Niilismo e afirmação da vida em Fernando Pessoa: uma leitura à luz da filosofia de Friedrich Nietzsche

Abstract

This dissertation investigates the issue of Nihilism and the affirmation of life in Fernando Pessoa's poetry, in the light of Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophy. The German philosopher, known as one of the most important experts on this subject, therefore, one who can offer vast and valuable interlocutory subsidies for an investment in the work of the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa. Pessoa's poetic corpus, for being full of philosophical questions, certainly appears as a fruitful field for the analysis and radicalization of this problem. As a strategy, initially, we can start from the reflection of Clademir Araldi (2004), who proposes an incursion into the extremes of Nietzsche's philosophy (nihilism and affirmation) from the most emblematic types of each stage of the author of Zarathustra: the tragic artist (period of youth), the free spirit (intermediate period) and the beyond-man (late period). For our part, we see a considerable affinity between the Nietzschean concept of type and Pessoa's concept of heteronym, that is, the phenomenon of the use of a multiplicity of pseudonyms to write, a characteristic for which Pessoa remained widely known. Thus, treating Pessoa's heteronyms as Nietzschean types, we used the conceptions of the will of power and eternal recurrence of the same, on a subjective level, as criteria to differentiate the weak from the strong, that is, to measure nihilism and the affirmation of life in the four primordial figures of heteronymy: Pessoa orthonym, Álvaro de Campos, Ricardo Reis, and Alberto Caeiro. In this latter heteronym, it would be, in thesis, the most successful Pessoa's attempt to build a superior type, that is, a type capable of offering a countermovement to nihilism. To finalize our mister, first, we examine the relationship of Fernando Pessoa with philosophy, as well as the liame of the Portuguese writer with Nietzsche's ideas, in addition to a brief state of the art of studies that seek to interrelate them. However, it must be said that still there are no works that brings them closer discussing the nihilism and assent to life. In a second moment of the research, we proceeded to a historical reconstruction of the concept of nihilism, until we reach nihilism of Nietzschean character, closely linked to the affirmation of existence, also bringing to light the concepts of will of power and eternal recurrence of the same. In possession of such elements, in a third and decisive moment, we enable ourselves, finally, to enter into a reading of Fernando Pessoa in the light of the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche.