Esboço de um percurso quase secular de Fernando Pessoa em Itália : do papel das primeiras traduções à transfiguração de Pessoa em mito contemporâneo

The work of Fernando Pessoa in Italy is now easily accessible. Pessoa’s works in the Italian language are numerous, just like the critical essays and the intertextual interpretations. Therefore, it is necessary to wonder why the Italian collective imagination has not been able to overcome some reconfigurations that crystallized Pessoa’s reception. The reception in question presents the poetics of the author essentially in two different ways. On the one hand, Pessoa as a poet-prose writer, who through the Livro do Desassossego becomes the symbol of his hometown. On the other hand, the genial and psychotic mind that has been able to invent a heteronomy world. This article tries to understand the dynamics that led to a structured, but peculiar path of the Italian reception of Fernando Pessoa and the reason why it is now possible to talk about Pessoa as a contemporary myth.