"SAUDADE" AND "SOLEDAD": FERNANDO PESSOA

AND ANTONIO MACHADO ON NOSTALGIA AND

LONELINESS

ESTELA VIEIRA

T H E brief essay, "Suggested Bases for a Comparative Study of Pessoa

and Antonio Machado" by Antonio Carreño is one of the first to call on
critics to explore similarities and differences between Pessoa's poetry and
that of other modernist Hispanic poets. According to Carreño a solid
basis for a comparative study between Machado and Pessoa exists
because the contemporary writers both invent others or different per-
sonas, are influenced by the same philosophical teachings, and possibly
even suffer from similar neurotic tendencies. In his book La dialéctica de
la identidad en la poesía contemporánea, Carreño follows his own
advice and spearheads this comparative work in an extensive analysis of
the problem of representation of self in a number of Hispanic modernist
authors. He juxtaposes a chapter exploring the concept of otherness in
Machado with one that reads some of the better-known writings of Pes-
soa's heteronyms. The objective is to illustrate what Carreño calls the
complex rhetoric of masks that Machado, Pessoa, and others employ
(24). Georges Güntert also puts the Portuguese and Spanish poets togeth-
er in an essay where he explores the figure of the "poeta filósofo" in the
work of Pessoa, Machado, and Unamuno. In this study Güntert focuses
on how the multiple meanings of "sueño," and the writers' understanding
of the consciousness of thinking and feeling, all shape not only the repre-
sentation of these imaginary personalities, but also the relation between
the authors and their invented others ("Heterónimos" 20).
As Güntert himself admits in another essay on heteronomy as a
problem of poetics, Pessoa's heteronyms and Machado's apocryphal
writers "son dos fenómenos que aparecen independientemente uno de

125
126 ROMANCE NOTES

Otro" ("La heteronimia" 158). Despite the differences in the nature of

their creative projects, Güntert still compares what he claims is their
shared "crisis de identidad" (160). Antonio Apolinário Lourenço is the
only scholar to date to dedicate a full-length study relating these writers'
treatment of self His thesis in Identidade e alteridade em Fernando Pes-
soa e Antonio Machado is twofold. On the one hand Lourenço wants to
show that, despite their points in common. Machado's and Pessoa's cre-
ative projects are not only different from each other but they also vary in
their distinctiveness from the general tendency of the period to explore
the workings of subjectivity: "os apócrifos de Antonio Machado e os
heterónimos de Fernando Pessoa sao realizaçôes particulares e diferen-
ciadas desse espirito epocal" (8). On the other hand he sets out on a
comparative study of Machado's Juan de Mairena and Pessoa's Alvaro
de Campos to uncover parallels between their aesthetic and ideological
proposals. All these comparative readings have tended to concentrate on
questions of self, identity, and the role of the modernist poet, by pre-
dominantly evaluating in conjunction the genesis of Pessoa's heteronyms
and the origin of Machado's apocryphal philosophers. My essay, while
building on this body of critical work, has a very different focal point.
During a recent visit to Indiana University at Bloomington, Geoffrey
Ribbans was asked whether he thought there were any connections
between Machado's "soledades" and the Portuguese literary movement
"saudosismo." He answered by asking whether "soledad" might not be a
kind of "saudade" or vice-versa. Inspired by this possibility, I would like
take a closer look at a brief selection of Pessoa's and Machado's writings
and explore the representation of loneliness, longing, and nostalgia in
their poetic framework. I want to ask and begin to answer Geoffrey Rib-
bans's question. In other words, does "saudade" compare to "soledad" in
Pessoa's and Machado's poetics, and if so, how?
A number of the critics that juxtapose Pessoa and Machado tend to
highlight similarities between the authors' residential circumstances in
order to explain that they both led lonely lives. Pablo del Barco writes,
"los dos escritores vivieron en pensiones, que es una praxis de vivir sin
vivir lo material y acentuar el vitalismo de lo espiritual. La misma
soledad implicó una necesidad en ambos escritores de explicarse el
mundo del pensamiento y de la creación" (507). Lourenço makes a sim-
ilar observation: "Ambos foram homens solitarios, vivendo sozinhos em
casas alugadas ou quartos de pensâo grande parte das suas vidas:" (9).
 "SAUDADE" AND "SOLEDAD" 127

