Multiple Abstractions

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Multiple ABSTRACTIONS

Typeface designed by Jonathan Barnbrook

Released by Emigre Type Foundry

The poems

of Fernando Pessoa, who, like

Priori, was inhabited by countless

lives

1. Section of the Book Emigre Type Foundry2

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Priori Serif // Priori Sans Designed by Jonathan Barnbrook

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A study of the typeface Priori By means of

word association

Released by Emigre Type Foundry

Book designed by Clara Silva

Typeface designed by Jonathan Barnbrook

Multiple ABSTRACTIONS

Multiplicity

a large number

word comes from latin: Multiplex

personalities Finding yourself: we have so many parts that makes who we are. Nobody is the same all the time.

Consisting of many elements in a complicated relationship

involving simultaneous transmission of several messages along a single channel of communication.

consisting of many different and connected parts

abundance

scores,

array

variety

range

diversity,

Multiplicity

Fernando Pessoa

multiple facets

Priori has serif and sans serif. Has two personalities.

Modernist poetry. Containing multitudes.

Typeface is based in a huge variety of inspirations, from Barnbrook’s walks through the streets of London

having or involving several parts, elements, or members

numerous and often varied

complex in its nature or effects

consisting of many different and connected parts

not easy to analyze or understand; complicated or intricate

mass,

host

range

heterogeneity

plurality,

profusion

Emigre Type Foundry8

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Introduction

Priori is a typeface designed by English graphic designer Jonathan Barnbrook. It is an evolution of Mason, a display font previously designed by Barnbrook as well. The name Priori comes form the term “a priori,” a term he came across in the book Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert M. Pirsig. (A priori would not work as the name of a typeface since it would be awkward to ask for. So he called it simply “Priori.”) The term appealed to him. A priori conveys the idea of a specific concept built up in people’s minds over time as the result of all kinds of outside data. In its simplest form, a priori means a piece of knowledge that is not based on actual experience but presupposition. This is how he saw his typeface. It was an idea he had carried in his head for a long time, a set of related serif and sans serifs infused with details from his favorite text types of the past. As he drew them, he tried to stay as close as possible to this imaginary model. Barnbrook thought of his typeface as something much simpler than what it actually is. Priori is loaded with meaning. Barnbrook’s interest in British typography of the first half of the 20th century provides Priori with its foundation. But it isn’t inspired only by the work of famous British typographers, such as Eric Gill and Edward Johnston. Priori also embraces all of the signage and lettering that Barnbrook observes in the streets, cathedrals, and public buildings of his neighborhood. “I wanted to express some of the features from my favorite letterforms,” says Barnbrook. “Some are more obvious than others. The ‘a’ echoes the alternative version of Futura. The ‘W’ reminds of the ones carved in stone on war memorials. The slight tail on the ‘n’, ‘m’, and the ‘h’ are all from 18th century letterforms. The ‘r’ are reminiscent of letter shapes seen in hand-painted signs of 1940s London.”

A PRIORI, THIS IS A BOOK ABOUT A TYPEFACE

But it is a book about Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa


Each of us is several, is many, is a profusion of selves. So that the self who disdains his surroundings

is not the same who suffers or takes joy in them.

In the vast colony of our being there are many species of people who think and feel in different ways.

Fernando Pessoa

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There are many personas inside Priori and it was thinking about all those “personas” that I remembered Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa. An eccentric character himself, Pessoa wrote under a variety of names. They were not simply alter egos, they were – their creator claimed – full-fledged individuals who wrote things that he himself would never or could never write. Not only were their styles different; they thought differently, they had different religious and political views, different aesthetic sensibilities, different social temperaments. And each produced a large body of poetry. Like Pessoa, Priori is an ensemble of diverse personas. Many of Pessoa’s poems are about this feeling of not knowing who you are. I felt there was a deep connection with the poems and the typeface. Barnbrook believes in the power of design to change people’s viewpoints. To present one of Barnbrook’s typefaces this book had to convey a message. My decision was to talk about this very common human feeling of searching for who we are in the middle of the many personalities we have in ourselves, and to do so through the poems of Fernando Pessoa. Pessoa embodied the idea of the multiple characters a person can have, and through his fertile imagination made richly expressive things. I hope you all enjoy it, and maybe discover something about yourselves.

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I don’t know when I think or feel who it is that thinks or feelsI am merely the place where things are thought or felt I have more than just one soul. there are more I’s than i myself

countless lives inhabit us

I exist, nevertheless,Indifferent to them all.I silence them: I speak.

The crossing urges of what I feel or do not feelStruggle in who I am, but I Ignore them. They dictate nothingto the I I know:

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Fernando Pessoa

When he died on November 30, 1935, the Lisbon newspapers paid tribute, without fanfare, to the “great Portuguese poet” Fernando Pessoa, who was born in Lisbon in 1888. He

was remembered for Mensagem (Message), a book of forty-four poems published in 1934, and for some 160 additional poems published in

magazines and journals, several of which he helped found and run. The author, a single man survived by a half sister and two half brothers,

had the peculiarity of publishing his poetry under three different names besides his own — Alberto Caeiro, Ricardo Reis and Álvaro de Campos — which he claimed were not mere pseudonyms, since it wasn’t just their names that were false. They were false personalities, with biographies, points of view, and literary styles that differed from Pessoa’s. They were names that belonged to invented others, whom

their inventor called “heteronyms.”

