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Sacred Geometry of Being:

Pessoa’s Esoteric Imagery and

the Geometry of Modernism

Patrícia Silva McNeill*

Keywords

Pessoa, Geometry, Esotericism, Sensationism, Yeats, Pound, Artistic Avant-‐‑Gardes.

Abstract

It is a known fact that throughout his life Pessoa was interested in and conversant with an

array of esoteric currents and doctrines. Underpinning that interest was a marked tendency

to a form of symbolic thinking encapsulated in the lines “[…] my thinking is condemned /

To symbol and analogy” from a 1907 poem by the incipient heteronym Alexander Search,

which recur in a fragment from 1932 of the dramatic poem

Fausto.

Pessoa’s continued

symbolic thinking, informed by copious readings mainly in Western Esotericism, allowed

him to develop a creative hermeneutical approach to esoteric epistemologies. This essay

will be concerned specifically with Pessoa’s conception of the mystical significance of

geometrical forms, arguing that they not only enriched the figurative expressiveness of his

poetry but also played a crucial role in his formulation of a poetics of Sensationism.

Pessoa’s use of geometric imagery will be considered in the context of the fascination with

sacred geometry and exploration of its aesthetic potential displayed by other modernists,

like Yeats and Pound, and by avant-‐‑garde movements from the early XX

century which

were also driven by analogous concerns, such as Futurism, Vorticism, Cubism,

Expressionism and Suprematism.

Palavras-‐‑chave

Pessoa, Geometria, Esoterismo, Sensacionismo, Yeats, Pound, Vanguardas Artísticas.

Resumo

É conhecido o interesse de Pessoa por e a sua familiaridade com uma variedade de

correntes e doutrinas esotéricas ao longo da sua vida. A esse interesse subjaz uma tendência

marcada para uma forma de pensamento simbólico cristalizada nos versos “[…] o meu

pensamento está condenado / ao símbolo e à analogia” de um poema de 1907 pelo

heterónimo incipiente Alexander Search, que seriam retomados num fragmento de 1932 do

poema dramático

Fausto.

O pensamento simbólico continuado de Pessoa, informado por

leituras abundantes sobretudo acerca do esoterismo ocidental, permitiu-‐‑lhe desenvolver

uma abordagem hermeneutica criativa às epistemologias esotéricas. Este ensaio prender-‐‑se-‐‑

á especificamente com a concepção do significado místico de formas geométricas por parte

de Pessoa, defendendo que estas não só enriqueceram a expressividade figurativa da sua ,

Centre for Social Studies, University of Coimbra and Department of Iberian and Latin American

Studies, Queen Mary University of London.

McNeill

Sacred Geometry of Being

mas também desempenharam um papel crucial na sua formulação de uma poética do

sensacionismo. O uso da imagética geométrica por Pessoa será considerado no contexto da

fascinação com geometria sagrada e da exploração do seu potencial estético por outros

modernistas, como Yeats e Pound, e pelas vanguardas artísticas do início do século XX

igualmente motivadas por preocupações análogas, tais como o futurismo, o vorticismo, o

cubismo, o expressionismo e o suprematismo.

Pessoa Plural: 6 (O./Fall 2014)

McNeill

Sacred Geometry of Being

Fernando Pessoa’s considerable knowledge and long-‐‑lasting interest in the

Kabbalah, Gnosticism, Rosicrucianism, Theosophy, Astrology and Alchemy –

corroborated by the large number of his writings about these matters and of books

on these doctrines in his private library – is gradually finding acceptance in the

critical exegesis of his works. However, his avowed interest in esotericism has not

received sufficient consideration in the context of his time and in relation to other

major modernist writers and artists whose work was informed by analogous

interests. This paper purports that Pessoa derived key structuring principles of his

poetics and a wealth of imagery pervading his poetry and that of the heteronyms,

notably Álvaro de Campos, from these esoteric sources. Due to space constraints, I

will limit my focus to geometric imagery that recurs in poetic and aesthetic texts,

exploring its links to esotericism. Pessoa’s deployment of geometry is here

considered in relation to that of contemporary modernist writers like Yeats and

Pound and of avant-‐‑garde movements like Futurism, Vorticism, Cubism,

Expressionism and Suprematism as equally symptomatic of the geometrical turn in

Modernism. According to Miranda Hickman:

By 1925, when Le Corbusier announced in Urbanisme that “modern art and thought” were

tending in the “direction of geometry” and that “the age” was “essentially a geometrical

one” (City

of Tomorrow

xxi-‐‑xxii), he was advancing a claim that had become so

uncontroversial as to be commonplace: in the first two and a half decades of the twentieth

century, the geometric shape was increasingly used as a vehicle for the nonrepresentational

impulse in the visual arts and was pervading visual culture more generally. Britain,

continental Europe, Russia, and slightly later, North America, had been swept by the

abstract geometric art of the Cubists, Expressionist, Futurists, Suprematists, and

Constructivists, as well as by the geometric architecture and design of Gropius’s Bauhaus

and of Le Corbusier himself.

