A Brief Introduction to Portugal's Most Celebrated Poet, Fernando Pessoa

Around 15 years ago I was introduced to the writings of the Fernando Pessoa, Portugal’s most celebrated modern poet and one of the 20th century’s greatest literary innovators. Born in Lisbon in 1888, he spent part of his childhood in South Africa after his father’s death, returning to Portugal as a teenager. A reserved, meticulous man who worked as a commercial translator, Pessoa lived a quiet existence while producing an extraordinary body of work.

His genius lay in the creation of heteronyms—fully developed fictional authors with distinct biographies, styles, and philosophies. The principal ones include Alberto Caeiro, a nature-loving pastoral poet; Ricardo Reis, a classical, stoic epicurean; and Álvaro de Campos, a futuristic, Whitmanesque modernist. 

Pessoa also wrote under his own name and as Bernardo Soares, the restless semi-heteronym of The Book of Disquiet, a fragmentary masterpiece of introspection and existential unease.

Published mostly posthumously (having died in 1935), his writings explore identity, the multiplicity of the self, and the nature of reality. Today Pessoa is revered as a cornerstone of modernist literature, his influence stretching far beyond Portuguese borders.

In addition to being a poet he was a prolific writer, literary critic, translator, and significant literary figure. Harold Bloom, author of Closing of the American Mind, referred to him as "the most representative poet of the 20th century," along with Pablo Neruda. He was trilingual in Portuguese, English, and French.

Here are two of Pessoa's poems extracted from a blog entitled Poems of Fernando Pessoa.

Saturday, November 6, 2010

This great wavering between
Believing and not quite dis-
Believing troubles the heart
Weary of knowing nothing.

Estranged from what it knows
For not knowing what it is,
The heart only has one vital
Moment, the finding of faith --

The faith that all the stars
Know, for it is the spider
Whose web they weave, and it is
The life before everything.


Sunday, December 26, 2010

I devote my higher mind to the ardent
Pursuit of the summit, leaving
Verse to chance and its laws,
For when the thought is lofty and noble,
The sentence will naturally seek it,
And rhythm slavishly serve it.

Sources: britannica.com and poets.org

John Stossel Says The Climate Apocalypse Is Bunk. I Agree.

As I have noted on numerous occasions, the public would be better served if they listened to more contrarians. One of my favorites is John Stossel. This week I watched his latest video You Don’t Understand the Environment: Lies about Greenhouse Gases, Polar Bears, Recycling, and More and wish everyone would watch or listen to it. You have my permission to quibble with a few details, but check out the facts first. Stop listening to the nonsense designed to keep you in a state of fear.

Stossel's guest in this half hour program is Research Fellow Linnea Lueken of The Heartland Institute. She is a Senior Fellow with the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy.

Global Warming and Climate Change Myths

Stossel opens by challenging popular alarmist claims, moving from "global warming" to "global boiling." He asserts that many scientists do not agree with the apocalyptic predictions made by activists and the media.

1. Melting Ice Caps

The arctic will be ice-free, oh no! Stossel disputes claims that Arctic ice is melting at a catastrophic rate and that the Arctic could be ice-free in summers by 2030 and sea levels will rise more than 20 feet. 

Stossel points out that while some melting has occurred, the trend has stabilized over the past 20 years and that predictions made in past decades have not come to fruition. Sea level rise is acknowledged but is described as occurring too slowly to prevent adaptation, debunking predictions that it will imminently flood cities. For over thirty years the Greens have been warning that coast cities will be underwater in ten years. Millions will be displaced. Malaria will kill even more. 

I'm reminded here of Michael Crichton's State of Fear, which argues that the threat of global warming is heavily exaggerated, driven by alarmist media, political agendas, and vested financial interests. The novel’s central message is a warning against "politicized science"—the dangerous intermixing of scientific data with politics, propaganda, and fear-mongering.

In 2009 Al Gore stated, "There is a 75% chance that the entire north polar ice cap during some of the summer months could be completely ice-free within the next five to seven years." How do these people still have any credibility?

2. Polar Bears and Mass Extinction:

The next myth Stossel challenges is the polar bear crisis. Contrary to claims of polar bear extinction, Lueken points out the reality is that polar bear numbers have increased by more than 50%. I know it's old-fashioned and unfair to use facts in such a controversial issue, but what the hey. When environmental groups use misleading information to solicit donations, someone has to point out the truth.

