Dionysus or Apollo?
The Heteronym António Mora as
Moment of Nietzsche’s Reception by Pessoa
MATTIA RICC ARDI
Introduction
On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Nietzsche’s death, Gottfried
Benn wrote these famous words: ‘Virtually everything which my generation
discussed, attempted to think through, one can say: suffered — one can
also say: went on about — had already been expressed and exhausted
by Nietzsche, who had seized definitive formulations; all that remained
was exegesis’.1 Benn belonged to a generation that took Nietzsche as a
model of an existential experience characterized by a wide and radical
crisis, and turned him into a cult object. Nietzsche was seen as the genial
forerunner, the first able to diagnose the symptoms of that grim era.
Born, like Benn, in the late 1880s, Fernando Pessoa also grew up in this
cultural atmosphere. However, compared to Benn’s work, Nietzsche’s
name not only occurs much more rarely in Pessoa’s, but is frequently
accompanied by corrosive comments. Nevertheless, a closer reading
shows that Pessoa’s relation to Nietzsche — the subject of my paper — is
much deeper than might appear at first sight. Furthermore, Pessoa’s case
seems, paradoxically, to confirm Benn’s retrospective remark in an even
clearer way, since it reveals an innermost commitment to Nietzsche even
on the part of those authors who explicitly distanced themselves from
him. In Pessoa’s case this can already be detected at a first reading, albeit
vaguely, but a meticulous examination of his works only intensifies this
first impression.2 Moreover, the philological investigation of the relation
between Nietzsche and Pessoa provides a deep insight into the murky
background of European culture at the beginning of the twentieth
century.
1
Gottfried Benn, ‘Nietzsche After 50 Years’, trans. by Matthew D. Lund, New Nietzsche Studies,
4.3/4 (2000–01), 127–37 (p. 127).
2
On the relation between Pessoa and Nietzsche, see Steffen Dix, ‘Pessoa e Nietzsche: deuses
gregos, pluralidade moderna e pensamento europeu no princípio do século XX’, Revista do
Centro de História da Universidade de Lisboa, 11 (2004), 139–74; Georg Rudolph Lind, ‘Nietzsche
e Pessoa’, in Um século de Pessoa: Encontro internacional do centenário de Fernando Pessoa (5–7
dezembro 1988) (Lisbon: Secretaria de Estado da Cultura, 1990), pp. 283–86; Eduardo Lourenço,
‘Nietzsche e Pessoa’ in Nietzsche: Cem anos após o projecto ‘Vontade de Poder — Transmutação de todos
os valores’, ed. by António Marques (Lisbon: Veja, 1989), pp. 247–63. For Nietzsche’s general
reception in Portugal see Américo E. Monteiro, A recepção da obra de Friedrich Nietzsche na vida
intelectual portuguesa (1892–1939) (Porto: Universidade Católica Portuguesa/Lello, 2000), who
also gives ample information about Pessoa.
110 Mattia Riccardi
A first, preliminary question is that of Pessoa’s reading of Nietzsche’s
works and, more generally, his knowledge about them. As regards the
direct sources, it is hard to track them down, as there is not a single book by
Nietzsche in Pessoa’s library. However, as Monteiro points out,3 the many
references to Nietzsche, together with a note in the espólio concerning a
Spanish translation of Zarathustra, allow us infer that Pessoa had direct
contact with his work. The indirect sources are more easily determined.
Firstly, Pessoa’s known reading of the French translation of Max Nordau’s
Entartung should be mentioned.4 In fact this very negative judgment
of Nietzsche seems to have greatly influenced Pessoa, who, agreeing
completely with Nordau, attacks Nietzsche’s ‘estilo inconsequente’ and
his ‘pensamento para o adivinharmos’, claiming that in Nietzsche’s
philosophy ‘a contradição de si-próprio é a única coerência fundamental,
e a sua verdadeira inovação é o não se poder saber o que foi que ele
inovou’.5 Secondly, one must consider Gaultier’s De Kant à Nietzsche,
which, in contrast to Nordau, provides a very positive image of Nietzsche.6
An important note by Pessoa on Nietzsche refers directly to Gaultier. The
beginning of the chapter dedicated to Nietzsche in Gaultier’s book goes as
follows: ‘Tout système philosophique est l’objectivation dans la mentalité
d’un tempérament prenant conscience de ses manières d’être, de ses
désirs et de ses aversions, érigeant en bien ce qui le favorise, en mal ce
qui lui est contraire. — Cette idée domine et éclaire toute la philosophie
de Nietzsche’ (pp. 251–52). Pessoa, based on this excerpt, polemicizes
with this alleged idea of Nietzsche’s: ‘O próprio Nietzsche asseverou
que uma filosofia não é senão a expressão de um temperamento. Não é
assim, suficientemente. As teorias de um filósofo são a resultante do seu
temperamento e da sua época. São o efeito intelectual da sua época sobre
o seu temperamento’.7 This example shows how Nietzsche’s reception by
Pessoa is complex, and filtered through second-hand sources. Amongst
the authors whose works belonged to Pessoa’s library, the following may
have provided other information about Nietzsche: Alfred William Benn,
John Cowper Powys, Henry Lichtenberger, and Alfred Fouillée.
To exemplify the broad context of Pessoa’s relation to Nietzsche let us
take a look at the following note, dating back to Pessoa’s student days,
which illustrates the circumstances of his first encounter with Nietzsche.
In the summer of 1905 Pessoa returned to Lisbon from South Africa,
3
See Monteiro, p. 294.
