Fausto Redux: por uma nova edição do Fausto de Fernando Pessoa

Abstract

This work discusses the fragmentary state of Pessoa’s Faust and the plurality of its editions. In the dramatic work of Fernando Pessoa, the recreation of Faust occupies a central role. Though Pessoa’s Faust is currently considered by critics as a “theater in ruins” (Gusmão [2003]), its main edition available presents a play supposedly organized in five acts (Pessoa, 1988). An examination of the documents that constitute this Faust reveals more than 200 disconnected fragments, mostly handwritten and undated – a puzzle whose only satisfactory solution is perhaps to accept its intrinsic incompleteness. A promising editorial possibility was presented by the University of Coimbra project Arquivo LdoD, dedicated to rethink the Book of Disquiet through an interactive online platform, with which a reader would be capable of reorganizing the textual fragments, generating her own personal anthology. This essay argues, thus, that a new edition of Pessoa’s Faust would be able to re-present the great Pessoan drama in a way to honor its state of fragment, plurality and labyrinth.