficult to disagreethat it was 'a recollection very much his own.' However, Ophelia's relentiesslydetailed epistolary flow reveals on several occasions that in the lovers'private vocabulary 'pombos' designated, quite unambiguously andprecisely, the young woman's breasts. Pessoa's comment translates thereforeinto a coy, teasing antiphrasis - 'what I'm thinking about doesn'tconcern you' meaning its exact opposite, 'what I'm thinking about haseverything to do with you' - a figure of discourse so alien to his literaryexpression that the possibility of reading it as such eludes MourS.o-Ferreiraentirely, as it does another critic (Seabra), who chooses the same

236 Anna M. I(obuckapassage to support his contention that the relationship berweenFernando and ophelia was imbued with negativity.3, opheiia, uf .o*trast, understood Fernando's implied meaning perfectiy and followed upin her reply with an antiphrastii comment of her own, referring to pes_soa's coterie of heteronyms and, among them, to ,aquele sujeito L.-"i,"mau, muito feio, e muito rabino que se chama Fernindo' lthat very bad,ugly, and naughty one named Fernando): 'd.esse e que eu nio gosto nad.a,mas mesmo nada ...' (him I don't rike at a[, reaily not at ail ..1).utAnother discursive feature of pessoa,s Certas d,e amorthut.riti.s havefound perplexing, given its conspicuous contrast to the generally matureand rhetorically controlled expression of his other writings, is the wealthof diminutives that grace his letters to ophelia, their -urry bebhzinhos,amorzinhos, anjinhos, querid.inho.s, and", last but not ieast, beijinhos (not tomention beijdes, beijocos, beijocas, and, beijninzinhos). Here, tot, alleged rry_listic incongruence disappears if insteid of reading pessoa's love lettersagainst his poetry literary prose, or even epistolary Jir.o,r.r. of non-amo_rous nature, we reinsert them into the dialogic context that produced.them, given that a prodigious use of diminutirls stands out as one of themost salient features of ophelia's epistolary expression. To illustrate:sim, filhinho, o teu bebezinho tem estado tiste e coitadinho do Nininhotambem tem tadol Tem Fernandinho? E 6 por ni.o ver e seu bebezinho?! Euaclrei tanta graQa ao meu querido pieguinhas! Mas que maridinho taopieguinhas que eu vou ter! E o -e., menino pequenino!! se o beb6 ni.ofosse beb6 andava com o Nininho ao colo, mas assim s5 se assen ta no cohpara ouvir hist6rias mas que hist6rias, hist6rias de beiiinhos nlo 6 meu feio?[Yes, my child, your lirtle baby has been sad and poor little Nininho has beentoo! Haven't you Fernandinho? And that,s because he hasn,t seen his littlebaby?! I thought my goofy darring was so cute! what a goofy littre husbandI'rn going to have! He's my riny lirtle boy! If baby wereri'r a baby she wouldcarry Nininho in her arms, but because she is shejust sits on his lap to listento his stories, but what great stories, kissing stories, right my noneypie?132This modest iliustration of ophelia's exuberant deployrnent of diminutivesseryes also to bring into play another leit motii of existing criticalcommentary on Pessoa's cartas de amor. the presumable infantilizingthrust of Fernando's attitude toward.s ophelL. Be it in Mour6o-Ferreira'sessay, in Robert Br6chon's biography of the poet, or in yvette centeno'stellingly titled arricle, 'oph6lia-B6b6zinho t' o horror do sexo,Love Letters of Ophelia Queiroz and Fernando Pessoa 227(Baby ophelia, or the Horror of sex), the emphasis is on the poet's initiativein metamorphosing the young woman into an innocent, asexualinfant, along with his own concomitant regression into the imaginaryparadise of cnLildhood.33 However, as ophelia's letters demonstrate oncountless occasions, the discourse of infantile masquerade they bothadopted for their exchange was, at the very least, a two-way street. Ineffect, it is ophelia who far more energetically than Fernando spins outelaborate constructions of their mutual infantilization; at the same time,her flights of fancy make it clear that her copious use of diminutives, apredilection for baby talk, and imagining