Il disincanto del dottor Reis. Un eteronimo eccellente tra Orazio, Pessoa, Saramago

Abstract

Ricardo Reis is one of the most important of Fernando Pessoa's heteronyms. He embodies a special kind of wisdom, based on passivity and acceptance of the destiny. His style is highly refined and disciplined, revealing his classical education of cultured man who read Greek and Latin authors. In particular, Horace's Odes seem to be his major model; this paper aims to recognize, in a close intertextual analysis, how some themes and topics of high relevance (e. g. carpe diem) has been received and transformed by the latter poet. The female 'speaking' name of Lidia is another obvious point of interference of the two writers, and provides a starting point for a brief additional analysis involving Josè Saramago's novel O ano da morte de Ricardo Reis, published in 1984. Saramago seeks successfully to generate a striking contradiction between the heteronymic creation and its recreation in the novel. The 'new' Ricardo Reis is now placed inside the real world that surrounds him, and involved in a love relationship with the hotel maid Lidia, a woman which experiments a 'special' form of carpe diem.