4
Max Nordau, Dégénérescence, 2 vols, (Paris: Alcan, 1894) — in Pessoa’s time still the only
French version of Nordau’s Entartung, 2 vols (Berlin: Drucker, 1892–93). On Pessoa’s knowledge
of the French translation see his letter to José Osório de Oliveira, in 1932, in Fernando Pessoa,
Obra poética e em prosa, ed. by António Quadros, 3 vols (Porto: Lello & Irmãos, 1986), ii, 325.
5
Fernando Pessoa, Textos filosóficos, ed. by António Pina Coelho, 2 vols (Lisbon: Ática, [n.d.]),
i, 135.
6
Jules de Gaultier, De Kant à Nietzsche, 4th edn (Paris: Mercure de France, 1910).
7
Pessoa, Obra, iii, 174.
Dionysus or Apollo? The Heteronym António Mora 111
matriculating the following autumn at the Curso Superior de Letras,8
where he attended classes (amongst others) in philosophy. Amongst the
numerous notes from this period, which were evidently stimulated by his
discovery of the philosophical tradition, there is a reflection, written in
English, upon the nature of the human soul. The young Pessoa regards
the soul as a mere physiological function, serving to co-ordinate and
guide the whole organism. It is out of this origin that there grows the false
idea that the human organism is subordinated to a real, substantial unity:
‘It is the basis of the human, too human, dogmas of the immortality of the
soul, of its freedom, of its perfect simplicity. The stupendous realisation
of an abstraction which consits [sic] in elevating a mere centralisation
of emotions, which has a reality by them and in them, and only in so
far as they are there all centralized, in elevating this into a reality, into
a personality’. Thus, Pessoa advocates a ‘ “psychology without soul” ’, as
‘Lange enjoined us to do’.9 In this context, not only the clear reference
to Nietzsche, implicit in the expression ‘human, too human’, has to be
mentioned, but moreover that to Lange, which indicate a broader field,
common to Pessoa as well as to Nietzsche.10 In fact, Nietzsche’s first
critique of the traditional concept of the soul dates back to his reading of
Lange’s Meisterwerk, the History of Materialism (1866), to be found in some
notes for a doctoral project dedicated to a discussion of teleology since
Kant.11 The dismissal of the substantial unity of the subject in favour of
the multiple structure of the body then becomes a central point of his
philosophy during the 1880s. As Nietzsche wrote, almost twenty years
after his juvenile reflections: ‘No subject-“atoms”. The sphere of a subject
constantly growing and diminishing — the centre of the system constantly
moving’, so that ‘all unity is such only as organization and interaction’,12 but
not as a real substance.
The same idea is also expressed by the young Pessoa: ‘Now all human
activity is of these various seats of those diverse passions and emotions.
Their centralisation is the idea of their implication, of their unity. There is
8
This information is based upon the documents on Pessoa’s student years revealed by Arnaldo
Saraiva at the sixth Congresso dos Lusitanistas Alemães (Leipzig, 15–18 September 2005), where it
is shown that Pessoa matriculated at the Curso Superior de Letras not in the autumn of 1906,
but in that of 1905.
9
Pessoa, Filosóficos, I, 216–17.
10
Nietzsche’s name appears in two other notes of this period, relating to the concept of value.
See Pessoa, Filosóficos, I, 18 and 53.
11
On Nietzsche’s commitment to Lange see Jörg Salaquarda, ‘Nietzsche und Lange’, Nietzsche-
Studien, 7 (1978), 236–60; George Stack, Lange and Nietzsche (Berlin/New York: De Gruyter,
1983).
12
Friedrich Nietzsche, Kritische Studienausgabe, ed. by Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, 15
vols (Berlin/New York: De Gruyter, 1981), XII, 391, 9[98] and 104, 2[87]. The translations of
Nietzsche’s cited passages are mine throughout.
112 Mattia Riccardi
no centre of personality, in a positive meaning of the word “centre” ’.13 In
a further text, in which Pessoa enumerates the most impressive scientific
discoveries dominating the cultural landscape of his time, the same
subject-theory of a Nietzschean flavour recurs:
Com efeito, contra a pseudopsicologia tradicional, cristã como não-cristã,
para quem a alma humana era símplice, a razão a faculdade, não só distintiva,
como também impulsiva, do Homem, e a consciência o fenómeno definidor
dos factos psíquicos, a ciência psicológica constata que a alma humana,
soma de instintos e impulsos herdados e de hábitos adquiridos e insensíveis,
é um composto heterogéneo; [...] o Homem é uma soma heterogénea de
solicitações inconscientes, a que uma consciência e uma razão, aquisições
recentes da animalidade, presidem como um rei constitucional, que reina mas
não governa.14
This remark shows what kind of relation links Pessoa to Nietzsche.
On one hand, many specific topics turn up repeatedly, if sometimes
surreptitiously, thus articulating a common axis shared by both their
discourses. On the other hand, it also implies the reference to a wider
cultural context, whose singularity Gottfried Benn seeks to emphasize in
the lines quoted earlier.
In this paper, starting out from the relation between Nietzsche and
Pessoa, I intend to identify some characteristic moments of this cultural
ambience. With this goal in mind, I will concentrate exclusively upon the
recently published texts attributed to Pessoa’s heteronym António Mora,
which take up several subjects also central to Nietzsche’s doctrine. As
pointed out by Américo Monteiro, the very staging of Mora as heteronym
seems to be inspired by Nietzsche’s biography.15 In fact, Pessoa situates
Mora in the ‘Casa de Saúde’, in Cascais, where he walks around the
garden dressed in a toga, holding forth upon the ancient philosophers
and cursing the Catholic Church.16 Madness, enthusiasm for the Greeks,
philosophical ‘pathos’ and reserved attitude: all these features that Pessoa
attributes to Mora remind us immediately of the stereotypical image of
Nietzsche, so popular at the turn of the century. In Pessoa’s ‘galaxy’ of
13
Pessoa, Filosóficos, I, 216.
