RICARDO REIS: The Sad Epicurean
This most elusive of Pessoa's heteronyms was born 1887, in Porto, and went to the Americas when already in his thirties but his exact whereabouts and livelihood were never very clearly established. It does not seem that Ricardo Reis, a trained physician, ever practiced his profession. He was reported to be a "Latin teacher in an important American high school," though in a letter written in 1935, Pessoa merely states that "he's been living in Brazil since 1919." Yet elsewhere among Pessoa's papers there is an address for Dr. Ricardo Sequeira Reis in Peru. It seems fitting that Reis is hard to locate geographically, for he was not of this world. Alvaro de Campos celebrated the modern age — with its machines, bustle, and surfeit of sensations. Alberto Caeiro celebrated the natural world as it is, on the surface. But Ricardo Reis, the third in the trio of Pessoa's major heteronyms, celebrated the "spirit" of things. The atmosphere of his poe...