(Hickman, 2005: 2)

Pessoa’s use of geometric imagery can be regarded as a form of sacred

geometry, which consists in attributing symbolic and mystical meanings to certain

geometric shapes and proportions. He refers specifically to the mystical

significance of numbers and geometrical forms in a fragment from an esoteric text,

entitled “Way of the Serpent”, in which he states

As numbers and figures are the external signs of the order and destiny of the world, the

simplest arithmetic, algebraic or geometric operation contains, as long as is it well done,

great revelations;

and without a need for further signs mathematics holds the keys to all

mysteries […] there is no reason to suppose that Euclides, in his Geometry books, had any

speculation other than a geometric one; but Euclides’s books, from the first to the last

proposition, are revelatory signs for those who know how to read them.

(in Centeno, 1985: 31; my emphasis, my translation

)

Pessoa Plural: 6 (O./Fall 2014)

McNeill

Sacred Geometry of Being

I argue that Pessoa’s use of sacred geometry is related to his quest for maximum

knowledge through accumulated experience – encapsulated in the tenet “Sentir

tudo de todas as maneiras” (Pessoa, 1990: 148, 263) [“To feel everything in every

way” (Pessoa, 1998: 146)] which underpins his self-‐‑styled

Sensacionismo

[Sensationism] – and for heightened existence through total depersonalisation,

embodied by the heteronyms, Alberto Caeiro, Ricardo Reis and Álvaro de Campos

and epitomised by the latter’s statement “Ah não ser eu toda a gente e toda a

parte!” (Pessoa, 1990: 73) [“Ah if only I could be all people and all places!” (Pessoa,

2006: 160)] at the close of his debut poem, “Ode Triunfal” [“Triumphal Ode”] .

Geometric imagery featured in Pessoa’s poetry from an early age. “The

Circle” (in Centeno & Reckert, 1978: 175), an English poem attributed to the literary

persona

Alexander Search confirms that Pessoa was already familiar with a key

symbol of sacred geometry at the age of nineteen. My emphasis:

IRCLE

I traced a circle on the ground,

It was a mystic figure strange

Wherein I thought there would abound

Mute symbols adequate of change,

And complex formulas of Law,

Which is the jaws of Change’s maw.

My simpler thoughts in vain had stemmed

The current of this madness free,

But that my thinking is condemned

To symbol and analogy:

I deemed a circle might condense

With calm all mystery’s violence.

And so in cabalistic mood

A circle traced I curious there;

Imperfect the made circle stood

Thought formed with minutest care.

From magic’s failure deeply I

A lesson took to make me sigh.

Alexander Search

July 30th. 1907.

Fig. 1. BNP/E3, 78-‐‑45

Pessoa Plural: 6 (O./Fall 2014)

McNeill

Sacred Geometry of Being

In this confessional lyric, Search uses occult terminology (apparent in the

underlined words) to evoke a past esoteric experience. By tracing a circle on the

ground, the

persona

hoped that the mystical power of this primary form,

traditionally associated with the divine, would reveal to him secret knowledge,

represented by the symbols of change in the zodiac and the laws of the hermetic

Kabbalah that rule the correspondences between the spiritual and the material

worlds. However, he fails to attain the revelation sought through the means of this

magical act since the circle was drawn imperfectly, signifying his condition of

neophyte. As a result, all that is left to him is a condition of bewilderment and

continuous inquiry encapsulated in his surname and epitomised by the phrase

“condemned | To symbol and analogy”. The fact that this latter phrasing recurs

several years later in the unfinished poetic drama

Fausto

and in Álvaro de

Campos’s poem “Psiquetipia” shows the prevalence of this dialectic of quest and

deferred revelation throughout Pessoa’s life and across his manifold poetic stances.

The ostensible failure of the persona’s magical endeavours in this poem betrays the

“kabbalistic humour” which, according to Yvette Centeno (in Centeno & Reckert,

1978: 165) stems from readings about magic and the Kabbalah, likely facilitated

through Franz Hartmann’s

Magic White and Black

and Hargrave Jennings’s

The

Rosicrucians: Their Rites and Mysteries, of which Pessoa owned editions respectively

from 1904 and 1907.

Several of the books in Pessoa’s library dating from this period also concern

astrology, a system which is based on correspondences between astronomical

phenomena and events in the human world. Its key figure, the wheel of the zodiac,

is a circle of twelve divisions of celestial longitude that are centred upon the

ecliptic: the apparent path of the Sun across the celestial sphere over the course of

the year. These aspects were explained at length in Robert Fludd’s

De Astrologie,

which Pessoa read in a French translation from 1907, and which displayed circular

images of the zodiac (Fludd, 1907: 197). That Pessoa was an assiduous and skilled

practitioner of astrology throughout his life is corroborated by the hundreds of

horoscopes found in his archive, some of which have been collected in

Cartas

Astrológicas (2011). As argued by the editors of the volume and demonstrated by its

contents, astrology influenced the theory of the heteronyms, providing Pessoa with

coherent formulae to delineate their complimentary personalities drawn from an

ancestral tradition. Another facet of Pessoa’s interest in astrology consists of a

tendency to cast horoscopes of well-‐‑known literary or historical figures.

A case in point is Pessoa’s natal astrological chart of W. B. Yeats, which

would have been of particular interest to him since the Irish poet was born on the

same day as he was, twenty-‐‑three years earlier.

Pessoa Plural: 6 (O./Fall 2014)

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