In an early letter dated January 19, 1915 Pessoa explains how "O fato de
eu estar agora vivendo só" does indeed deepen his spiritual state. But
being alone does not provoke feelings of loneliness for him, it only hap-
pens to exacerbate what he calls his "crise de incompatíbílídade" (53).
Güntert takes Pessoa's loneliness a step ñirther and ties it to his creative
endeavors. He claims that Pessoa's heteronomy "Es, para él, la única
manera de poblar su soledad" ("Heterónimos" 26), In fact physical lone-
liness is but a small part of a larger creative and philosophical project,
which Pessoa brings together with the invention of his heteronyms. Pes-
soa's comments on "saudade" and "soledad" intertwine on different lev-
els, and while they are clearly difFerent concepts they are not unrelated
in his writing.
Before taking a closer look at how Pessoa conceptually connects
"saudade" and "soledad," I want to briefly touch upon the multiple
meanings of "saudade," its difference to "soledad," and its various links
to the literary movements of "saudosismo" and "sensacionismo." While
"saudade" has no direct translation in English there are a number of pos-
sible meanings depending on the context. "Saudade" can refer to long-
ing, yearning, nostalgia, and homesickness. In Portuguese it is associat-
ed with memory, desire, absence, loss, melancholy, and even death.
Unlike simple nostalgia, "saudade" has resonance in the past, present,
and ftiture. It is therefore not only a complex cultural construction but
also speaks of unique psychological facets. Furthermore, it is especially
significant because of its ties to Portuguese culture and national identity,
since "saudade" in its dual linguistic and emotional components, is
allegedly exclusive to the Portuguese-language cultures.' It is not equiv-
alent to "soledad" in Spanish, which translates as "solidâo" in Por-
tuguese. The Spanish "extrañar" is closer in meaning to "saudade." Curi-
ously "saudade" and "soledad" have been intertwined from their
etymological origins. "Saudade" originates from the Latin Word soli-
tatem from which the Spanish "soledad" developed, while the Por-
tuguese "solidào" is a semi-learned word from the Latin solitudo.

' In Galicia, despite the fact that the word "saudade" exists, "morriña" is the correct
counterpart to the Portuguese "saudade" because it has acquired a similar usage and
equivalent implications, "Morriña" has long been used by other Spanish-speaking cul-
tures, and curiously the dictionary of the Real Academia Española has accepted
"saudade" and defines it as "Soledad, nostalgia, añoranza,"
128 ROMANCE NOTES