3. Massive Global Food Shortage

He next refutes the idea that climate change has led to a global food shortage. Lueken smiles and says, "There is o claim less true." In point of fact, there has been an increase in agricultural outputs, attributed in part to higher CO2 levels aiding plant growth and technological advances.

4. Droughts 

We have had a lot of wildfires this year, but claims that droughts and wildfires are increasing are easily disputed by pointing to historical data showing that drought conditions were worse in the 1930s, and that current wildfire incidences are more linked to land management and urban sprawl rather than climate change.  The EPA has itself acknowledged that the last 50 years has been wetter than average.

5. Wildfires

Yes there has been a modest uptick in wildfires since the early 1980s, but that was the lowest period of wildfires in U.S. history Lueken points out. The data from 50 years earlier shows that more than twice as much land area burned. And we should know. Here in the Northland we should know. The 1918 fires wiped out 35 towns and communities. Was that the same year as the Hinckley fire? 

6. Rising Seas

Oh please. Climate alarmists predicted in the 1990s that major European cities would be underwater by 202o. I'm rolling my eyes.

6. Coral Reefs

How many times have you heard that the Great Barrier Reef is dying and will become extinct? I have heard this assertion numerous times over the years. It's convenient that none of us live there. Repetition of this lament is endless. Stossel challengesn this nonsense with data indicating recent expansions of the Great Barrier Reef, countering the image of them as dying ecosystems.

7. Plastic and Recycling

This one may cause pushback by some. Stossel criticizes the recycling industry, particularly the inefficiency in recycling plastics. He points out that very little plastic is actually recycled and much ends up in landfills or is shipped to developing countries. 

8. Honeybees

We've heard plenty about the ominous decline in the honeybee population. Lueken and Stossel say it just isn't so. There is no Bee Apocalypse.

9. GMOs

Hmmm. All we've ever heard is how bad GMOs are. There's another side of that story, too. Why do we never hear it?

10. Environmental Activism and Financial Motives
Environmental groups are scrutinized for their fundraising strategies, which allegedly rely on perpetuating myths and fears about the planet's future. Stossel suggests these groups, despite their activist image, hold significant financial power and often obstruct development that could lead to greater prosperity.

This is my own personal beef with the environmentalists. There is a "no compromise" stance toward everything to a degree that it almost appears that their intentions are to deliberately damage the economy (which creates wealth that creates jobs and enriches all of us).  Instead, Greenpeace and other groups spend bazillions on lawyers to thwart projects that are in the best interests of all of us. 

11. The Role of Media

Stossel has special contempt for those in the media for amplifying alarmist climate narratives without adequately considering contrary scientific evidence, driven largely by the pursuit of sensational stories that attract attention and funding. When I used to have a radio in my car I regularly listened to NPR and thought it almost hilarious how many ways they could tie any event into a climate change reference. If one did a study, I'm willing to bet that there has never been a day in 20 years that did not mention climate change in a story. I'm not making this up. (Does anyone have access to the last 20 years of NPR transcripts? Maybe an AI could quickly answer that question for us?) "When was the last time NPR did not mention climate change?" As we know, NPR is not alone in tooting this horn.

12. Summing Up

Stossel concludes with these observations:

"I'm ashamed that I once fell for their scams. Years ago, my TV station ran ads promoting my alarmist environmental reporting. Now I realize that what today's big environmental groups mostly do is stop progress and make lawyers richer. We invited the groups to come here and explain to me why I'm wrong, defend your work. Not one would agree. I still want to ask them how they justify making it so hard for people to build anything. It's a shame because really, when I think about what America could be, what we could be building, we could be so prosperous, so much more prosperous than we are." 

I find it lamentable how any and every issue gets twisted once it has become political. Perhaps the real underlying issue is the fact that so much money is at stake. It seems like the doomsayers missed the point on the story of Chicken Little. Always screeching that "the sky is falling" should have consequences. The moral the story is that eventually no one takes you seriously. Children "got it." Why don't more adults get it?

Related Links
Climate Change Myths https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3vsyB84TcI
He Who Controls the Narrative Controls the People

Nadezhda von Meck, Tchaikovsky"s Patron: Influence, Encouragement, and the Quiet People Who Shape History.

The world has always depended upon people who quietly support genius without seeking the spotlight. Michelangelo had the Medici. Samuel Johnson had patrons. C. S. Lewis had friends who encouraged him. Van Gogh had his brother Theo. And Pyotr Tchaikovsky had Nadezhda von Meck.

