{"id":99253,"date":"2016-06-13T18:48:40","date_gmt":"2016-06-13T22:48:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=99253"},"modified":"2016-06-14T10:50:46","modified_gmt":"2016-06-14T14:50:46","slug":"you-waspy-wasp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/06\/13\/you-waspy-wasp\/","title":{"rendered":"You Waspy Wasp"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

Fernando Pessoa, right, at the Caf\u00e9 Martinho in Lisbon, 1914.<\/p><\/div>\n

In 1929, after a nine-year silence, Fernando Pessoa renewed his correspondence with Ophelia Queiroz, with whom he had enjoyed the only romance of his life. Where his earlier letters, from 1920, found him effusive (perhaps excessively)\u00a0<\/em>in his affections, this later chapter sees him in a far more disturbed frame of mind; by the end of the year he had broken off their correspondence again, this time for good. Read more of his letters in <\/em>The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa<\/a>.<\/p>\n

September 24, 1929<\/p>\n

So tell me, my little Wasp (who\u2019s not really mine, though you are a wasp), what words you want to hear from a creature whose mind took a spill somewhere on the Rua do Ouro, whose wits\u2014along with the rest of him\u2014got run over by a truck as it turned the corner onto the Rua de Sao Nicolau.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Does my (my?) little Wasp really like me? Why this odd taste for older people? You complain in your letter about having to put up with some aunts who are eight-odd and fifty-odd years old and aren\u2019t really aunts, but then how do you expect to put up with a creature who\u2019s almost the same age and can never be an aunt, since this profession, to the best of my knowledge, is only open to women? An aunt, of course, needs to be two women or more. So far I\u2019ve only managed to be an uncle, and just of my niece, who, funnily enough, calls me \u201cUncle Fenando,\u201d due to (1) the aforementioned fact that I\u2019m her uncle, (2) the fact I\u2019m called (remember?) Fernando, and (3) the fact that she can\u2019t say the letter R. <\/em><\/p>\n

Since you say that you don\u2019t want to see me and that it\u2019s hard for you to want not to want to see me, so that you\u2019d rather I phone you, because phoning means not being present, and write you, because writing is to be at a distance, I\u2019ve already phoned you, Wasp that\u2019s not mine, and now I am writing you, or rather, have written you, because I\u2019ll stop here.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m going out and will take the letter in my black briefcase\u2014do you hear?<\/p>\n

I\u2019d like to go, simultaneously, to India and Pombal. Strange combination, isn\u2019t it? But it\u2019s just one leg of the journey.<\/p>\n

Do you remember this geography, you waspy Wasp?<\/p>\n

Fernando<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 1929, after a nine-year silence, Fernando Pessoa renewed his correspondence with Ophelia Queiroz, with whom he had enjoyed the only romance of his life. Where his earlier letters, from 1920, found him effusive (perhaps excessively)\u00a0in his affections, this later chapter sees him in a far more disturbed frame of mind; by the end of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":998,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1900],"tags":[19608,5733,22769,2111,13335,11342,22770],"class_list":["post-99253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-correspondence","tag-aunts","tag-correspondence-2","tag-fernando-pessoa","tag-love","tag-love-letters","tag-uncles","tag-wasps"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n\u201cYou Waspy Wasp\u201d: Pessoa\u2019s Love Letters Take a Bizarre Turn<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"After a nine-year gap, he resumed writing his only lover\u2014but something had changed.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, 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