her beloved Fernandinhoand/or herself as children are not in the least incompatible with adult -that is, sexualized - patterns of amorous engagement, as her wordplaybetween 'ao colo' (in my arms) and 'no colo' (on your lap) in the abovepassage neatly demonstrates. It is Ophelia who sends Fernando numerouspostcards featuring, alternatively, amorous adult couples andchubby.babies and toddlers, with such hybrid configurations as two smallchildren kissing (identified as representing little Fernando andophelia) and a mother with a small boy (labeled as 'Fernandinho'). It isophelia's imagination that engenders a seamless continuum betweeninfantile masks she makes herself and her lover wear throughout theirromance and the child as a reproductive signifier of their future sexualunion. To assume, as has invariably been the case, that ophelia wasmerely a willing follower in what Br6chon has called 'o jogo de infantilidadeperversa que lhe imp6e o seu excdntrico namorado' (the game ofperverse infantilization imposed on her by her eccentric lover) is ofcourse consistent with extrapolating all interpretive constructs of therelationship from the unilateral, monologic evid.ence of pessoa's letters.34Such an assumption rests additionally on the evid.ence of obviousintellectual inequality between the correspondents; as Br6chon alsostresses, Fernando and ophelia should not be viewed as a portuguesecounterpart to Flaubert and Louise Colet. Yet it ignores the commonsensicairecognition that, in the matter of lovers' talk and in spite of heryoung age, Ophelia was likely more experienced and uninhibited thanFernando: unlike him, at least she had already had a boyfriend. The easeand exuberance with which she deploys her considerable repertoire ofbaby talk, diminutive endearments, and imaginary scenarios of sexualizedchildren's play are only on rare occasions matched by her correspondent'sepistolary discourse, occasions puzzling nevertheless for theinterpreters of Pessoa's Cartas de amorand for which they have attemptedto account by articulating explanations ranging from infantile regres-

238 Anna M. Klobucksion.as a refuge from sex to suggestions of paedophilia (to which eventhe thirty-year-old ophelia of the affair's second stage remains subject inBr6chon's imagination). Here as elsewhere, reading Pessoa's letters in adialogic counterpoint with Ophelia's yields effects that are quite distinctfrom - if not necessarily incompatible with - those produced by readingthem as part and parcel of his mass of heteronyrnous writing. It is to behoped that such a split framing of this much-dissected hermeneuticobject can make it a more meaningfully relevant component of theincreasingly variegated scenario in which Pessoa's drama em genteis recurrentlybeing restaged in contemporary critical discourse.35NOTES1 Darlene Sadlier, An Introd,uction to Femand.o Pessoa: Mod,emism and, the Parad,oxesof Authorshzp (Gainesville: Universiry Press of Florida, 1gg8), 133.2 The existence of the relationship and of its epistolary record had, of course,been public knowledge since carlos Queiroz, ophelia's nephew and pessoa'sfriend, commented on them in a radio broadcast (later published in a booklet)a few days after the poet's untimely death. see carlos eueiroz, Homenagema Femando Pessoa: Com os excerptos das suas cartas d,e amor e um retrato deAlmad,a (Coimbra: Presenqa, 1936).3 I will generally follow the usage prevalent in Portuguese cultural discourse,which is to refer to Fernando Pessoa as 'Pessoa' and to ophelia eueiroz as'Ophelia' (or, in a modernized fashion, as 'Of6lia'), since the discursive conventionon which it rests is not predominantly sexist but takes into accountthe relative originality of a person's given and last name (thus 'Pessoa' is usedsince it less common than 'Fernando,' whereas 'ophelia,' an unusual firstname, is preferred as more original than 'Queiroz').I will, however, attempt' to correct the gendered bias that is also operative in this usage (since womenare never referred to by their last name alone) by employing the poet's givenname on