14
Pessoa, Obra, III, 102. There is a close relation between such remarks and the problem of
heteronomy. Thus, one can draw a parallel between Pessoa and Nietzsche also on this point. See
Nietzsche’s following note, that clearly preludes Pessoa’s heteronomy: ‘I do not need to believe
any more in “souls”, [...] I deny the “personality” and its supposed unity and in every person I
meet I find stuff for many different “personae” (and masks)’, Nietzsche, XI, 558, 36[17].
15
See Monteiro, p. 344.
16
Pessoa’s mise en scène actually resembles — surely by sheer chance — the painful staging that
Nietzsche, already ill, had to suffer in his last years. According to Walter Benjamin, at a social
evening organized by his sister, as Director of the Nietzsche Archive in Weimar, the ‘sufferer
[Nietzsche], wearing a gown similar to a toga’, was shown as a living relic from behind a curtain.
See Walter Benjamin, ‘Nietzsche und das Archiv seiner Schwester’ in Gesammelte Schriften, ed. by
Rolf Tiedemann and Hermann Schweppenhäuser, 7 vols (Frankfurt–Main: Suhrkamp, 1972–
99), III: Kritiken und Rezensionen, ed. by Hella Tiedemann-Bartels (1991), 323–26 (p. 323).
Dionysus or Apollo? The Heteronym António Mora 113
heteronyms, Mora acts as a disciple to the Master Caeiro, and following on
from Caeiro’s ‘natural’ poetry, Pessoa uses him to draw the philosophical
outline of a renewed paganism on Portuguese soil, present also in the
writings of Ricardo Reis. Nevertheless it is with Mora that we find Pessoa’s
neo-pagan ‘movement’ promoted by means of propagandistic essays, and
it is upon these that I will focus my attention.
Mora, Nietzsche and the Criticism of Christianity
Regarding his reception of Nietzsche’s thought, the approach to the topic
of paganism by Pessoa can be developed as a comment on the following
excerpt:
O ódio de Nietzsche ao cristismo aguçou-lhe a intuição nestes pontos. Mas errou,
porque não era em nome do paganismo greco-romano que ele erguia o seu grito,
embora o cresse; era em nome do paganismo nórdico dos seus maiores. E aquele
Diónisos, que contrapõe a Apolo, nada tem com a Grécia. É um Baco alemão.
Nem aquelas teorias desumanas, excessivas tal qual como as cristãs, embora
em outro sentido, nada devem ao paganismo claro e humano dos homens que
criaram tudo o que verdadeiramente subsiste, resiste e ainda cria adentro do
nosso sistema de civilização.17
This passage immediately makes clear both the points of agreement and
those of divergence. On one hand, it confirms, as one might expect, that
the critique of Christianity is the obvious common ground to the writings
of Mora and of Nietzsche. On the other hand, the critical remark on
Nietzsche’s concept of the Dionysian makes us aware of a fundamental
disagreement regarding the interpretation of the Classics. I will begin
with the first aspect.
In a note by Pessoa that might have come from Mora’s pen, the origin
of religious sentiment is seen as a result of the attempt to escape the pain
that accompanies any human experience: ‘No fundo, o homem religioso
é um hedonista. O instinto religioso de modo geral é um instinto de
prazer, de ter tudo resolvido na vida. Deter-se só perante a Verdade é
doloroso para o homem. A Realidade é muda e fria’.18 From its state
of need, humanity develops the religious representation as a means
to rationalize, in an as yet unsophisticated way, the tragic in its own
life, gaining power over it. Nietzsche sees exactly the same tendency in
Christianity, its goal being to provide a plausible justification for human
suffering.19 In doing this, Christianity acts as a powerful narcotic against
17
Fernando Pessoa, Ricardo Reis: Prosa, ed. by Manuela Parreira da Silva (Lisbon: Assírio &
Alvim, 2003), p. 81.
18
Pessoa, Filosóficos, II, 103.
19
Amongst Pessoa’s sources, this claim of Nietzsche’s is expounded for instance by Henri
Lichtenberger, L’Allemagne moderne: Son évolution, (Paris: Flammarion, 1907), p. 310.
114 Mattia Riccardi
life, a claim also shared by Mora: ‘Foi o Christianismo que trouxe à
civilização occidental a necessidade de substituir o universo. Não seremos
injustos se dissermos que o Christianismo foi na civilização europeia a
primeira fórma conhecida do opio ou da cocaina’.20 Moreover, Mora
borrows directly from Nietzsche’s famous formula, according to which
the innermost nature of Christianity consists in the absolute negation
of reality: ‘o invisivel, o ultra-humano, o divino, por grosseiramente
que fosse concebido, era-o como opposto á Realidade Exterior’ (p.