"Saudosismo" on the other hand was a literary and philosophical

movement in Portugal at the turn of the nineteenth to the twentieth cen-
tury, whose most important forerunner was Teixeira de Pascoaes. Of
varying manifestations the movement evoked "saudade" as a unique
condition of the Portuguese cultural tradition making it the central emo-
tion of a literature intent on reviving a collective sense of national char-
acter. Critics argue, I believe correctly, that "sensacionismo," one of the
various avant-garde literary movements that Fernando Pessoa invented
and a favorite of Alvaro de Campos's, maintains important links to
"saudosismo." Rafael Bellón writes that Pessoa's "sensacionismo" pro-
ceeds "del nostálgico saudosismo" (263). "Sensacionismo," however, is
only thematically related to "saudosismo," formally they are despairing-
ly different. In fact one can argue that the way Pessoa's "sensacionismo"
both incorporates and redefines "saudosismo" is analogous to Pessoa's
reinterpretation of "saudade." Pessoa reinterprets "saudade" by forcing
the concept out of its traditional context and assimilating it to the experi-
ence of loneliness.
In what is commonly regarded as his most famous letter, written to
Adolfo Casais Monteiro on January 13, 1935, the year Pessoa dies, and
in which among other things, he describes the genesis of his het-
eronyms, Pessoa makes a number of important references to "saudade"
always within the context of his invented poets. When vaguely remem-
bering his childhood heteronym. Chevalier de Pas, he claims that this
figure "ainda conquista aquela parte da minha afeiçâo que confina com
a saudade" (95). Finally, after explaining his life-long process of the loss
of personality, and the creation of an aesthetic and dramatic world popu-
lated by invented others, he concludes: "E assim arranjei, e propaguei,
varios amigos e conhecidos que nunca existiram, mas que ainda hoje, a
perto de trinta anos de distancia, oiço, sinto, vejo. Repito: oiço, sinto,
vejo . . . E tenho saudades deles" (96). Pessoa refers repeatedly to his
heteronyms in this letter and in other texts as "amigos," "companheiros
de espirito," "um conhecido inexistente," and "almas." He discusses
encounters and dialogues among them, and less frequently between him
and them, and describes the general unperturbed camaraderie and
cohabiting of what he calls his "coterie!' Hence, feeling "saudade" for
these figures precludes loneliness and nostalgia and calls for their seem-
ingly impossible yet persistent presence and the creative inspiration and
expression that they bring along with them.
 "SAUDADE" AND "SOLEDAD" 129

In a different text in which he continues to refine the story of the

birth of his heteronyms, Pessoa writes again of the importance of the
eariy personalities that appeared during his childhood. He claims that
when he was five years old, and already a, "criança isolada e nao dese-
jando senâo assim estar," he invented fictional personalities some of
which to his great dismay he has forgotten. This forgetfulness is, as he
explains, "uma das grandes saudades da minha vida" (92). He misses
not the innocence of his childhood, or a lost knowledge or preconscious
state, but the loneliness that went hand in hand with the physical compa-
ny or the reality these imaginary friends invoked. In another letter, dated
December 11, 1931, to one more important interiocutor, Joâo Gaspar
Simôes, Pessoa writes:

Nunca senti saudades da infancia; nunca senti, em verdade, saudades de nada. Sou, por Índo-
le, e no sentido directo da palavra, futurista. Nao sei ter pessimismo, nem olhar para tras.
Que eu saiba ou repare, só a falta de dinheiro (no próprio momento) ou um tempo de trovoa-
da (enquanto dura) sao capazes de me deprimir. Tenho, do passado, somente saudades de
pessoas idas, a quem amei; mas nao é a saudade do tempo em que as amei, mas a saudade
délas: queria-as vivas hoje, e com a idade que hoje tivessem, se até hoje tivessem vivido. (65)

Pessoa's "saudade" is therefore not "saudade" in the customary sense and

in fact Pessoa is keen on separating himself from the conventions tradition-
ally associated with the concept. "Saudade" in Pessoa is a lot more related
to loneliness since the absence of others is what causes the painñil feelings
regularly associated with nostalgia. Yet the absence is itself a creative pres-
ence populated with imagined others a lot more real than the emptiness of
reality. Like all feelings, loneliness for him is nothing more than one ofthe
sources of creation. "Saudade" and "soledad" coalesce to evoke what is for
Pessoa his companionship, his inspiration: poetry and poets.
Rafael Bellón maintains that Machado's first poems already conjure
up the apocryphal figure of Abel Martin: "Quizás sea la culminación de
aquellos fantasmas y quimeras que aparecen en las páginas de
Soledades (1903) y llenan las de Soledades. Galerías. Otros poemas
(1907)" (263). One could argue that some ofthe poems in these initial
collections anticipate the later apocryphal personalities and their writ-
ing, which in turn serve as a response to the original loneliness.^ Indeed

