Poetry · Characters
Character guide
Key figures in Poetry by Fernando Pessoa.
Skim names here — open a free preview to see character cards and Character Web beside the page as you read.
Unknown
major
Also known as myself, mine
A first-person voice that doubts whether any self can be spoken, writing sonnets about the unbridgeable distance between soul and word.
The Bride
major
Also known as The bride, hers
A bride being dressed, watched, and undressed by the gaze of maids and guests before she ever reaches the church door.
Hadrian
major
Also known as thou, Thy, thee, thy
The Roman emperor whose grief for the dead Antinous becomes an imperial act of will, remaking a lost boy into a god.
Fate
supporting
Also known as Nature, Fate, not Nature, its
The personified force that men blame for their failures, though the poem insists the will supplies the mirror Fate only seems to fill.
Death
supporting
The recurring threshold in Pessoa's verse, at once the end of the body and, for Hadrian, the portal through which a lover becomes divine.
Thought
minor
Also known as its, Its
Personified Thought, a recurring abstract entity in the poems.
Venus
minor
Also known as herself
The goddess Venus, appearing as a mythological figure.
Ganymede
minor
The mythological youth Ganymede, cupbearer to the gods.
Lo
minor
A character or addressee named Lo, possibly mythological.
