Fernando Pessoa launched the sale of Message on December 1, 1934—the date marking the Restoration of Independence—“intentionally,” although the book had already been printed in October of the same year. Since then, much has been said and written about the forty-four poems that compose this fatherland-book, a vision of Portugal offered by a self-pronounced “super-Camões.”

Today the most complete edition of Message—that myth which “is the nothing that is everything”—fulfills the Pessoan desire to “build, through the power of dreams, a fatherland forever lost.” In addition to the poems, this edition includes slight changes to the textual canon and its dating, and a short reading guide that illuminates lesser-known aspects of a work fraught with multiple meanings, arduously understood. No matter how much it is analyzed, Message persists as an adventure open to all courageous reader-argonauts.

COLLECTION EDITED BY JERÓNIMO PIZARRO