Fernando Pessoa was a Portuguese writer and poet, born June 13, 1888, in Lisbon, where he lived continuously from 1904 until his death in 1935. An introverted and idealistic young man, he wrote under several pseudonyms, becoming the author who most precisely staged the multiplicity of self thanks to the literary device of heteronymy, which he developed. He invented a “master,” Alberto Caeiro, and “disciples.” A regular contributor to Portuguese literary magazines, he also penned a collection of poems, Message, in 1934, however most of his work was discovered only posthumously, stashed in a trunk that has yet to be depleted. For this reason, Pessoa is the author of a fragmentary and unfinished body of work, one of incredible beauty that makes him a major author of Portuguese and international literature.