^ In his introduction to Soledades. Galerias. Otros poemas. Geoffrey Ribbans also

notes how personification in Machado's poetry oflen leads to dialogues, as in the poem
130 ROMANCE NOTES

in a well-known sonnet of Nuevas canciones "¡Oh soledad, mi sola com-

pañia" the personification of "soledad," the form of the poem as a dia-
logue between the poetic voice and the female figure, and finally the
references to "mascarada," "espejo," and "voz amante," all suggest the
subsequent philosophical voices of Martin and Juan de Mairena. Hence
there seems to be a significant metamorphosis of the concept of
"soledad" to Machado's construction of otherness. It is as if in the late
Machado "soledad" has transformed itself into both its opposite and its
complement by way of an imagined community of others, as in Pessoa.
Yet, unlike Pessoa's, Machado's soul mates are all dead. The fact that
Machado's invented others are apocryphal and regulated to the past,
while Pessoa's heteronyms are his contemporaries and accompany him
throughout his Lisbon wanderings, is a significantly telling detail. This
distinction relates to the different theoretical implications the terms
"saudade" and "soledad" have in their work.
One the one hand, "soledad" for Machado, as for Pessoa, is not fig-
ured so much as a problem of being alone, but is closer linked to the
source of creative inspiration. Armando López Castro writes in his edi-
tion of the 1903 Soledades: "su soledad no sólo responde a una actitud
vital sino también poética, a un estado desde el que el poeta escribe, al
lugar donde la experiencia poética se produce" (7). Still, "soledad" in
Machado's early poetry is on the other hand also an evocation of a lost
time. Güntert explains that the dream-like image that Machado repeat-
edly summons in Soledades "se extiende al pasado, a lo ya vivido: es
sobre todo recuerdo. Recuerdo que puede ser auténtico o falaz" ("He-
terónimos" 34). This early collection of poems repeatedly calls on indis-
tinct memories, and the enduring melancholic tone is not primarily
responding to time's persistence to pass, as most critics point out, but
instead to a longing for some past, loss, or unknown that would fiirnish
the poet with the creative impulse. In this respect Machado's "soledad"
reminds us a lot more of the concept of "saudade."
"Tarde," which opens the 1903 collection, has as complex narrative
and spatial structure that exemplifies the poet's encounter and intemal-
ization of a sense of longing. It is a poem that questions the possibility

"Retrato," whieh as Ribbans explains, prefigures the "desdoblamiento de su personali-

dad" and "más tarde, los filósofos apócrifos Abel Martín y Juan de Mairena surgen del
mismo impulso haeia el desdoblamiento" (36).
 "SAUDADE" AND "SOLEDAD" 131

of crafting a poetic voice while at the same time exemplifying a strong

desire to find that voice. The title can refer not only to the time of day,
but also to a belated and nostalgic wish. The poet enters the "solitario
parque" and heads in the direction of the fountain, one of the various
leitmotifs in the poem characteristic of Machado, and begins a dialogue
in an attempt to remember a forgotten time and event. The fountain's
superior knowledge overpowers the poet and repeatedly makes the past
present: "Fue esta misma tarde: mi cristal vertia/como hoy sobre el már-
mol su clara harmonia," and further on "sombreaban los claros
cantares,/que escuchas ahora" and once again "Fue esta misma lenta
tarde" (10). The poet can only respond by repeating what he believes he
knows about that forgotten afternoon, but insists that this memory must
be "lejana" "vieja" "antigua" and "olvidada" (10). The old stories of
melancholy that the fountain could sing the poet chooses not to retain,
and instead listens passively to their slow timbre. The poet, then, aban-
dons the fountain "para siempre" and leaves "la tarde muerta" locked up
behind him in the "solitario parque" (10-11). The fountain's indefinite
knowledge resembles an unspecified wish and loss, which the poet
ambiguously longs for, intent on turning the memories into poetry: "tu
monotonía alegre es más triste que la pena mia" (11). Longing in itself
is the inspiration for the poetic creation, and therefore the past must
remain far away, and there is no wish to relive it in the present. This is
why the poet says "Adiós para siempre," and turns his back on the foun-
tain and the park (11). The melancholic song in this poem echoes one of
"saudade" by creating a dialogue between an individual and his fate; a
fate that is both fatalistic and past. But a fate, nonetheless, that is also a
search for a loss, and whose evocation fulfills the poetic desire. It is not
"soledad" that Machado encounters in the "parque solitario" but
"saudade," a continual, sometimes passive desire for an anonymous and
unidentified experience past or future.
A number of other poems from this collection illustrate Machado's
ambivalent relationship with a longing for a past that the poet is incapable
or unwilling to revive. Ultimately this looking back is but a search to sat-
isfy a creative impulse; there is a constant hope that regaining conscious-
ness of the past would renew the present. In this respect the "proceso de
exteriorización" (53) that Ribbans claims begins in Soledades, Galerías.
Otros poemas, and which intensifies with Machado's poetic evolution can
also be seen as a drawing away from the feeling of "saudade" or in Ma-
132 ROMANCE NOTES

