Fernando Pessoa.

Amazon's got Zenith's, the Serpent's Tail edition, and The Complete Book of Disquiet. Haven't checked local library system yet.

Just windowshopping, but want to be sure I'm fantasizing about the right one.

I have the Serpent's Tail, there must be several different translations I think because the *actual text* is different in each one, on account of how it was assembled

The Serpent’s Tail and the Complete (which came out in Serpent’s Tail in the UK) are both translated by Margaret Jull Costa, I don’t know whether she re-worked any or all of the fragments for the complete edition. Her early 90s Serpent’s Tail is the one I read first and I love it.

Zenith is translator for the Carcanet edition ( The Book of Disquietude”) and the Penguin, I don’t know whether they are the same text. Interestingly the Carcanet one also claimed to be complete when published but is nowhere near as long as the MJC translated Complete Edition. This book is so slippery!

There is also a Quartet Encounters edition from the early 90s translated by Iain Watson, I haven’t read it.

I’ve only dipped into the Zenith, at a cursory glance I found it less lyrical than the Costa so I’m sticking with that one. I’ve talked to people who have done a bit of direct comparing, including with the original Portuguese, and they came out preferring the Zenith translation.

Okay, I have the New Directions, also translated by Margaret Jull Costa.

Is this the thread where I can complain about Gregory Rabassa hogging the translator limelight?

Thanks yall!

Fernando Pessoa introducing his new heteronym Bernardo Sanders. pic.twitter.com/eicowNgzJV

— rui tavares (@ruitavares) January 22, 2021

Lol

There is a podcast about Oessoa's life and work. Written about here

For the Almanac, I wrote about Fernando Pessoa and @disquietradio, an internet radio program about his life and work: https://t.co/EAnj5dvsgn

— Matthew Spencer (@unpaginated) April 1, 2024