Tchaikovsky's primary patron was a wealthy railroad magnate's widow. She supported him financially with an annual stipend of 6,000 rubles for 13 years, allowing him to quit teaching and compose full-time, under the unusual condition that they never meet in person.

I'd long known that this great composer had been supported by a wealthy patron, and that they agreed to never met, but it was news to me when I learned (while researching this story) that they had an extensive correspondence. During those 13 years they exchanged more than 1200 letters. That's almost 100 letters a year, or 92 to be more precise. 

Who was this woman? Nadezhda Filaretovna von Meck (1831–1894) was one of the wealthiest women in Russia. She married Karl von Meck, who built a fortune developing Russia's expanding railway system. (Russia's equivalent of Cornelius Vanderbilt.) When von Meck died in 1876, she inherited his immense fortune and controlled a vast business empire.

In the mid-1870s Tchaikovsky was becoming recognized in Russian musical circles, but he was hardly wealthy. Von Meck first became acquainted with his music through her resident musicians. She was deeply moved by it and soon commissioned him to arrange several pieces for violin and piano for her household performances.

Another thing I just learned. I'd always believed that it was Tchaikovsky who created the condition that they never meet. It turns out that it was von Meck because she feared that meeting would destroy the idealized friendship they had built through letters.

What did they discuss in their correspondence? Music, of course, but much more. Literature, philosophy, religion, illness, depression, travel, family, artistic struggles and daily life were all recurring themes. He purportedly confessed thoughts to her that he revealed to almost no one else.

One reason this topic interested me this week is that I have many times over the decades thought about how valuable this woman must have been to Tchaikovsky, and how the world for 150 years has been enriched by his incredible catalog that includes The 1812 Overture, The Nutcracker Suite, piano masterpieces, concertos and six symphonies.

The thing is, you don't have to be J.P. Morgan or the Vandebilts or the Rockefellers or Elon, or Bill Gates to make a difference in another life. Even if you can't support artists, authors or musicians as an ongoing subsidy, you can purchase their work or simply give them encouragement. 

Although it's true that we have foundations and grants for the arts, somehow it's the personal human interaction that really adds meaning to the artist-patron relationship. 

Money isn't the only thing aspiring artists may benefit from. Mentors play an invaluable role in many artists' and writers' lives. My career as a writer was greatly advanced by a professional writer, John Prin, who took me under his wing when I was first starting out. Whether in the arts or in business, mentors often play a critical role in getting one's feet on the first rungs of the ladder.

As a writer I've sought to shine a spotlight on local artists whose work I've admired. The impact of Robert Shelton's review of Bob Dylan is legendary. Dylan was doing a two week residency at Gerde's Folk City in Greenwich Village. Shelton was a reporter for the New York Times whose review appeared in print on September 29, 1961 in which he wrote that a "bright new face in folk music" was in town. 

Bottom Line: You can make a difference. Encouragement is nourishment, and hope is what keeps us going. 

What Is "Gain of Function" Research?

Now that we are in the AI era, when I ask Google a question it no longer begins with sponsored links or a list of websites based on perceived value algorithms. Rather, it begins with an AI Overview.

From the earliest days of the Covid epidemic it was suspected that the Covid virus or organism was created in a lab in Wuhan, China. This was flatly denied by Dr. Fauci, the CDC and other spokespersons. Voices that questioned "the company line" were squashed. 

Once in a while we (the public) would hear references to what struck me as a strange phrase: Gain of Function research. We've heard it for years now, but frankly, I never really understood what it meant.

This week, with Dr. Fauci on the hot seat in DC, it seemed time to understand what this phrase meant, since it feels like a central feature of this story. 

When I asked Google what it was, here is what was delivered to me:

Gain-of-function research is medical and biological study that genetically alters an organism to give it new or enhanced abilities, such as increased potency, wider host ranges, or faster transmission. It is used broadly across science to understand basic cell functions, create helpful products like insulin, and prepare for future viral outbreaks. However, when applied to dangerous pathogens, it sparks major safety debates over the risk of accidental leaks. 

Core Concepts and Goals

Genetic alteration: Changes an organism's DNA or RNA in a lab or through selective growth to add a trait.

General applications: Helps design vaccines, map out disease targets, and build better medicines.

Everyday examples: Modifying bacteria to produce medical insulin or altering crops to resist bad weather and pests.