chado's terms, "soledad." In other words. Machado begins exclusively

inspired by the intimate world, then slowly rejects in Ribbans's words "la
ensoñación autosuficiente" (54), and eventually establishes stronger dia-
logues with the external world. This poetic personality that dialogues with
others, imagined or real, no longer needs "saudade" as a precondition for
his poetry. The poetics of "soledades" resemble "saudade" or the constant
desire for something nonexistent, something other than the present, and an
indolent and dreamy search for a form of expression. While on the one
hand Machado seems unwilling to relive or revive the past, the creative
impulse is only satisfied if there is a constant longing to regain conscious-
ness of what has been lost.
In his 1915 essay "Mourning and Melancholia" Freud identifies
important correlations between these two affects in order to distinguish
their significantly different consequences. To conclude I would like to
draw an analogy between Freud's definitions of these terms and the con-
cepts of "soledad" and "saudade" as they influence Pessoa's and Macha-
do's poetics. Like mourning and melancholia, "soledad" and "saudade"
both involve a sense of loss that surfaces as loneliness. But while the
former terms, mourning and "soledad," are seen as something that can
be overcome with the lapse of time, the former concepts are considered
more complex, and as Freud argues, become pathological if untreated.
Ultimately, melancholia, as "saudade," is more problematic, because the
loss or cause for loneliness is unknown.^ Mourning, on the other hand,
and by analogy "soledad," serves life and hence to forget, or to be lonely,
is considered to be a normal part of reality. Yet one can also claim that a
form of morality accompanies melancholia and the pathological keeping
alive of the absent and of the past, as in "saudade," and that some poets
clearly struggled in their search for a poetic expression to remember and
long for what is naturally forgotten.
"Soledad" and "saudade" are different conceptually and theoretical-
ly, and Machado's poetic construction of "soledad" or "soledades" is not
analogous to Pessoa's understanding of "saudade." On the contrary, on
can argue that Pessoa's poetics of "saudade" are in fact closer to loneli-

^ It is also interesting to note that "saudade" to a certain degree relates to the Italian
"malinconia," "Malinconia" in Italian is a feeling of incompleteness that one uncon-
sciously wishes never to completely resolve and hopes to keep searching for. The term in
Italian then seems to combine the feelings of melancholy with the emotions central to
"saudade,"
 "SAUDADE" AND "SOLEDAD" 133

ness and Machado's idea of "soledad" in its earlier manifestations has a

lot more to do with the traditional sense of "saudade." Yet what is most
striking is not how these concepts or affects intertwine on a psychologi-
cal level, but the fact that they relate on the level of poetics. Both Pessoa
and Machado clearly experience the open and multiple meanings of
these terms and have in common the fact that they use these ideas as
central metaphors for their poetics and for their creative projects of oth-
erness. If Pessoa makes multiplicity an intricate part of "saudade,"
Machado turns "soledad" into something plural, multiplying its possible
significances and purposes. Once the poets find their many forms of
expression then "saudade" and "soledad" become primarily initial steps
in a creative process.

INDIANA UNIVERSITY

WORKS CITED

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