Love and other pretexts: exercises of passion in the correspondence between Fernando Pessoa and Ofélia Queiroz

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to analyze some poems exchanged between Fernando Pessoa and Ofélia Queiroz during the first year of their romantic relationship, which began at the end of 1919. These short poems of popular style – such as quatrains or acrostics – were offered to each other, generally in notes, as a way of pampering or even provoking the interlocutor in the face of some action considered reprehensible. Thus, the poem would contain a joke or anathema, but always in a serious joking tone, which often evolved into irony. Our objective, in this sense, is to situate these documents, showing their importance for the construction of an aesthetic of love in the set of their correspondence.