273). To express it in Nietzsche’s own terms, we can say that Mora sees
Christianity as embodying the most paradigmatic form of that nihilistic
tendency which considers life as something fictitious and worthless. This
fundamental attitude is also common to Buddhism:
O buddhismo, e, antes d’elle, a religião da India, representam o mais puro typo
do afastamento dos ideaes naturalmente humanos, que o colleccionador de
doenças possa desejar encontrar. Partindo, clara ou obscuramente, do principio
deshumano de que a vida é uma illusão, o buddhista ou o brahmanista visa, no
seu culto religioso, transcender essa misera humanidade. Semelhantemente o
christão [...]. (p. 180)
Hence the accusation of counter-naturalism made against Christianity,
equally in agreement with Nietzsche. Whereas in Buddhism the main
goal consists in a ‘renuncia ao mundo, não só externo como interno, e
a morte total como unica verdadeira vida’ (p. 231), Christianity lets the
denial of life culminate in the postulation of a ‘second world’, according
to Nietzsche’s formulation.21 As Ricardo Reis explains, neo-paganism
counterposes to this idea the dignified and objective attitude of the
Ancients:
O que distingue o paganismo greco-romano é o carácter firmemente objectivo
que nele transparece, efeito de uma mentalidade, que, embora diferente nos dois
povos, tinha de comum a tendência para colocar na Natureza exterior, ou num
princípio, embora abstracto, derivado dela, o critério da Realidade, o ponto de
Verdade, a base para a especulação e para a interpretação da vida. [...] E, na esfera
da vida humana, a mesma objectividade perdura: de modo que são as qualidades
humanas e não sobre-humanas que formam as bases ideais da ética. O ideal, a
especulação, são extraídos da realidade pelos gregos, não lhe são impostos nem
por dentro, como no sistema índio, nem por fora como no de Cristo.22
20
Fernando Pessoa, Obras de António Mora, ed. by Luís Filipe B. Teixeira (Lisbon: Imprensa
Nacional–Casa da Moeda, 2002), p. 191.
21
See also Nietzsche’s following remark, cited by Gaultier: ‘Le christianisme, dit-il [Nietzsche],
est par principe essentiellement et radicalement satiété et dégoût de la vie pour la vie, qui
se dissimulent, se déguisent seulement sous le travesti de la foi en une autre vie, en une vie
meilleure’ (Gaultier, p. 299). The quotation is taken from the new preface to The Birth of Tragedy
that Nietzsche wrote in 1886. See Nietzsche, I, 18.
22
Pessoa, Reis, p. 78. In this text we also find a critique of the common image of the Ancient
Greek mentality as ‘joyful’: ‘Tão-pouco se distingue o paganismo greco-romano por aquele
característico que é costume atribuir-lhe: a alegria e a sensualidade. Esse conceito, que existe
Dionysus or Apollo? The Heteronym António Mora 115
Nietzsche, too, establishes the affirmative nature of paganism in diametric
opposition to Christianity: ‘Pagan is saying yes to the natural, feeling
innocent amongst the natural, “the naturality” [...] Christian is saying no to
the natural, feeling unworthy amongst the natural, the counter-nature’.23
Besides, Mora’s notes clearly reveal his knowledge of Nietzsche’s famous
claim that Christianity was the historical outcome of a slave insurrection that
occurred in the decadent context of the dissolution of the Roman Empire.
In spite of its dubious birth, writes Mora, Christianity was able to ensure
its victory over Greek and Roman aristocratic culture: thus, ‘uma religião
de escravos’, after taking over the power structures of the Roman Empire,
‘attinge um poder de imperadores’.24 This event was so decisive that our
soul still carries the visible traces of this miserable genesis: ‘descende dos
escravos e das prostitutas do imperio romano em decadencia’ (p. 101).25
According to this diagnosis, Christianity institutionalizes degeneracy,
casting its shadow over all Western civilization, and its morbid nature, far
from making it weaker, is just what enables such an impressive success:
‘elle ficou sendo uma religião com um universal apêlo a tudo quanto é
fraqueza humana, decadencia, tibieza e incapacidade. De ahi lhe vém
o seu desmascarado poder de ser acceite por todos os povos, a funesta
funilicidade com que penetra em todas as regiões e se infiltra por todos
os póros’ (p. 270). This is reflected in its indefinite and ‘cosmopolitan’
nature, which, as Nietzsche stresses, allows Christianity to creep into
the soul of any nation: ‘it [the Christian movement] does not express
the decline of a race, it is from the beginning an aggregate of disease-
formations gathering together and looking for each other... Thus, it is not
national, not conditioned by the race: it addresses the disinherited from
everywhere’.26 In summary, we can use Mora’s short sententia: ‘todo o
christismo é uma crise que se fixou’.27
Besides this rejection of the Christian tradition some other resemblances
can be noted. Just like Nietzsche, Mora too sees in the so-called ‘modern
ideas’ a new form of Christian decadence:
apenas nos ignorantes e nos que só pensam em paganismo como coisa diferente do cristismo,
é, como a ciência sabe, um erro. Não é mister repetir as observações dos dois mestres da ciência
do helenismo — Boecke e Burckhardt. Eles afirmaram, o último categoricamente, que os gregos
eram mais tristes do que muita gente julga’ (p. 77). The same idea, which here Pessoa traces back
to Burckhardt, also plays a central role in the Birth of Tragedy. Through Burckhardt’s mediation,
that notoriously provided Nietzsche with a deeper insight into the soul of the Ancient Greeks,
another point of convergence between Pessoa and Nietzsche can be drawn.
23
Nietzsche, XII, 571–72, 10[193].
24
Pessoa, Mora, p. 264.
25
With regard to this question, Gaultier writes of Christianity: ‘il se manifeste dans sa perfection
et dans sa pureté parmi le troupeau d’esclaves assemblé par le monde romain, et, plus tarde, sous
sa forme idéale, dans l’Imitation de Jésus-Christ’, Gaultier, p. 265.
26
Nietzsche, XIII, 267–68, 14[91].
27
Pessoa, Mora, p. 210.