FERNANDO PESSOA, THE MAN AND POET

Fernando Pessoa has the advantage of living more in ideas than in himself. // Álvaro de Campos



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Fernando Pessoa

Pessoa also published over a hundred pieces of criticism, social commentary, and creative prose, including passages of The Book of Disquiet, whose authorship he credited to “Bernardo Soares, assistant bookkeeper in the city of Lisbon.” Another peculiarity about this author — mentioned by the literary compeer who delivered the brief funeral address — was that he wrote poems in English some of which he published in chapbooks, for the benefit (according to the compeer) of “the literary cercles of serene Albion.” In fact, scarcely anyone in Portugal had read them. French was the second language of those who had one. T Still another peculiarity — this one a complete secret was that Pessoa’s death marked the birth of a far larger writer than anyone had ever imagined. It was a slow birth that began only in the 1940s, when Pessoa’s posthumous editors opened up the now legendary trunk in which the author had deposited his legacy to the world: twenty nine notebooks and thousands upon thousands of manuscript sheets containing unpublished poems, unfinished plays and short stories, translations, linguistic analyses, horoscopes, and nonfiction in a dizzying array of topics — from alchemy and the Kabbala to American millionaires, from “Five Dialogues on Tyranny” to “A Defense of Indiscipline,” from Julian the Apostate to Mahatma Gandhi. The pages were written in English and in French as well as in Portuguese, and very often in an almost illegible script. The most surprising discovery was that Pessoa wrote not under four or five names but under forty or fifty. The editors timidly stuck to poetry by the names they knew — Alberto Caeiro, Ricardo Reis, Álvaro de Campos and Pessoa himself — and further limited their selection to manuscripts that were easy to transcribe. It wasn’t until the 1980s that reliable, relatively complete editions of poetry by the main heteronyms began to appear, and no such edition has yet appeared for the poetry signed by Pessoa himself, much of which still needs to be

“lifted” from the manuscripts. Pessoa’s English heteronyms and his one French heteronym remained virtually unpublished until the 1990s, when many of the minor Portuguese heteronyms also began to make their way into print. T It’s impossible to know how much psychological and emotional space the heteronyms occupied, or opened up, in their creator. In the real world, Pessoa was a loner, by choice and by natural inclination. He was in love once, if at all, and his intimacy with friends was limited by literary matters. As a young man he moved from one neighborhood to another, staying sometimes with relatives, sometimes in rented rooms, but from 1920 on he lived at the same address

— with his mother until her death in 1925, and then with his half sister, her husband and their two children. Family members have reported that the mature Pessoa was affectionate and good-humored but resolutely private. T Pessoa the child was the same way, according to people who knew him at school in Durban, South Africa, where he lived from age seven to seventeen. His father had died when he was five, and his mother remarried Portugal’s newly appointed consul to Durban, a boom town in what was the British colony of Natal. Shy foreigner though he was, Fernando Pessoa stood out among his classmates, none of whom could surpass him in English composition. English writers — including Shakespeare, Milton, Byron, Shelley, Keats and Carlyle — were the formative influence in his literary sensibility, and English was the language in which he began to write poetry. Pessoa returned to Lisbon


to attend university but soon dropped out, and it was his knowledge of English that enabled him to make a living as a freelance, doing occasional translations and drafting letters in English (he also wrote some in French) for Portuguese firms that did business abroad. T In 1920 Pessoa’s mother, once more a widow, also returned from South Africa to Lisbon, accompanied by three grown children from her second marriage. Pessoa’s half brothers soon emigrated to England, and Pessoa thought to do the same toward the end of his life, though probably not very seriously. Since stepping off the Herzog, the ship that had brought him back to Lisbon in 1905, Pessoa had never strayed far from his native city, which became a more frequent reference in his writing as he got older, specially in the Book of Disquiet. In a passage dating from the 1930s Bernardo Soares, the book’s fictional author, called Lisbon the crucial address” of “the main literary influences on my intellectual development,” which were one other than the common, everyday people whom the bookkeeper worked with. Had Pessoa written those words in his own name, they would have been an exaggeration, but the people who were part of the scenery in the Lisbon he inhabited — shopkeepers, restaurant waiters, streetcar operators, sellers of lottery tickets, fruit vendors, delivery boys, office workers, schoolchildren — are a striking presence in his literary work, partly because of the absence of more intimate kinds of social contact: romance, close friendships, family life. It seems, for the same reason, that a few of those almost anonymous people were a strong, if quiet, presence in Pessoa’s sentimental life. It

was the case, probably, of the tobacco shop owner who inspired poems signed by Campos and by Pessoa himself. And it was surely the case of the barber who made cameo appearances

in The Book of Disquiet and elsewhere. Among the family members and the literary people at the funeral on December 2, he was spotted — the barber — paying, or

repaying, some kind of respect.

I haveideasand reasonsKnow theoriesinall theirparts, _ and never reach the heart.


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Fernando Pessoa

I’M BEGINNING TO KNOW MYSELF.

∏ I DON’T EXIST.

This liquor I drink, the air I breathe,Belong to the very way I exist:

I’ve never discovered

how to resist These hapless sensations I conceive.

Nor have I ever ascertained

If I really feel what I feel

Am I what I seem to myself—the same?

Is the I I feel the I that’s real?

