Fernando Pessoaºs anniversary.

Yesterday, the 30^th November, passed the anniversary of the death of Fernando Pessoa. Pessoa remains one of Portugal’s more emblematic symbols as one of the oldest nations of Europe and its legacy, both as poet, writer and intellectual, although admired has remained quite unknown outside the Portuguese speaking world. Its poetry demonstrates Portuguese symbolism, one of the most important intellectual movements of the 20^th Century. Man of transition between the 1^st Republic and the Salazar “Estado Novo”, he experienced the frustrations raisind from the difficult balancing between liberty and order that rooted the first decade of Salazar’s long rule. Pessoa’s late poetry became a cry against the lack of freedom and "air" that surrounded Portuguese intellectuals along the 1940’s. It is a matter of controversy if he was a Freemason or not. There are no indications that he was initiated as member of Grande Oriente Lusitano, the sole Portuguese Obedience at that time. It has been suggested, by his biographers, that he may be had been initiated as Templar Knight during his stays in England. This is a part of Pessoa’s “secretive” life still looking to be studied as many of its personal notes are still kept by his family outside the public and schoolars eyes. One of his most interesting poems is called “Iniciação” (Initiation) and runs like this:
“You don’t sleep under the cypress because there is no sleep in this world. Body is the shadow of the dress that covers your inner self. Comes the night that is the death and the shadow vanishes without being it. You go through the night just a transparence equal to you without knowing it. But in the Haunting Inn the angels undress you of your cover. You continued without anything covering your shoulders just the little that covered you. Then, the archangels of the road unfit you and let you naked. You have no clothes, you have nothing on, you have only your body that is you. Finally in the gloomy cavern, the Gods undress you more. Your body evanish, external soul, and you see that they are equal to you. The shadow of your clothes stayed with us in the destiny. You are not dead, between cypresses. Neophit, there is no death.“
Pessoa’s admirers interpret this poem and other esoteric reflections as clues of Pessoa’s undisguised connection to the Craft but till now there is no indisputable proof. Pessoa remains one of the most admired Portuguese intellectuals of the 20^th Century and give name to one of Lodges of the Grand Legal Lodge of Portugal performing the Scottish Rectified Rite, a Christian Rite.