This book offers a crucial piece of a modern literary puzzle. Fernando Pessoa, discovered towards the end of the 20th century, is a literary enigma. He wrote under a multitude of heteronyms - alter egos with distinct biographies, ideologies and influences who produce radically different texts - and the full extent of his canon is as yet unknown. Like Kafka, who electrified the modernist world with his posthumous accession to artistic superstardom, Pessoa left his work in disarray, much of it being found and published only after his death. Again like Kafka, as scholars, executors and publishers struggle to piece together his oeuvre, Pessoa’s work rises in importance and recognition. In 1999, Richard Zenith made a new find in the Pessoa archives in Lisbon: a group of prose writings by a previously unknown heteronym, The Baron of Teive . The Portuguese writings have been received by scholars as a crucial piece of the puzzle and in content perhaps a key to the heteronymic creative process Pessoa invented.
The Education of the Stoic is the unique work left by the Baron of Teive, who, after destroying all his previous literary attempts and before destroying himself, explains the impossibility of producing superior art. A dark companion piece to that which is known of Pessoa’s output to date, it will undoubtedly prove to be one more vital fragment in the most fascinating authorial conundrum of our time.