I study myself but can’t perceive. I’m so addicted to feeling that I lose myself if I’m distracted From the sensations I receive

Even with feelings I’m a bit of an atheist. I don’t even know if it’s I who feels.



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Fernando Pessoa

I’m sorry I don’t respondBut it isn’t, after all, my faultThat i don’t correspondTo the other you loved in me.

Each of us is many persons.To me I’m who I think I am. But others see me differentlyAnd are equally mistaken.

Don’t dream me into someone else But leave me alone, in peace! If I don’t want to find myself,

Should I want others to find me?

o p o e t a é u m f i n g i d o r , f i n G e T ã o c o m p l e t a m e n t e

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THE MANY PESSOAS

In trying to organize himself he created more selves than he could ever imagine

How do I write in the names of these three? Caeiro, through sheer and unexpected inspiration, without knowing or even suspecting that I am going to write his name. Ricardo Reis, after an abstract meditation that suddenly takes a concrete shape in an ode. Campos, when I feel a impulse to write and don’t know what. From a letter dated 13 January 1935

Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935), describing his literary enterprise as “a drama divided into people instead of into acts”, split himself into dozens of dramatis personae, the “heteronyms”, who occupied the stage of his otherwise uneventful life. It was a process that began in Pessoa’s childhood, gathered steam in his adolescence with the invention of alter egos who wrote in English, and made literary history in 1914, with the creation of would-be shepherd Alberto Caeiro, Futurist naval engineer Álvaro de Campos, and classicist Ricardo Reis, three of the finest Portuguese poets of the twentieth century.

I’m sorry I don’t respondBut it isn’t, after all, my faultThat i don’t correspondTo the other you loved in me.

Don’t dream me into someone else But leave me alone, in peace! If I don’t want to find myself,

o p o e t a é u m f i n g i d o r , f i n G e T ã o c o m p l e t a m e n t e


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Alberto Caeiro

Alberto Caeiro was Pessoa’s first great heteronym; summarized by Pessoa, writing: “He sees things with the eyes only, not with the mind. He does not let any thoughts arise when he looks at a flower... the only thing a stone tells him is that it has nothing at all to tell him... this way of looking at a stone may be described as the totally unpoetic way of looking at it. The stupendous fact about Caeiro is that out of this sentiment, or rather, absence of sentiment, he makes poetry.”›What this means, and what makes Caeiro such an original poet is the way he apprehends existence. He does not question anything whatsoever; he calmly accepts the world as it is. The recurrent themes to be found in nearly all of Caeiro’s poems are “wide-eyed child-like wonder at the infinite variety of nature”, as noted by a critic. He is free of metaphysical entanglements. Central to his world-view is the idea that in the world around us, all is surface: things are precisely what they seem, there is no hidden meaning anywhere. He manages thus to free himself from the anxieties that batter his peers; for Caeiro, things simply exist and we have no right to credit them with more than that. Our unhappiness, he tells us, springs from our unwillingness to limit our horizons. As such, Caeiro attains happiness by not questioning, and by thus avoiding doubts and uncertainties. He apprehends reality solely through his eyes, through his senses. What he teaches us is that if we want to be happy we ought to do the same. Octavio Paz called him “the innocent poet”. Paz made a shrewd remark on the heteronyms: “In each are particles of negation or unreality. Reis believes in form, Campos in sensation, Pessoa in symbols. Caeiro doesn’t believe in anything. He exists.”

:Poetry before Caeiro was essentially interpretative; what poets did was to offer an interpretation of their perceived surroundings; Caeiro does not do this. Instead, he attempts to communicate his senses, and his feelings, without any interpretation whatsoever. Caeiro attempts to approach Nature from a qualitatively different mode of apprehension; that of simply perceiving (an approach akin to phenomenological approaches to philosophy). Poets before him would make use of intricate metaphors to describe what was before them; not so Caeiro: his self-appointed task is to bring these objects to the reader’s attention, as directly and simply as possible. Caeiro sought a direct experience of the objects before him.

ALBERTO CAEIRO

Priori Serif // Priori Sans 1. Born in Washington, DC, Richard Zenith lives in Lisbon, where he works as a freelance writer, translator, and researcher in the Fernando Pessoa archives.

„ As such it is not surprising to find that Caeiro has been called an anti-intellectual, anti-Romantic, anti-subjectivist, anti-metaphysical...an anti-poet, by critics; Caeiro simply—is. He is in this sense very unlike his creator Fernando Pessoa: Pessoa was besieged by metaphysical uncertainties; these were, to a large extent, the cause of his unhappiness; not so Caeiro: his attitude is anti-metaphysical; he avoided uncertainties by adamantly clinging to a certainty: his belief that there is no meaning behind things. Things, for him, simply—are.∏ Caeiro represents a primal vision of reality, of things. He is the pagan incarnate. Indeed Caeiro, Richard Zenith¹ tells us, was not simply a pagan but ‘paganism itself’.The critic Jane M. Sheets sees the insurgence of Caeiro—who was Pessoa’s first major heteronym— as essential in founding the later poetic personas: “By means of this artless yet affirmative anti-poet, Caeiro, a short-lived but vital member of his coterie, Pessoa acquired the base of an experienced and universal poetic vision. After Caeiro’s tenets had been established, the avowedly poetic voices of Campos, Reis and Pessoa himself spoke with greater assurance.”

They spoke to me of people and humanityBut I’ve never seen people, or humanity.