116 Mattia Riccardi
como todas estas cousas aconteciam a-dentro da civilização christan, e entre gente
sob cujas almas pesava a herança doentia de seculos de uma fé de degenerados
e de escravos, como a base das actividades da alma era sempre de indole christã
— outra cousa não podia acontecer do que sahir-se mais em aparencia do que em
verdade, do espirito do christianismo, e practicarem actos espirituaes de christão
os que mais se julgariam afastados do christianismo, de-sorte-que a propria revolta
contra a religião de Jesus, ella vinha do amago do sentimento christão. (p. 315)
Democracy and egalitarianism, feminism and socialism are no more
than the last products of the Christian soul. Mora supports this claim
by arguing that individualism and sentimentalism, which represent
the kernel of romanticism, are at the same time central elements of
Christianity. The nihilistic escape from life necessarily leads to an extreme
‘interiorization’: the habit of introspection culminating in asceticism thus
becomes the most worthy life-model, to the detriment of the vita activa.
Leaving aside its scanty attention to reality, the soul now concentrates only
on its own, inner feelings: ‘O progresso humano, da Grecia para cá, tem
sido um apesar, tem sido uma serie de erros de origem sentimental. É tudo
isso resultado de nos termos entregue ao sentimento para tudo’ (p. 101).
Such a spiritual tendency then comes to its fullest realization through the
shameless confessionalism of romantic literature: ‘O christismo attingiu a
sua expressão exacta só com o movimento romantico’ (p. 201).
Dionysus or Apollo? Divergences in Interpreting Antiquity
In the passage quoted above, Pessoa attacks the Nietzschean interpretation
of Hellenism, as it embodies the distorting perspective of a ‘Baco alemão’.
The emphasis upon the Dionysian as the identifying feature of the Greek
soul is thus rejected, and Pessoa’s neo-pagan interpretation is oriented
instead towards the Apollonian ideal.28 To make this point clear, one
should take into account the reception of this aesthetic opposition in
Pessoa’s work, in order to determine the specific meaning he attributes
to it. Curiously, these notions appear in the text António Botto e o ideal
estético criador, apparently dedicated to a critical analysis of António Botto’s
poetry. Actually, Botto’s work is given a marginal position within the essay,
which focuses, rather, on shaping the general aesthetic theory suggested
by its title. Pessoa classifies all identifiable ideals by their relation to life:
28
Amongst Pessoa’s sources, a strict condemnation of Nietzsche’s interpretation of tragedy
is articulated by Alfred William Benn: ‘As an interpretation of Greek art the Origin of Tragedy
has no value, and was very properly denounced by one destined to become in after years the
fore-most Hellenist of his age, Wilamowitz-Möllendorf’. Alfred W. Benn, The Morals of an
Immoralist: Friedrich Nietzsche’, International Journal of Ethics, 18.4 (1908), 1–23 (p. 8). (Pessoa
read the version of this essay included in Benn’s book Revaluations: Historical and Ideal (London:
Watts, 1909), pp. 228–80, which is still to be found in his library. Unfortunately, only the article
mentioned above, not the book Pessoa owned, was available to me).
Dionysus or Apollo? The Heteronym António Mora 117
‘Nasce o ideal do nosso convencimento da imperfeição da vida: consiste
na ideia de perfeição que derivamos, por contraste, da maneira como
concebemos essa imperfeição’.29 Amongst others ideals, Pessoa also
enumerates the Apollonian and the Dionysian. The first does not strive
for a life of a totally different nature, but rather endeavours to perfect the
given one. Thus, the Apollonian ideal is characterized by an unequivocally
affirmative worldview: the most harmonic and beautiful sides of Nature
are accentuated and stylized. According to this perspective, mankind is
idealized and, as in Pindar, is presented as being a model of Divinity: ‘Os
deuses são uma experiencia super-, não extra-humana. “A raça dos deuses
e dos homens é uma só.” Píndaro’.30 By contrast, the Dionysian ideal
stems from a denying attitude, which counterposes to life an unattainable
perfection. Such a deficiency, according to the Dionysian, is due to the fact
that the life conceded to mankind is not enough. Thus, ‘unsatisfactory’
would be the most adequate definition, as the stress falls mainly on the
lack of intensity and variety of experience. The Dionysian ideal represents
therefore an excessive and exuberant life: ‘a vida em qualquer expansão,
violenta ou desvairada, em que, sem se esquecer de si, se exceda’. Briefly,
it is the ideal ‘da embriaguez da vida’.31
It is now clear what meaning Pessoa attributes to the Dionysian as the
central concept of Nietzsche’s misleading interpretation of the Greeks. It
is an attitude that condemns life to an innate insufficiency, thus revealing
a close affinity with the Christian ideal, which, according to Mora, is the
quintessence of decadence. Due, to some extent, to his fragmented and
partial reading of Nietzsche, Pessoa perceives the Dionysian as the only
fundamental element of his philosophy. Hence, if Mora, on the one hand,
recognizes that the ‘conceito de superhomem de Nietzsche é um conceito
pagão’, on the other, he sees in Nietzsche’s ‘anti-intelectualismo’ the
clear sign of the opposite, a markedly Christian inclination.32 With this in
mind, one should not be surprised that Mora’s presentation of Hellenism
always sounded a critical note against Nietzsche: ‘Contra a vontade de
excedencia, que characteriza Nietzsche, como a todos os christãos, é para
o proprio [?] a vontade de equilibrio’ (p. 212). Therefore, based on
Gaultier’s portrayal, Pessoa sees evidence in Nietzsche’s own biography
of the close relation between Dionysian and Christian ideal: ‘A crueldade
contra si-proprio, que Nietzsche prega tem, até, um sabor christan que
não engana. Aqui se rompe os trapos pôdres com que o christan busca
29
Fernando Pessoa, Crítica: Ensaios, artigos e entrevistas, ed. by Fernando Cabral Martins (Lisbon:
Assírio & Alvim, 2000), p. 443.
