Names Used Twice Over

Abstract

Abstract Fernando Pessoa’s relationship with his heteronyms is complicated. They exist as protagonists in imaginary stories of his own creation, and Pessoa imagines himself as them, or imagines being them. In “Notes for the Memory of My Master Caeiro,” Pessoa has Caeiro suggest that things thus seen in “dreams”—that is to say, in acts of imagination—have much the same status as things seen in pictures. The use of a name twice over in this story seems to be a characteristic hallmark of heteronymy. This chapter analyses it further, with reference to the story of two Līlās in the Mokṣopāya. I discuss too Pessoa’s poem “Autopsychography.”