I’ve seen various people, astonishingly dissimilar,

Each separated from the next by an unpeopled

space


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Alberto Caeiro

I have no ambitions and no

desires To be a poet is not

my ambition,It’s my way of being

alone


This may be the last day of my life I lifted my right hand

to wave at the sunBut I did not waive it in

farewell

I was glad I could see it —that’s all


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Alberto Caeiro

On an incredibly clear day, The kind when you

wish you’d done lots of work So that you wouldn’t have to work that day, I saw – as if spotting a road

through the trees – What may

well be the Great Secret, That Great Mystery the false poets

speak of.

I saw that there is no Nature,

That Nature doesn’t exist,That there are hills, valleys and

plains,That there are trees, flowers

and grass,That there are rivers and stones,

But that there is no whole to which all this belongs,That a true and real ensemble

Is a disease of our own ideas.

Nature is parts without a whole.This is perhaps the mystery they

speak of.

This is what, without thinking or pausing,

I realized must be the truth

That everyone tries to find but doesn’t find And that I alone found, because I

didn’t try to find it.


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Ricardo Reis Emigre Type Foundry

Reis sums up his philosophy of life in his own words, admonishing: ‘See life from a distance. Never question it. There’s nothing it can tell you.’ Like Caeiro, whom he admires, Reis defers from questioning life. He is a modern pagan who urges one to seize the day and accept fate with tranquility. ‘Wise is the one who does not seek’, he says; and continues: ‘the seeker will find in all things the abyss, and doubt in himself.’ In this sense Reis shares essential affinities with Caeiro. ¥ Believing in the Greek gods, yet living in a Christian Europe, Reis feels that his spiritual life is limited, and true happiness cannot be attained. This, added to his belief in Fate as a driving force for all that exists, as such disregarding freedom, leads to his epicureanist philosophy, which entails the avoidance of pain, defending that man should seek tranquility and calm above all else, avoiding emotional extremes. ¥ Where Caeiro wrote freely and spontaneously, with joviality, of his basic, meaningless connection to the world, Reis writes in an austere, cerebral manner, with premeditated rhythm and structure and a particular attention to the correct use of the language, when approaching his subjects of, as characterized by Richard Zenith,’the brevity of life, the vanity of wealth and struggle, the joy of simple pleasures, patience in time of trouble, and avoidance of extremes’. ¥ In his detached, intellectual approach, he is closer to Fernando Pessoa’s constant rationalization, as such representing the orthonym’s wish for measure and sobriety and a world free of troubles and respite, in stark contrast to Caeiro’s spirit and style. As such, where Caeiro’s predominant attitude is that of joviality, his sadness being accepted as natural (‘My sadness,’ Caeiro says, ‘is a comfort for it is natural and right.’), Reis is marked by melancholy, saddened by the impermanence of all things.

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RICARDO REIS: The sad epicurean

Priori Serif // Priori Sans

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Ricardo Reis is the main character of Nobel prize winner José Saramago’s 1986 novel ∏The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis ∏.

want little: you will have everything want nothing: you will be free. the same love by which we are loved oppresses us with its wanting.

want little: you will have everything want nothing: you will be free. the same love by which we are loved oppresses us with its wanting.

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Álvaro de Campos

&Álvaro de Campos manifests, in a way, as an hyperbolic version of Pessoa himself. Of the three heteronyms he is the one who feels most strongly, his motto being ‘to feel everything in every way.’ ‘The best way to travel,’ he wrote, ‘is to feel.’ As such, his poetry is the most emotionally intense and varied, constantly juggling two fundamental impulses: on the one hand a feverish desire to be and feel everything and everyone, declaring that ‘in every corner of my soul stands an altar to a different god ‘(alluding to Walt Whitman’s desire to ‘contain multitudes’), on the other, a wish for a state of isolation and a sense of nothingness.&As a result, his mood and principles varied between violent, dynamic exultation, as he fervently wishes to experience the entirety of the universe in himself, in all manners possible (a particularly distinctive trait in this state being his futuristic leanings, including the expression of great enthusiasm as to the meaning of city life and its components) and a state of nostalgic melancholy, where life is viewed as, essentially, empty. &One of the poet’s constant preoccupations, as part of his dichotomous character, is that of identity: he does not know who he is, or rather, fails at achieving an ideal identity. Wanting to be everything, and inevitably failing, he despairs. Unlike Caeiro, who asks nothing of life, he asks too much. In his poetic meditation ‘Tobacco Shop’ he asks:

ÁLVARO DE CAMPOS: A LITTLE LARGER THAN THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE

How should I know what

I’ll be, I who don’t know what I

am? Be what I think? But I think

of being so many things!



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Álvaro de Campos


From Álvaro de Campos’s Notes for the Memory of My Master Caeiro.

I don’t believe in anything but the existence of my sensations; I have no other certainty, not even of the outer universe conveyed to me by those sensations. I don’t see the outer universe, I don’t hear the outer universe, I don’t hear the outer universe. I see my visual impressions. I hear my auditory impressions; I touch my tactile impressions. It’s not with the eyes but with the soul that I see; It’s not with the ears but with the soul that I hear; It’s not with the skin but with the soul that I touch.

And if someone should ask me what the soul is i will answer that it is me.


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Álvaro de Campos

I’ve visited more lands than I’ve set foot on,I’ve seen more landscapes than I’ve laid eyes on,I’ve experienced more sensations than all the ones I’ve felt,Because however much I felt I never felt enough, And life always pained me, it was always too little, and I was unhappy.

