Jerónimo Pizarro and Leenu Nigu

Title: Content:
Time of Event:
Venue: Estonian Writers’ Union (see on map)
Guests:
Event format:
  • Conversation with writer
Original language: English
Translated to: Estonian
Add to Calendar:

Jerónimo Pizarro

© Bernardo De Niz

Jerónimo Pizarro is a literary scholar, Professor at the Universidad de los Andes and holds the Camões Institute Chair of Portuguese Studies in Colombia. He is brought o the HeadRead festival thanks to the central subject of his research, the Portuguese classic Fernando Pessoa. Estonia is undergoing a rediscovery of Pessoa, especially thanks to the great interest that his Livro do Desassossego (The Book of Disquiet) attracted. The book was first published in 1982 – 47 years after the author’s death, and it is a fragmentary and philosophical collection, an ode to solitude and melancholy. However, Pessoa is not only an influential writer; he is an extraordinary person in every way and created not just literature but also writers. Namely, from an early age, Pessoa managed to create a number of “heteronyms” – doppelgängers Pessoa used to publish his works but many of whom developed their own style and biography. For years, Jerónimo Pizarro has led the efforts to organise, analyse and reevaluate Pessoa’s works. A large share of Pessoa’s writing is unpublished and unresearched, which is why Pizarro has worked in the archives for years with the classic’s manuscripts – often in barely comprehensible handwriting – and corrected the material that has already been published. In 2010, Pizarro contributed to the publication of the first critical edition of The Book of Disquiet. Pizarro himself has called his effort detective work, which often leads to a false trail or dead ends, but also enables him to discover a piece of paper in the material left behind by Pessoa with seemingly random lines, which can nevertheless completely transform the current understanding of who Pessoa was.

View profile

Major Supporters

Back to Top