suitable occasions.4 Although it is not entirely clear whether such a bias was among the reasonsfor the delayed publication of Ophelia's letters, it is worth noting that the historyof women's epistolary writing registers a strong tradition of resistanceagainst making a female writer's private discourse public: 'To publish awoman's letters ... was in some way to violate her personal integrity.' ElizabethC. Goldsmith, Introduction to Writi,ng the Femal.e Voi,ce: Essays m Epistotary LiteruLure,e d. Elizabeth C. Goldsmith (Boston: Northeastern University Press,1989), vii.Love Letters of Ophelia Queiroz and Fernando Pessoa ' 2395 On the combined evidence of Fernando's letters and Ophelia's retrospectiveaccount (as presented in the 1978 volume), the first stage of their relationshipwas assumed to have lasted eight months, from late February lg20 to lateNovember of the same year, and its second instalmentjustfour months, fromSeptember 1929 toJanuary 1930. As Ophelia's letters show, however; their allimportantfirst kiss (vividly if imprecisely recollected in her account)occurred in effect on Z2January 7920, while their exchange of flirty notes atthe office where they both worked had been taking place as early as November1919. More dramatically, it can be ascertained that the second phase ofthe romance lasted at least ayear and a half, till the spring of 1931; the lastpublished letter in which Ophelia still showers her 'Nininho'with terms ofendearment and expresses expectations for a common future dates from 29March 1931.6 In fact, the commentary most attentive to the two-way dynamic of theexchange is probably a note byJorge de Sena, written in 1977 and thereforebefore any of the correspondence, save for brief excerpts from Pessoa's letters,was published atall; Sena based his remarks on a paper by AlexandrinoSeverino, which remains unpublished. SeeJorge de Sena, Fernand,o Pessoa e CHeter6nima (Lisbon: Ediqoes 70, 7984), 427 .7 David Mourd.o-Ferreira, 'Sobre as "Cartas d.e amor" de Fernando Pessoa,' inCartas de Amor de Fnnando Pessoa, ed. Mourdo-Ferreira and Maria da GraqaQueiroz, 3rd ed. (Lisbon: Aliiru,1994) ,183-4, Unless orherwise attributed,all translations are my own.8 Mourdo-Ferreira'Sobre as "Cartas de amor,"' 214.9 Jos6 Augusto Seabra, 'Amor e Fingimento (Sobre as "Cartas de amor" d.eFernando Pessoa),' PnsonaS (July 1979) :78,84. Reprinted in his O Hetsrotextopessoano (Lisbon: Dinaliwo, 1985) ,61-76.10 Isabel Allegro de Mahalhies, 'O gesto, e nio as mios: Fernando Pessoa e afiguraqlo do feminino; uma gramdtica da mulher evanescente,' in Capelasim,perJ'eitas (Lisbon: Horizonte, 2002), 115. In an essay posted on the internet,Janise de Sousa Paiva takes this critical direction to an extreme bordering onself-parody by stating that '[o] espago ocupado por Oph6lia 6 um nioespaqo' (the space occupied by Ophelia is a non-space) and that the poet's. missives are in effect 'cartas de amor entre Fernando Pessoa e FernandoPessoa' (love letters between Fernando Pessoa and Fernando Pessoa). 'AHeteronimia nas cartas de amor de Fernando Pessoa,' http://victorian.fortunecity. com/statue / 44 / Nteteronimianascartasdefernando. htm.20July 2004.11 In an earlier publication, Monteiro had suggested a connecLion between thedevelopment of Pessoa's romance and the discourse of his letters to Ophelia

240 Anna M. KlobuckLove Le tters of Ophelia Queiroz and Fernando pessoa Z4land Edgar Allan Poe's short story 'Ligeia' (which pessoa glossed in a poem).See his 'Oph6lia's Levers' in Selzcted Proceedings olthe 35,h Annual Mounta,inInterstate.Foreign Language Confnence, ed. Ram6n Fernd.ndez Rubio (Greenville,SC: Furman Universiry 1987), 245-54. For another conrriburion roreading the relationship as a case of fictional emplotment intentionally engineeredby Pessoa, see Antonio Thbucchi, 'IJm Fausto Mangas-de-alpaca: as"Cartas de amor" de Pessoa' in Pessoana mtnima (Lisbon: Imprensa Nacional-Casa da Moeda, 1984), 51-9.12 Joao Gaspar sim6es, vi.da e obra d.e Fsrnand,o pessoa,4th ed, (Amadora: Bertrand,1981),493.13 Gaspar Sim6es, Vi.da e obra de