From every sidewalk café of every cityAccessible to the imaginationI look at life passing by, watching without getting involved,Belonging to it without pulling a gesture out of my pocketAnd without noting down what I see to pretend later on that I saw it.

I’m held by nothing, I hold on to nothing, I belong to nothingAll sensations seize me, and none endure. I’m more motley than a random crowd,I’m more varied than the spontaneous universe,All eras have belonged to me for a moment,All souls for a moment have had their place on meCurrent of intuitions, river of imagining me as them,Always wave after wave,Always the sea—now growing strange,Always drawing away from me, indefinitely.

To feel everything in every way,To hold all opinions,To be sincere contradicting oneself every minute,To annoy oneself with absolute open-mindedness,And to love things just like God.-

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All kisses of all trysts have been placed on my lips

All handkerchiefs of all farewells have waved in my heartAll obscenely suggestive gestures and gazes

Pound in my sex organs and throughout all my body.I was every ascetic, every outcast, every forgotten man,

And every pederast—absolutely every last one of them.Black and red rendezvous in the hell of my soul’s depth

I don’t know if life is too little or too much for me,I don’t know if I feel too much or too little, I don’t knowIf I lack moral scruples, a fulcrum in my mind,Consanguinity with the mystery of things, impactOn contact, blood beneath blows, sensibility to noises,Or if there’s a simpler and happier explanation for all this.

Make me human, O night, make me helpful an brotherly.Only humanitarianly can one live.Only by loving mankind

I multiplied myself

to feel myself,To feel myself I had to feel everythingI overflowed, I did nothing but spill

out,I undresses, I yielded,

And in each corner of my soul there’s an altar to a

different god.


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Álvaro de Campos


To

be able to

laugh, laugh, laugh uproariously,

To laugh like an overturned glass,

Completely crazy just for feeling,

Completely disfigured from scraping against things

My mouth cut up from biting on things,

My fingernails bloody from clawing at things,

And then I give me whatever cell you like that I may look back on life.

To

be able to

laugh, laugh, laugh uproariously,

To laugh like an overturned glass,

Completely crazy just for feeling,

Completely disfigured from scraping against things

My mouth cut up from biting on things,

My fingernails bloody from clawing at things,

And then I give me whatever cell you like that I may look back on life.


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ns in one scattered extravagant complete and aloof moment

To feel everything in every way, to live everything from all sides, to be the same thing in all ways possibleat the same time,

to realize in oneself all humanity in all moments

to realize in oneself all humanity


in one scattered extravagant complete and aloof moment

to realize in oneself all humanity in all moments

to realize in oneself all humanity


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Fernando Pessoa Himself

‘Fernando Pessoa-himself ’ is not the ‘real’ Fernando Pessoa. Like Caeiro, Reis and Campos-- Pessoa ‘himself’ embodies only aspects of the poet， Fernando Pessoa’s personality is not stamped in any given voice; his personality is diffused through the heteronyms. For this reason ‘Fernando Pessoa-himself’ stands apart from the poet proper. X ‘Pessoa’ shares many essential affinities with his peers, Caeiro and Campos in particular. Lines crop up in his poems that may as well be ascribed to Campos or Caeiro. It is useful to keep this in mind as we read this exposition. X The critic Leland Guyer sums up ‘Pessoa’: “the poetry of the orthonymic Fernando Pessoa normally possesses a measured, regular form and appreciation of the musicality of verse. It takes on intellectual issues, and it is marked by concern with dreams, the imagination and mystery.” X Richard Zenith calls ‘Pessoa’ ‘[Pessoa’s] most intellectual and analytic poetic persona.’ Like Álvaro de Campos, Pessoa-himself was afflicted with an acute identity crisis. Pessoa-himself has been described as indecisive and doubt plagued, as restless. Like Campos he can be melancholic, weary, resigned. The strength of Pessoa-himself’s poetry rests in his ability to suggest a sense of loss; of sorrow for what can never be. X A constant theme in Pessoa’s poetry is Tédio, or Tedium. The dictionary defines this word simply as ‘a condition of being tedious; tediousness or boredom.’ This definition does not sufficiently encompass the peculiar brand of tedium experienced by Pessoa-himself. His is

What I am essentially—behind the involuntary masks of poet, logical reasoner and so fort—is a dramatist. My spontaneous tendency to depersonalization, which I mentioned in my last letter to explain the existence of my heteronyms, naturally leads to this definition. And so I do not evolve, I simply JOURNEY. (...) I continuously change personality. I keep enlarging (and here there is a kind of evolution) my capacity to create new characters, new forms of pretending that I understand the world or, more accurately, that the world can be understood.

From a letter of Pessoa dated January 20, 1935

FERNANDO PESSOA HIMSELF

My native land is the Portuguese language.

more than simple boredom: it is from a world of weariness and disgust with life; a sense of the finality of failure; of the impossibility of having anything to want. X ‘The impossibility of having anything to want’: this is Tédio for Pessoa-himself. It is one thing to have nothing to do or want, but to be deprived even of this...is tedium. Kierkegaard tells how if asked to choose between the two; between a perpetual state of boredom, or eternal bodily pain; he would choose--eternal bodily pain. Pessoa-himself, it would seem, would concur with the melancholy Dane.


To travel!

To change countries!