30
Pessoa, Mora, p. 241.
31
Pessoa, Crítica, p. 445.
32
Pessoa, Mora, p. 273.
118 Mattia Riccardi
destruir os do liberto. Aqui se sconde, em todo o seu abjecto sentir, o
spirito ascetico e excendencial’ (ibid).33
Against the primacy of excess and of being-out-of-oneself, Mora
rather prefers the mild, ‘Apollonian’ attitude of Epicurus: ‘Façamos da
harmonia, da disciplina, e da moderação a cidadella do nosso destino
e do nosso pensamento. Firmes nisso, não temamos. Tão bellas são a
harmonia e a moderação que nellas não pode haver excesso, porque são
o contrario do excesso; e que o seu conseguimento não fica nellas, mas é
o seu calmo auge, o seu frio climax — a perfeição’.34
In conclusion, this different approach is at best reflected by a motto
Mora adopts once and which could be seen as a polemical variation of
Nietzsche’s own. While the latter lets his philosophical thought culminate
in the symbolic opposition of ‘Dionysus against the Crucified’, Mora, on
the contrary, starts his offensive against Christianity under the slogan:
‘Apollo contra o Christo’ (p. 245). Thus, a different divinity presides over
each of their philosophical projects.
Nietzsche, German Culture and the War
In the last part of this article, I will deal with another side of Pessoa’s
reception of Nietzsche now made available through the recent publication
of Mora’s work. Amongst the various literary and philosophical projects
that Pessoa planned for Mora, we find a Dissertação a favôr da Allemanha e do
seu procedimento na guerra presente. As clearly expressed by Mora, this essay
is motivated by the reading of John Cowper Powys’ book The Menace of
German Culture.35 Powys’ essay polemicizes with the German psychologist
Hugo Münsterberg, professor at Harvard and author of an intervention
into the violent discussion on the causes of the First World War that
sought to swing American public opinion towards Germany. Powys rejects
the thesis that Germany, in the clash of civilizations symbolized by the
belligerent powers, represented the ‘superior culture’. His concern
is already revealed by the cover of the book: a Prussian army officer,
33
In another passage Pessoa ascribes to Nietzsche ‘a assumpção da atitude cristã da necessidade
de dominar os seus instintos [...], a necessidade de dominar toda a espécie de instintos, incluindo
os bons, torturando a própria alma, o próprio temperamento’, Pessoa, Obra, III, p. 174. Gaultier
insists upon Nietzsche’s asceticism and cruelty against himself, that Pessoa here takes up. See for
example: ‘Cette cruauté à l’égard de soi-même, prise comme moyen de l’Instinct de grandeur,
va nous rendre compte du lien qui existe entre l’attitude morale de Nietzsche et la morale
chrétienne qui semble avoir servi de point de départ à son évolution. L’ascétisme que comporte
parfois la culture chrétienne a en effet une grande ressemblance avec cette cruauté envers
soi-même qui est pour Nietzsche le moyen de la grandeur, en sort que l’on pourrait être tente
d’attribuer cette vertu du philosophe à son atavisme chrétien’. Gaultier, pp. 264–65.
34
Pessoa, Mora, p. 245.
35
John Cowper Powys, The Menace of German Culture: A Reply to Professor Münsterberg (London:
Rider, 1915).
Dionysus or Apollo? The Heteronym António Mora 119
with pointed moustache and an icy look, takes off a mask representing
a classical statue, hence revealing the true, frightening nature of the
German state, based upon discipline, technocracy and militarism. Far
from being the bearer of a ‘superior culture’, such a tendency of the
German soul rather endangers the development of civilization. Against
this negative image of the Prussian Reich, widely spread through Allied
propaganda, Mora, on the contrary, underlines some positive aspects of
the German mentality.36
This side of Mora’s work is of concern here insofar as Nietzsche has a
relevant role in the dispute about the outbreak of the First World War.
Moreover, it clearly shows how Mora’s account of Nietzsche’s philosophy
joins a Europe-wide debate. According to Mora, the superiority of German
culture consists in a realist attitude, in which he sees the reflection, albeit
pale, of the Greek attitude towards the world: ‘O caracteristico principal
da cultura classica era a noção concreta da realidade, a subordinação do
espirito individual á phenomenologia geral da Natureza. Ora a cultura
allemã tem, precisamente, por thema a subordinação do individuo
á realidade’.37 Powys, too, considers realism a distinguishing mark
of German mentality, leading to the glorification of state and power.
However, whereas Powys’ sees this feature as confirming his own, negative
critique of German culture, Mora, on the contrary, interprets it as a sign
of indisputable superiority. Of interest for my reading is, now, the key role
Nietzsche plays in both interpretations.