Fernando Pessoa, 492.14 Mourio-Ferreira, 'Nota pr6via,' in cartas de amor d,e Femando pessoa, r0.15 An even more patent case of testimonial ambiguity may be found in a textpublished in 1985, in which Maria da Graga eueiroz freely alternaresbetween her own third-person recollections of her great-aunt and Ophelia's. first-person responses to Maria da Graqa's interview questions. See Maria daGraqa Queiroz, 'ophelia Queiroz: o mist6rio de uma pepsoa,' Jom,ald,e Letras,Artes e ldeias,12-18 November 1985.l6 Carl;as d,e amor de tr'ernando Pessoa,23-6.L7 The responsibility for endowing the youngest offspring of the eueiroz familywith a Shakespearean nalne - rindoubtedly a source of attraction for Pessoa,whose in[ense and lifelong interest in Shakespeare and the character ofHamletis well documented - also lies with one of the family's women: asOphelia recounts in the 1985 interview, her oldest sisterJoaquina was readingHamletatthe time of the girl's birth. Ophelia's own predilection and talentfor theatrical self-dramatizatsonis attested to vividly in the same testimony.18 Cartas de Amor de Otblia a Fnnando Pessoa, ed. Manuela Nogueira and Maria daConceiqao Azevedo (Lisbon: Assirio & Alvim, 1996), bg.19 Cartas de amor de Ofdlia,33-4.20 Cartas de amor d,e Fenxand,o Pessoa,4g-50.2l 'fhe Selccted Prose of lremando Pessoa, ed. and trans. Richard Zenith (NewYork:Grove, 2001 ), 1 29-30.22 Deborah Tannen, YouJust Don't (Jndsrstand,: Wom.en and, Mm i.n Conaersati.on(NewYork: william Morrow, 1gg0) ,lB,42.Interestingly, one of Fernando'sown devices for deflecting Ophelia's continuing insistence on introducinghim to her family was an invocation of properly cultural difference: herefused the invitation to her home on the grounds of his 'educaqioestrangeira' (foreign education) . Cartas de amor fu Of6lia,77.23 cartas cle amor d,e ofelia,8l, BB; cartas d,e amor de Femand,o pes;oa, g6.24 Barbara Weiss, 'The Dilemma of Happily Ever After: Marriage and the Victo-iLIiIt,II{F.ft,l:''n,f,{rian Novel,' in Portra'ih of Marriage in Literature, ed. Anne c. Hargrove andMaurine Magliocco (Macomb:western Illinois Universiry 1gB4), 68.25 Cartas de amor de Ofili,a,27}.26 Cartas de amar de Ofelia,233.27 Dated 21 October 1935 and therefore a little over a month before Pessoa'sdeath. See Fernando Pessoa (Alvaro de campos), poesia, ed. Teresa RitaLopes (Lisbon: Assirio & Alvim, 2002), bb0-1.28 Mourao-Ferreira, in Cartas de amor d,e Fsm,and,o pessoa,IgZ.29 Cartas de amor de Fetnando Pessoa,198-9. English translation of the quote fromPessoa's letter is by Richard Zenith (Setected prose,lBB).30 Seabra, 'Amor e Fingimento,' 81.3l Cartas de amor de Ofdlia, 71.32 cartas de amor de ofdlia, 92. My English translarion of this passage is at besrapproximate. I have not accounted for Ophelia's spelling distortions thatmimic baby talk ('tiste'for'triste' and 'tado'for 'estado'); herwordplayjuxtaposing'ao colo' and 'no colo' is likewise untranslatable. It is worth notingthat she consistently displays a predilection fbr antiphrastic terms of endearment,such as 'feio' (literally, 'ugly') and, elsewhere, ,preto' (literally,'black').33 Robert Br6chon, Estranho estrangeiro: (/ma biografia d.e Fernando Pessoa, trans.Maria Abreu and Pedro Tamen (Lisbon: euetzal, 1996); yvette centeno,'oph6lia-B6b6zinho ou o horror do sexo,' col6quio/Letras 4g (May 1979): 1l-19.34 Brecho n, Estranho estrangeiro, 375.35 Another long-overdue critical undertaking, which is however beyond thescope of the Present essay, would be a comparative reading of Pessoa's mostsignificant epistolary texs (such as, in additi on to Ca,rtas rJe amrn; his muchdiscussedepistles to Gaspar Simoes and Casais Monteiro, his f'ew surviving lettersto M6rio de Sd.-Carneiro, etc.) as a diversified but fundamentally coextensiveexercise in heteronymous discursive performance, in which heteronymyclearly and recurrently emerges as a living experiment in enacting and confrontingalteriry both within the writing self and between the self and theinterpellated, (non-)corresponding other. (I am grateful to Mark sabine forthis suggesrion.)