This is not the first time that Fernando Pessoa has been a topic here at Razão Automóvel – a few months ago I went to test the Mégane RS Trophy with one of its heteronyms sitting on the hanger.
Today the roles are reversed. We are the ones who sit in the passenger seat and head towards the Serra de Sintra with Fernando Pessoa at the wheel.
At the wheel
Driving a Chevrolet on the Sintra road,
In the moonlight and in the dream, on the desert road,
I drive alone, I drive almost slowly, and a little bit
It seems to me, or I force myself a little so that it seems to me,
That I follow another road, another dream, another world,
That I still have no Lisbon left or Sintra to go to,
What do I follow, and what more is there to go on than not stopping but going on?
I'm going to spend the night in Sintra because I can't spend it in Lisbon,
But when I get to Sintra, I'll be sorry I didn't stay in Lisbon.
Always this restlessness without purpose, without connection, without consequence,
Always always always,
This excessive anguish of the spirit for nothing,
On the road to Sintra, or on the road of dreams, or on the road of life...
Able to my subconscious steering wheel movements,
The car they lent me climbs under me.
I smile at the symbol, thinking of it, and turning right.
How many things I borrowed do I follow in the world
How many things they lent me guide as mine!
How much they lent me, alas! I am myself!
On the left the shack — yes, the shack — by the roadside
To the right the open field, with the moon in the distance.
The car, which seemed to give me freedom a little while ago,
It's now a thing where I'm closed
That I can only drive if it's closed,
That I only dominate if he includes me in him, if he includes me.
To the left behind the modest hut, more than modest.
Life there must be happy, just because it's not mine.
If anyone saw me from the window of the hut, they would dream: He is the one who is happy.
Perhaps to the child peeking through the glass in the upstairs window
I was (with the borrowed car) like a dream, a real fairy.
Maybe the girl who looked, listening to the engine, through the kitchen window
On the ground floor,
I'm something from the prince with all the girl's heart,
And she'll look at me sideways, through the glass, to the curve where I got lost.
Will I leave dreams behind me, or is it the car that leaves them?
Me, the handlebars of the borrowed car, or the borrowed car I drive?
On the Sintra road in the moonlight, in sadness, before the fields and the night,
Driving the borrowed Chevrolet disconsolately,
I get lost in the future road, I disappear in the distance I reach,
And, in a terrible, sudden, violent, inconceivable desire,
Accelerate...
But my heart stayed in the pile of stones, from which I turned away when I saw him without seeing him,
At the door of the hut,
my empty heart,
My dissatisfied heart,
My heart more human than me, more accurate than life.
On the Sintra road, close to midnight, in the moonlight, at the wheel,
On the Sintra road, what a weariness of your own imagination,
On the Sintra road, closer and closer to Sintra,
On the Sintra road, less and less close to me...
Álvaro de Campos, in “Poems”
Heteronym of Fernando Pessoa
May Fernando Pessoa, the poet, writer, astrologer(!), critic and translator, be remembered as one of us from now on: a petrolhead. Literary genius who, through his heteronym, felt the road, speed and freedom that only these machines can provide. Just the passion for automobiles to bring a genius closer to us, common mortals.
At a time when there is more and more talk of autonomous driving – with all the advantages and disadvantages associated with this technology – let us never forget the time when cars were dominated by us. Dangerous? No doubt. Liberator? Definitely.
Have a nice day World of Poetry!
NOTE: In the absence of an image of the Sierra de Feela with a Chevrolet, we decided to use a Morgan 3 Wheeler that spent last week here at Reason Automobile.