Notes on the Modernist Long Poem in the Writings of Fernando Pessoa’s Heteronym Álvaro de Campos and T. S. Eliot

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Starting from Edgar Allan Poe’s assertion that there is no such thing as a long poem, several modernist poets discovered the lyrical potential of a new poetical form in which extension is possible if one follows an analogous principal to that in music: base the poem not on narration, but on a concert of images or emotions that pursue a new language, a language we could say begins with Mallarmé and resolves itself in modern poems of very diverse natures, such as T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land and Four Quartets, and Ode marítima by Fernando Pessoa’s heteronym Álvaro de Campos.

The purpose of this reflection is to compare the way Eliot and Pessoa, representing differing contemporary literary traditions, created, each in his own way, the modernist long poem. The result, I hope, may enhance our understanding of this poetic manifestation, not as a national but as a cosmopolitan phenomenon, which may explain its success throughout the last century.

KEYWORDS: Álvaro de Campos, T.S. Eliot, modernist long poem