Safety and Controversy
High-risk subset: Focuses on pathogens with pandemic potential by making viruses deadlier or easier to catch.
Dual-use dilemma: Provides crucial insights for stopping real-world outbreaks, but carries the inherent biological risk of creating or releasing a severe contagion.

I suppose we should not be surprised that governments are doing this kind of research. As Dylan wrote in his 1982 song "License to Kill": "Man thinks 'cause he rules the earth he can do with it as he please // And if things don't change soon, he will"

The surprise is how totalitarian-like the efforts were to force the public to "accept" the story that this was not a lab leak and then smother us with mask mandates and isolation, shutting down of schools. Covid-19 was essentially a bad flu virus. 

The whole Wuhan event makes me want to write a short story about a group of virions (singular for a virus cell) that are tired of being genetically altered in this foreign laboratory. The have meetings and discuss how to escape. In the end, one of the virions gets tired of the meetings and starts a new group called "Take Action." In the end, he concludes that meetings and protests aren't working, but clings to the hope that he might be able to escape on his own. His motive, he says, is this: "The world needs to know what is going on here."

Related Links

What Anthony Fauci's Defenders (and Critics) Get Wrong [Robby Soave, Reason Magazine]

Acting CDC director says Fauci "abused the place of power" during the COVID pandemic [Faris Tanyos, CBS]

Photo Credit: This image is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

Throwback Thursday: Four Ishiguro Book Reviews and a Bonus Track

Like most avid readers I read when I can, and never as much as I'd like. In 2010 I carried around with me a borrowed Spring 2008 edition of The Paris Review, chiefly with the purpose of reading a fascinating interview with Kazuo Ishiguro, author of Remains of the Day, which I then wrote about here.   

Kazuo Ishiguro is a Japanese-born British novelist and one of the most acclaimed contemporary writers in English literature. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2017 for works that, in the Swedish Academy’s words, uncover “the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world.” The first time I wrote about him here was in 2010

A 3-Day Ride with Ryder: Ishiguro’s The Unconsoled Is an Achievement of the First Order
When a world-famous pianist returns home to perform an important concert, he is forced to come to terms with who he really is. Ishiguro’s The Unconsoled has the feel of a cross between Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland and the magical realism of Jorge Luis Borges. Like each of these authors, he has created a work that defies categorization.
https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2019/04/a-3-day-ride-with-ryder-ishiguros.html

In Awe of Ishiguro's The Buried Giant
The novel takes place in England in that period after the passing of King Arthur. The story follows an elderly married couple, Axl and Beatrice, who for some reason cannot remember their past, or rather, the memories they've lost touch with are hazy and dark.

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2020/08/in-awe-of-ishiguros-buried-giant.html

Ishiguro Again Shows His Mastery: Never Let Me Go
There's something special about the students living at Hailsham, a boarding school in England. At first we don't know what's so special about this school, and neither do the children who grow up there, but eventually a little light streams in and we learn that these children are here for a purpose.

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2020/09/ishiguro-again-shows-his-mastery-never.html

Ishiguro's Klara Is Apparently No Fiction
Ishiguro demonstrates once again why he is considered one of the great writers of our time. The English language has a shortage of superlatives to describe the power of his prose, so I shan't even attempt it. 

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2021/07/ishiguros-klara-and-sun-is-another.html

Interview with David Asch Offers Insights On A.I.
Klara and the Sun is about A.I. and David Asch's review demonstrated his deeper understanding of the current status of Artificial Intelligence and where it is headed. I asked permission to pick his brain on this topic and he graciously accepted.

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2021/10/interview-with-david-asch-offers.html

Have you read Ishiguro's work? What is your favorite novel of his? Please share it in the comments.

Signs of Our Decline Are All Around; A Dire Warning from Niall Ferguson

“Hope is important because it can make the present moment less difficult to bear. If we believe that tomorrow will be better, we can bear a hardship today.” 
—Thich Nhat Hanh

“To live without hope is to cease to live.” 

—Fyodor Dostoevsky

Yesterday as I listened to a video titled Niall Ferguson Stuns World Leaders at ARC Australia - "Are We The Soviets Now?" some thoughts clicked in my head. Ferguson, a historian from Edinburgh, has much to say about the times we live in. In the past hundred years the massses, who for various reasons have felt abandoned by the Church, how been encouraged to put their faith in the State. Today, this folly has become apparent. His talk is less than 20 minutes long and you can watch it below or follow the URL and listen on YouTube.