To be forever someone else,With a soul that has no roots,

Living only off what it sees!

To belong not even to me!To go forward, to follow

afterThe absence of any goal

And any desire to achieve it!

This is what I call travel.But there’s nothing in it of me

Besides my dream of the journey.The rest is just land and sky.

The poet is a faker

Who’s so good at his actThat he even fakes the pain

Of the pain he feels in fact.And those who read his words

Will feel in what he wroteNeither of the pain he has

But just the one they don’t.And so around its track

This thing called the heart winds,A little clockwork train

To entertain our minds

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∏I’m a fugitive. I was shut up in myself As soon as I was born, But I managed to flee. ∏If people get tired Of being in the same place, Why shouldn’t they tire Of having the same self? ∏My soul seeks me out, But I keep on the run And sincerely hope I’ll never be found. ∏ Oneness is a prison. To be myself is not to be. I’ll live as a fugitive But I live really and truly.

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EVERYTHING IS WORTH DOING WHEN THE SOUL IS NOT SMALL

O salty sea, so much of whose saltIs Portugal’s tears!

The mothers who wept for us to cross you!All the sons who prayed in

vain!All the brides who never marriedFor you to be

ours, O sea!

Was it worth doing? Everything is worth doingWhen the soul is not small.Whoever would go beyond the CapeMust go beyond sorrow.God place danger and the abyss in the sea,But he also made it heaven’s mirror.


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PRIORI: THE TYPEFACE ITSELF

Get to know Priori better

At Emigre we have always had a soft spot for typefaces designed by graphic designers

as opposed to typefaces designed by type designers.

When graphic designers design type,

there is a decidedly different intent

and aesthetic

at play

that often results in surprising and unusual solutions

to letterforms.



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The professional type designer is almost always concerned with following tradition and established reading habits. Their knowledge and experience ensure that the basic principles of type design are well taken care of - all the small details that are so important when designing a complete font (especially text fonts), such as spacing, kerning, modulation, armature, etc. P Graphic designers, on the other hand, have something else in mind when they design typefaces. Their type is usually filled with connotations, quotes, questions, contradictions, critiques, and idiosyncrasies. Their typefaces are often an outgrowth of specific design jobs requiring custom made letters for posters or logos. They are less concerned with, and often also less adept at, the finer points of drawing type. They are also less restricted by tradition, which lends their fonts a unique appeal.P For a foundry to release such fonts commercially is a balancing act of correcting obvious mistakes and omissions while keeping the integrity and soul of the original idea intact. In the end, these fonts are not idiot-proof. They often require a trained, discriminating eye to use them effectively. This results in fonts that are perhaps limited in their application, but high on emotion and expressiveness.P Jonathan Barnbrook is a graphic designer. He is well known for his recent collaborations with the British artist Damien Hirst and his work for Adbusters magazine. He is outspoken about his political beliefs, and in his personal work often addresses the dilemma of reconciling the commercial aspects inherent in graphic design with his ambition to use design as a weapon for social change.P Another aspect that attracts us to Barnbrook’s work is his ability to draw inspiration from his immediate surroundings. To us, his work comes across as particularly British with a definite leaning towards religious and medieval imagery, although he is quick to point out that he is neither religious nor patriotic. In a world that is becoming increasingly globalized with cultural specificity waning, Barnbrook’s choice to draw inspiration from his own culture is both brave and highly effective. His work stands miles apart from most of his contemporaries. P Despite all their inherent contradictions and sometimes downright illegible characters, Barnbrook’s fonts have sold remarkably well, particularly the Emigre releases Mason and Exocet, two typefaces based on primitive Greek and Roman stone carving and loaded with Barnbrook’s typical religious and medieval connotations. Exocet became an immediate favorite for particularly dark, Gothic-like video games, such as Diablo, and comic strips of similar ilk. Surprisingly, it was used just as frequently in applications for an entirely different purpose, such as the logo for the upscale TAZO teas. Mason, too, found usage in a number of dark, cult-like settings, while also being selected as the title font for Walt Disney’s re-release of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The wide-ranging popularity of these fonts sprouted numerous rip-off and look-alike designs, all furthering the popularity of Barnbrook’s fonts.P Emigre has never shied away from releasing fonts that have wide appeal. We enjoy seeing our releases saturate popular culture on all levels, although we are usually as surprised by their success as anybody else. Obviously Barnbrook has a finger on the pulse of a particular segment of type design, and we were happy to collaborate with him again on this new release.P Priori is a logical progression from Mason, a typeface he designed around ten years ago. Mason was designed as an all caps font, because, as Barnbrook points out, “At that time I disliked lower case. It was a reaction to the ‘pretend modernism’ that I saw everywhere around me. I thought ‘Why do I need lower case letters when the most beautiful typography was set in capitals in Rome?’”