On one hand, Powys emphasizes the rejection, constantly to be found
in Nietzsche, of the ‘Philistine’ culture upon which the Prussian state-
machine rests:
It may be true that by many portions of his work Nietzsche has put weapons into
the hands of these State-worshippers and force-worshippers, but it is altogether
untrue that he belongs to their camp. They can quote from him [...] but he is not
of their company. He is of the company of Heraclitus and Heine. His authors are
Russian and French. His cities are the cities of the Mediterranean. The culture
that Nietzsche fought for was European culture, not German culture.38
Nietzsche, ‘Germany’s own profoundest thinker’ (p. 63), thus becomes, in
Powys’s opinion, the advocate of a classical and truly cosmopolitan culture,
capable of revitalizing the best fruits of Western tradition. Therefore,
nothing seems more distant from this cultural scenario than the ‘German
36
On Pessoa’s relation to Germany see António Sousa Ribeiro, ‘ “A Tradition of Empire”:
Fernando Pessoa and Germany’, Portuguese Studies, 21 (2005), 201–09, who concentrates mainly
on the issue of empire.
37
Pessoa, Mora, pp. 357–58.
38
Powys, p. 67. See Constance Harsh, ‘Wrestling with Nietzsche: John Cowper Powys’s
Engagement with Nietzsche in the Early Years of the First World War’, The Powys Society Journal,
11 (2001), 63–79; Nicholas Martin, ‘ “Fighting a Philosophy”: The Figure of Nietzsche in British
Propaganda of the First World War’, The Modern Language Review, 98.2 (2003), 367–80.
120 Mattia Riccardi
ideal’, represented by such personalities as Rudolf Euken, Ernst Haeckel
or Heinrich von Treitschke, whose final design is the submission of the
individual to the state. Long before the unification of the Reich headed
by Bismarck, this ideal had found in Hegel its most sublime formulation:
‘Hegel, with the Prussian State behind him; Hegel, with an enormous
policeman to clear his path — [...] the very originator and master of this
singular new academy’ (p. 88). Now, the Weltanschauung portrayed in
this passage coincides with the ‘Philistinism’ that Nietzsche had already
identified and fought in the figure of David Friedrich Strauss. Thus,
despite his very corrosive critique of German culture, Powys energetically
praises Nietzsche.
On the other hand, Mora brings up a totally opposed argument: first,
regarding German culture as such, he sees in its Machiavellism a sound
and efficient attitude; second, regarding Nietzsche’s attitude towards
the German Zeitgeist, Mora portrays him as the most paradigmatic
representative of the cult of power and war typical of the Prussian Reich:
‘Tal mysticismo materialista está photographado para sempre no espirito
do infeliz chamado Nietzsche. Este homem chegou á divinização da
Força, da Materia propriamente’.39 In this characterization, Nietzsche
is defined as the last stage of development of the German soul, as the
culminating product of the same spiritual stream already emerging with
Hegel’s philosophy. Unlike Powys, Mora thus presents Nietzsche not as a
break in German tradition, but rather as a sign of its continuity. In the
following note, where Mora sketches a general outline of German history
in the nineteenth century, Nietzsche again becomes the paladin of the
Bismarck era:
(1) o espirito allemão é fundamentalmente realista, isto é, preocupado com a
visão real das cousas. [...] Hegel, com a sua theoria central de que ‘o racional
é real, e o real é racional’ representa o conceito realista allemão em toda a sua
plenitude; a justificação da realidade, pelo espirito [...]
(2) A realisação bismarckiana d’essa cultura. A Realpolitik; succedeu a uma
Realphilosophie. Permaneceu o espirito da cultura allemã: a politica é feita por
homens que sabem que a politica é a politica, e não sentimentalismo christão,
philosophias practicas ou outros dogmas semelhantes.
(3) O periodo post-bismarckiano. [...] Nietzsche é um bismarckiano, não só
(como viu Ranke) pela sua adoração das cousas reaes, como a força, a crueldade
e a [?], mas também pela sua tendencia a não illudir.
Assim obtemos uma visão da profunda unidade e intimidade da cultura allemã;
da sua relação intima com o militarismo allemão, com a realpolitik, com a guerra
feita à outrance. (p. 356)
This account reveals once again the extent to which Pessoa is taking on
some important authors of his time. This can be clearly shown by taking a
39
Pessoa, Mora, p. 353.
Dionysus or Apollo? The Heteronym António Mora 121
closer look at the numerous works dedicated to German history and culture
included in Pessoa’s own library. Regarding his relation to Nietzsche’s
philosophy, the work of Alfred Fouillée, Esquisse psychologique des peuples
européens, plays a special role.40 Through a number of essays, Fouillée
contributed decisively to the diffusion of Nietzsche’s thought in France.
Therefore, it is no wonder that Nietzsche’s name repeatedly appears also
in his work dedicated to the psychology of European nations. Like Powys,
Fouillée deplores the tendency to glorify brute force, characteristic of
the German mentality: ‘l’Allemagne a une idée du droit entièrement
opposée à la nôtre, qu’elle en est restée au caractère sacré et divin de la
force et de la conquête’ (p. 310). The continuous reappearance of this
idea, which usually goes hand in hand with a conservative realism, is then
illustrated through some paradigmatic cases, such as Hegel, Mommsen
and Nietzsche: ‘Depuis Hegel, l’apothéose du succès et de l’homme
fort est restée en Allemagne le dernier mot de la spéculation et de la
pratique. L’élévation du ‘réel’ à la dignité du ‘rationnel’, malgré le sens
profond qu’un aussi grand philosophe pouvait lui donner, devait favoriser
finalement le réalisme’ (p. 315). The culture of the Bismarck era rounds
off this process, definitively declaring the primacy of power as such, free
from any bounds. Fouillée also interprets Nietzsche’s Übermensch and his
rhetoric in favour of the ‘strong Man’ from this point of view:
Mommsen fait pressentir Nietzsche, qui, dans son admiration de toutes les
forces naturelles et du déploiement de toutes les énergies humaines, aboutit à
la morale des princes et artistes de la Renaissance païenne. On a dit avec raison
que Mommsen a préparé Nietzsche et l’a rendu possible dans son pays. En tout
cas, personne plus que Mommsen n’a contribué à réagir contre la conception
chrétienne de la vie humaine. [...] En ce sens, on a pu dire que le disciple le plus
direct de Mommsen est Nietzsche, qui, poussant la théorie jusqu’à ses conclusions
logiques, a salué dans le prince de Machiavel ‘le type splendide des conducteurs
d’hommes’. De son côté, Ranke avait dit que les ‘sanglants combats humains ne
sont, au fond, que la lutte des énergies morales’ ; Nietzsche dit : ‘des énergies
brutales’ (pp. 284–85).
