Read The Year of the Death Of Ricardo Reis for Free Online

than satisfy ourselves with the word of a man whom we cannot claim to know intimately, here is another paper which has reported the news on the page under obituaries. It outlines his career in detail, Yesterday there took place the funeral of Fernando Antonio Nogueira Pessoa, bachelor, forty-seven years of age, forty-seven, take note, born in Lisbon, studied literature at an English university, became established as a writer and poet in literary circles, on his coffin were placed sprays of wild flowers, worse luck for them, as they wither so quickly. While he is waiting for the tram that will take him to Prazeres, Doctor Ricardo Reis reads the funeral oration delivered at the graveside, he reads it near the place where a man was hanged, as everyone knows, almost two hundred and twenty-three years ago, during the reign of Dom João V, who is not mentioned in the
Mensagem.
They hanged a Genoese swindler who for the sake of a piece of cloth killed one of our countrymen, stabbing him in the throat with a knife, then doing the same to the dead man's mistress, who died on the spot. He then inflicted two wounds on their servant, which were not fatal, and put out another's eye as if he were a rabbit. The murderer was arrested, and sentenced to death here, since it was near the house where he committed the crimes, in the presence of the crowd that had gathered to watch. Scarcely comparable with this morning in nineteen thirty-five, the month of December, the thirtieth to be precise, the sky overcast, and only those who cannot avoid it out walking in the streets, even though it is not raining now as Ricardo Reis, leaning against a lamppost at the top of the Calçada do Combro, reads the funeral oration. Not for the Genoese swindler, who did not receive one, unless you count the insults of the rabble, but for Fernando Pessoa, poet and innocent of any murders. Two words about the poet's earthly passage. For him two words suffice, or none. Indeed silence would be preferable, the silence that already enshrouds both him and us and which is in keeping with his temperament, for what is close to God is close to him. Yet those who were his peers in extolling beauty should not, could not have allowed him to descend into the earth, or rather ascend to the final horizons of Eternity without voicing their protest, calm yet aggrieved at this departure, the companions of Orpheus, more brothers than companions, who pursued the same ideal of beauty, they could not, I repeat, abandon him in this final resting place without having showered his gentle death with the white lilies of silence and suffering. We mourn the man whom death takes from us, and the loss of his miraculous talent and the grace of his human presence, but only the man do we mourn, for destiny endowed his spirit and creative powers with a mysterious beauty that cannot perish. The rest belongs to the genius of Fernando Pessoa. Come now, come now, exceptions can fortunately still be found to the normal rules of life. Since the time of Hamlet we have been going around saying, The rest is silence, in the end it's genius that takes care of the rest, and if this genius can do it, perhaps another genius can too.
    The tram has come and gone, Ricardo Reis has found a seat all to himself. The ticket cost seventy-five centavos, in time he will learn to say, One at seven and a half. He resumes his reading of the funeral oration, unable to convince himself that it is dedicated to Fernando Pessoa, who must be dead if we look at the press reports, because the poet would not have tolerated such grammatical and lexical bombast. How little they must have known him, to address him and speak of him in this way. They take advantage of his death, his feet and hands are bound. They call him a despoiled lily, a lily like a girl stricken by typhoid fever, and use the adjective
gentle.
Such banality, dear God. Since gentle means noble, chivalrous, gallant, elegant, pleasing, and urbane, which of these would the