by Fernando Pessoa
translated by Jonathan Griffin

Fernando Pessoa the Poet
Fernando Pessoa created personality masks to express his full range as a poet. This site explains how the personalities worked their way into Pessoa's writing. Explore the links, then create a chart to describe the personalities and the way each "began" a writing life.

History of Portugal
Read the first three pages of this modern Portuguese history site to discover the political climate in Pessoa's Portugal from 1910 through the 1930s. Using specific lines from "In the terrible night," speculate about how the political and social upheavals might have influenced the poet.