The affinity between this frame of thought and Mora’s is evident. They
not only correspond in what concerns the understanding of German
culture and of Nietzsche’s position in it, but also in pointing out the
anti-Christian traits of Bismarck’s pragmatic realism and its exaltation of
power.41 Nonetheless, Mora argues for the superiority of German culture
compared to that represented by the Allies, since it is closer to the sober
Ancient soul. Hence, though stressing again that even German mentality
40
Alfred Fouillée, Esquisse psychologique des peuples européens, 12th edn (Paris: F. Alcan, 1903).
41
Henri Lichtenberger, who, together with Fouillée, contributes to the diffusion of Nietzsche’s
thought in France, also describes Bismarck with Nietzschean traits such as ‘la volonté de puissance,
la lucidité intellectuelle, l’intensité de la vie nerveuse’, in addition to ‘ “cette conception agonale”
de l’existance’ (Lichtenberger, p. 112) which he explicitly ascribes to Nietzsche (p. 312).
122 Mattia Riccardi
cannot avoid showing the degenerative symptoms inherited from its
Christian origin, Mora counterattacks the anti-German propaganda.
In conclusion, the topic of the war shows once again how Pessoa,
focusing exclusively on notions such as those of power and Dionysian
intoxication, actually ends up adopting the questionable and irrationalist
image of Nietzsche widespread at the beginning of the century. Bearing
this in mind, one might explain why Pessoa feels the urge to distance
himself from Nietzsche and from the cult paid to him by the artistic and
literary avant-garde: ‘São inúmeros, em todo o mundo, os discípulos de
Nietzsche, havendo alguns deles que leram a obra do mestre. A maioria
aceita de Nietzsche o que está apenas neles, o que, de resto, acontece com
todos os discípulos de todos os filósofos. A minoria não compreendeu
Nietzsche, e são esses poucos os que seguem fielmente a doutrina dele’.42
However, despite his summary — and thus suspicious — condemnation of
Nietzsche, some analogies can be drawn. This is the case not only for Mora’s
critique of Christianity, but also for his ‘political’ theory of power. Taking
into account that Mora characterizes Nietzsche’s position as a ‘mysticismo
materialista’, there are two points that need to be briefly stressed.
First, Pessoa again accuses Nietzsche’s interpretation of the Classics of
being a ‘paganismo de estrangeiro’, aggravated by ‘erros constantes de
pronuncia’ (p. 135). Far from representing an exhaustive understanding
of the Ancient World, Nietzsche’s cult of power would be the result,
rather, of an unfortunate mix of his ascetic character with the brutal
atmosphere of his time: ‘a filosofia de Friedrich Nietzsche é a resultante
do seu temperamento e da sua época. O seu temperamento era o de um
asceta e de [um] louco. A sua época no seu país era de materialidade
e de força. Resultou fatalmente uma teoria onde um ascetismo louco
se casa com uma (involuntária que fosse) admiração pela força e pelo
domínio.’43 Second, the fact that Nietzsche’s philosophy is depicted as
supporting the power politics of the Reich confirms that Pessoa takes up
the interpretative scheme proposed by Fouillée. However — and this is
the most interesting point — Pessoa’s own draft of a new theory of power
shows how his critique of Nietzsche fails. Furthermore, Pessoa’s attempt at
demystifying power, defining it as the ‘facto fundamental da Vida’ as well
as, at the same time, approaching it in a way which establishes ‘qual deve
ser o seu “caminho” ’ and making it ‘mais multiforme, mais psychicamente
exercida’, paradoxically agrees with the philosophical project of the will
to power.44
42
Pessoa, Filosóficos, I, 135–36.
43
Pessoa, Obra, III, 174.
44
Pessoa, Mora, p. 353.
Dionysus or Apollo? The Heteronym António Mora 123
Conclusion
This short survey of the heteronym António Mora gives further evidence
of the complexity of Pessoa’s reception of Nietzsche. On the one hand,
it is determined by his very partial knowledge of Nietzsche’s work, mostly
based on second-hand sources, such as Nordau, Gaultier or Fouillée. Thus,
Pessoa ends up assimilating the patchy image of the philosopher, either
celebratory or ostracizing, very current during the first two decades of the
twentieth century, and hence rejecting it. That is why he only becomes
aware of the Dionysian side of Nietzsche’s thought, without perceiving,
even incidentally, the ‘free spirit’. On the other hand, at a deeper level,
some common orientations and lines of thought emerge, implying a less
dramatic divergence.45
Humboldt Universität, Berlin
45
I thank Onésimo Teotónio Almeida, Steffen Dix, Dina Mendonça and Rip Cohen for their
support and encouragement. I also thank Constance Harsh for sending me her article on John
Cowper Powys (see Note 38), and Tereza Diniz D’Almeida from Casa Pessoa, who provided me
with a very helpful list of Pessoa’s own books.