P After that, he started to love what he hated and went through a period of using lower case only. “But,” he is quick to add, “not in the same way as practiced by the so-called Swiss International Style. Instead, I was more interested in experimenting with historically based letterforms.”P The typeface he wished to produce turned out to be one of his most ambitious type projects to date. In typical non-type designer fashion, Priori first saw the light of day on David Bowie’s 2002 album Heathen, where a prototype version can be seen.P One of the reasons for a graphic designer to draw typefaces is to control every element on the page. While Barnbrook was able to create very intricate designs with the display fonts that he had drawn over the years, none were practical for setting texts in a book. Priori was to be his first text type design that would make it possible to finally control all elements on the page, including lengthy texts. To complete the challenge, it was to encompass matching sans and serif type.P Many type traditionalists will frown upon his claim. With all its idiosyncrasies, Priori does not exactly rival any established text fonts. But from Barnbrook’s perspective, the claim is not so curious. He is a strong believer in the impossibility of neutral, transparent typography. For Barnbrook, every detail in a design helps to build a larger story. Nothing is neutral. Everything has meaning. P Priori is loaded with meaning. Barnbrook’s interest in British typography of the first half of the 20th century provides Priori with its foundation. But it isn’t inspired only by the work of famous British typographers, such as Eric Gill and Edward Johnston. Priori also embraces all of the signage and lettering that Barnbrook observes in his neighborhood. “I wanted to express some of the features from my favorite letterforms,” says Barnbrook. “Some are more obvious than others. The ‘a’ echoes the alternative version of Futura. The ‘W’ reminds me of the ones carved in stone on war memorials. The slight tail on the ‘n’, ‘m’, and the ‘h’ are all from 18th century letterforms. The ‘r’ reminds me of letter shapes I’ve seen in hand-painted signs of 1940s London.” Priori is about recapturing an atmosphere that permeates the designer’s surroundings, yet is slowly disappearing.

RUDY VANDERLANS

Priori Sans

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Priori Sans Regular

Regular:

Regular Alternate:

Small Caps:

Small Caps Alternate:

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ1234567890 !¡?¿£¢$¥&*øØåÅæÆœŒß


abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz 1234567890 !¡?¿£¢$¥&*øØåÅæÆœŒß




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6/8pt. When he died on November 30, 1935, the Lisbon newspapers paid tribute, without fanfare, to the “great Portuguese poet” Fernando Pessoa, who was born in Lisbon in 1888. He was remembered for Mensagem (Message), a book of forty-four poems published in 1934, and for some 160 additional poems published in magazines and journals, several of which he helped found and run. The author, a single man survived by a half sister and two half brothers, had the peculiarity of publishing his poetry under three different names besides his own — Alberto Caeiro, Ricardo Reis and Álvaro de Campos — which he claimed were not mere pseudonyms, since it wasn’t just their names that were false.


12/13.5pt. When he died on November 30, 1935, the Lisbon newspapers paid tribute, without fanfare, to the “great Portuguese poet” Fernando Pessoa, who was born in Lisbon in 1888. He was remembered for Mensagem (Message), a book

of forty-four poems published in 1934, and for some 160 additional poems published in magazines and journals, several of which he helped found and run. The author, a single man survived by a half sister and two half brothers, had the peculiarity of publishing his poetry under three different names besides his own — Alberto Caeiro, Ricardo Reis and Álvaro de Campos — which he claimed were not mere pseudonyms, since it wasn’t just their names that were false.



14/15.5pt. When he died on November 30, 1935, the Lisbon newspapers paid tribute, without fanfare, to the “great Portuguese poet” Fernando Pessoa, who was born in Lisbon in 1888. He was remembered for Mensagem (Message), a book of forty-four poems published in 1934, and for some 160 additional poems published in magazines and journals, several of which he helped found and run. The author, a single man survived by a half sister and two half brothers, had the peculiarity of publishing his poetry under three different names besides his own — Alberto Caeiro, Ricardo Reis and Álvaro de Campos — which he claimed were not mere pseudonyms, since it wasn’t just their names that were false.


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Bold: abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ 1234567890 !¡?¿£¢$¥&*øØåÅæÆœŒß

Small Caps: abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz 1234567890 !¡?¿£¢$¥&*øØåÅæÆœŒß


Bold: abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ 1234567890 !¡?¿£¢$¥&*øØåÅæÆœŒß

Bold Alternate: abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ 1234567890 !¡?¿£¢$¥&*øØåÅæÆœŒß

Small Caps Alternate: abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz 1234567890 !¡?¿£¢$¥&*øØåÅæÆœŒß

Priori Sans Bold


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12/13.5pt. When he died on November 30, 1935, the Lisbon newspapers paid tribute, without fanfare, to the “great Portuguese poet” Fernando Pessoa, who was born in Lisbon in 1888. He was remembered for Mensagem (Message), a book of forty-four poems published in 1934, and for some 160 additional poems published in magazines and journals, several of which he helped found and run. The author, a single man survived by a half sister and two half brothers, had the peculiarity of publishing his poetry under three different names besides his own — Alberto Caeiro, Ricardo Reis and Álvaro de Campos — which he claimed were not mere pseudonyms, since it wasn’t just their names that were false.



14/15.5pt. When he died on November 30, 1935, the Lisbon newspapers paid tribute, without fanfare, to the “great Portuguese poet” Fernando Pessoa, who was born in Lisbon in 1888. He was remembered for Mensagem (Message), a book of forty-four poems published in 1934, and for some 160 additional poems published in magazines and journals, several of which

he helped found and run. The author, a single man survived by a half sister and two half brothers, had the peculiarity of publishing his poetry under three different names besides his own — Alberto Caeiro, Ricardo Reis and Álvaro de Campos — which he claimed were not mere pseudonyms, since it wasn’t just their names that were false.