What follows here are some excerpts from his talk, with a few of my thoughts added in response.

American politics is geriatric. If you look at the chart on the other side of this slide, the United States is a real outlier because its legislators are also substantially older than those of peer countries. 

Joe Biden was president when this was recorded, but it was apparent Donald Trump would be his successor. Each would end their terms at 82. Nancy Pelosi was well advanced and others as well. A friend of mine told me that a local congressperson confided that the worst part is that these people spend 70% of their time getting re-elected (to hold on to power) and 30% actually focused on legislation. Its very difficult to unseat those in office due to the massive name recognition advantage they have over new faces.

  

The Soviet Union's economy was characterized by the soft budget constraint which meant that state-owned enterprises were under almost no pressure to be economically efficient. That's in fact true of the US federal government too. I spend a lot of my time thinking about US fiscal policy. It's really shocking to observe that this year, for the first time, the United States federal government will spend more on interest payments on the federal debt than on defence. 

Even without the massive amounts of grift and fraud, the government's fiscal irresponsibility is apparent to all. The blame game seems more important than fixing any of it.

One of the striking features of life in 1980s Soviet Russia was that nobody believed in the system anymore.

It was a crock and rampant cynicism spread like like an oil slick across the culture.

Fact, as many Americans have died of suicide or drug overdoses in the last 10 years, has died of COVID-19, 1.2 million. If you include the deaths from alcohol abuse, deaths of despair killed more people in the past 10 years in the United States than COVID did.  

This (above) was the statement that arrested my attention. I've noted it in the past, and have expressed alarm that there have been more overdose deaths each year than all the soldiers who died in Vietnam over the span of ten years. Back then it seemed like we saw in the evening news daily footage of bodybags being loaded onto planes. These news stories produced the pushback against the war that became known as the anti-war movement. Where is the outrage today? What are we doing to end our current tragedy?

Well, Ferguson gives it a context.

What an extraordinary increase there has been in deaths of despair from suicide, alcohol poisoning, or drug overdoses. And if you compare the United States with comparable countries, including Australia, which is in the lower chart, dotted blue line, you see that the United States has a completely unique trend, with an extraordinary upward surge in deaths of despair unlike anywhere else.  

Our suicides, overdose deaths and alcohol poisoning among the you should alert us in the same way as those canaries in the mines. Something serious is amiss.

I come from Scotland. We invented the Rust Belt. We did Hillbilly Elegy before J.D. Vance was even born. I remember the east end of Glasgow, they shut down the steelworks, they shut down the shipyards. Glasgow in the 1970s was already a Rust Belt. By the 1980s, deaths of despair was our major export. Anybody seen the movie Trainspotting? 

"Deaths of despair." Wow. This is not a nice sound byte. It's a painful reality that few upper crusts think about. Life at the bottom is not something cool. 

As I looked at Angus Deaton's work on deaths of despair, and I kept asking myself, why have I seen this before? What does this remind me of? And then I remembered. The only other advanced economy where there has ever been a comparable decline in life expectancy, a comparable increase in particularly male midlife mortality, the Soviet Union in the 70s and 80s. And you can see the data here. The extraordinary deterioration in male life expectancy at birth in the Soviet Union compared here with France.

Which leads to Ferguson's doppelganger comparison, our nation's ghostly double being the Soviet Union of 1980.

The explanation in the Soviet case was that people had completely lost their belief in the system and regarded the party as a massive scam. The cynicism was bone deep. 

For many, there is still hope. I wish I shared their confidence. Too much of what passes for optimism today is little more than wishful rhetoric. Even here in Duluth, I see few signs that we are willing to confront our deepest problems with the seriousness they deserve. Hope cannot survive indefinitely on slogans. Unless we honestly face the realities before us, we may find ourselves following the same kind of decline and despair that engulfed the Soviet Union in its final years—a society that ignored its accumulating failures until they became impossible to escape.

Related Links

Niall Ferguson on the Breakdown of the Rule of Law

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2022/02/niall-ferguson-on-breakdown-of-rule-of.html

Decline of the West: Historian Niall Ferguson Sounds Wake Up Call

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2021/12/decline-of-west-historian-niall.html

Niall Ferguson Stuns World Leaders at ARC Australia - "Are We The Soviets Now?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUJMyTJ9gyI&t=