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TED-Ed

Will the real Fernando please stand up? - Ilan Stavans

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1,137 Questions Answered

TEDEd Animation

Let’s Begin…

On November 30th, 1935, dozens of writers passed away. They came from different backgrounds, espoused divergent beliefs, and wrote in a variety of styles. Yet almost 30,000 pages of their work was stashed in a trunk in an apartment in Lisbon, Portugal. So, what mysterious string tied all these writers together? Ilan Stavans explores the enigmatic life of Fernando Pessoa and his many identities.

Additional Resources for you to Explore

Fernando Pessoa was a modernist writer who converted the anxieties of life into a rich, symphonic inner dialogue. He saw himself as having multiple literary personalities and allowed many of them to develop an oeuvre. He is often equated with Jorge Luis Borges, James Joyce, Franz Kafka, and Virginia Woolf. Among other contributions, Pessoa’s legacy invites us to question the concept of human personality as a uniform, monolithic approach to life. To learn more about Pessoa, take a virtual tour of the house in which the author spent the last 15 years of his life. 

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Meet The Creators

Educator
Ilan Stavans
Director
Héloïse Dorsan Rachet
Narrator
Christina Greer
Music
André Aires, João Mendes
Sound Designer
André Aires, João Mendes
Director of Production
Gerta Xhelo
Produced by
Sazia Afrin
Editorial Director
Alex Rosenthal
Editorial Producer
Cella Wright
Script Editor
Iseult Gillespie
Fact-Checker
Charles Wallace

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