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Regular Alternate:

Small Caps:


Italic:

Italic alternate:







Priori Serif Regular


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14/15pt. When he died on November 30, 1935, the Lisbon newspapers paid tribute, without fanfare, to the “great Portuguese poet” Fernando Pessoa, who was born in Lisbon in 1888. He was remembered for Mensagem (Message), a book of forty-four poems published in 1934, and for some 160 additional poems

published in magazines and journals, several of which he helped found and run. The author, a single man survived by a half sister and two half brothers, had the peculiarity of publishing his poetry under three different names besides his own — Alberto Caeiro, Ricardo Reis and Álvaro de Campos — which he claimed were not mere pseudonyms, since it wasn’t just their names that were false.


10/11.5pt. When he died on November 30, 1935, the Lisbon newspapers paid tribute, without fanfare, to the

“great Portuguese poet” Fernando Pessoa, who was born in Lisbon in 1888. He was remembered for Mensagem (Message), a book of forty-four poems published in 1934, and for some 160 additional poems published in magazines and journals, several of which he helped found and run. The author, a single man survived by a half sister and two half brothers, had the peculiarity of publishing his poetry under three different names besides his own — Alberto Caeiro, Ricardo Reis and Álvaro de Campos — which he claimed were not mere pseudonyms, since it wasn’t just their names that were false.



9/11.5pt. When he died on November 30, 1935, the Lisbon newspapers paid tribute, without fanfare, to the “great Portuguese poet” Fernando Pessoa, who was born in Lisbon in 1888. He was remembered for Mensagem (Message), a book of forty-four poems published in 1934, and for some 160 additional poems published in magazines and journals, several of which he helped found and run. The author, a single man survived by a half sister and two half brothers, had the peculiarity of publishing his poetry under three different names besides his own — Alberto Caeiro, Ricardo Reis and Álvaro de Campos — which he claimed were not mere pseudonyms, since it wasn’t just their names that were.

12/13.5pt. When he died on November 30, 1935, the Lisbon newspapers paid tribute, without fanfare, to the “great Portuguese poet ” Fernando Pessoa, who was born in Lisbon in 1888. He was remembered for Mensagem (Message),

a book of forty-four poems published in 1934, and for some 160 additional poems published in magazines and journals, several of which he helped found and run. The author, a single man survived by a half sister and two half brothers, had the peculiarity of publishing his poetry under three different names besides his own — Alberto Caeiro, Ricardo Reis and Álvaro de Campos — which he claimed were not mere pseudonyms, since it wasn’t just their names that were false.


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Priori Serif Bold



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14/15pt. When he died on November 30, 1935, the Lisbon newspapers paid tribute, without fanfare, to the “great Portuguese poet” Fernando Pessoa, who was born in Lisbon in 1888. He was remembered for Mensagem (Message), a book of forty-four poems published in 1934, and for some 160 additional poems published in magazines and journals, several of which he helped found and run. The author, a single man survived by a half sister and two half brothers, had the peculiarity of publishing his poetry under three different names

besides his own — Alberto Caeiro, Ricardo Reis and Álvaro de Campos — which he claimed were not mere pseudonyms, since it wasn’t just their names that were false. 8/10pt. When he died on November 30, 1935, the Lisbon newspapers paid tribute, without fanfare, to the “great Portuguese poet” Fernando Pessoa, who was born in Lisbon in 1888. He was remembered for Mensagem (Message), a book of forty-four poems published in 1934, and for some 160 additional poems published in magazines and journals, several of which he helped found and run. The author, a single man survived by a half sister and two half brothers, had the peculiarity of publishing his poetry under three different names besides his own — Alberto Caeiro, Ricardo Reis and Álvaro de Campos — which he claimed were not mere pseudonyms, since it wasn’t just their names that were false.


9/12pt. When he died on November 30, 1935, the Lisbon newspapers paid tribute, without fanfare, to the “great Portuguese poet” Fernando Pessoa, who was born in Lisbon in 1888. He was remembered for Mensagem (Message), a book of forty-four poems published in 1934, and for some 160 additional poems published in magazines and journals, several of which he helped found and run. The author, a single man survived by a half sister and two half brothers, had the peculiarity of publishing his poetry under three different names besides his own — Alberto Caeiro, Ricardo Reis and Álvaro de Campos — which he claimed were not mere pseudonyms, since it wasn’t just their names that were.

12/13.5pt. When he died on November 30, 1935, the Lisbon newspapers paid tribute, without fanfare, to the “great P o r t u g u e s e p o e t ” F e r n a n d o P e s s o a , w h o w a s b o r n i n Lisbon in 1888. He was

remembered for Mensagem (Message), a book of forty-four poems published in 1934, and for some 160 additional poems published in magazines and journals, several of which he helped found and run. The author, a single man survived by a half sister and two half brothers, had the peculiarity of publishing his poetry under three different names besides his own — Alberto Caeiro, Ricardo Reis and Álvaro de Campos — which he claimed were not mere pseudonyms, since it wasn’t just their names that were false.


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Colophon

Book designed by Clara Silva Software used: Adobe InDesign and Adobe IllustratorFonts used: Priori Serif and Priori SansPhotos taken by the designerPhoto on page 28/29 taken by Crystal Lim. Photos of the poet on pages 15, 22, 23 and 37 are from casafernandopessoa.cm-lisboa.pt/index.php?id=2233



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Emigre Inc.1700 Shattuck Ave., #307Berkeley, CA 94709USA

EMIGRE.COM

T 1-530-756-2900

F 1-530-756-1300

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