Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Reader Beware - Amazon has followed its usual procedure of cobbling reviews for three totally different editions of the same book together. After having read all the reviews of this book, one could get a good idea of what Pessoa is all about (he's not for everybody), but get a distorted idea of this particular edition. But first - there are other issues I’m surprised no one mentioned. The first is the hideously ugly cover. In no way does it have any connection with the contents or induce the reader to buy the book, which, after all, is the purpose of a front panel design. Next - this new ‘complete edition.’ Can any edition be complete? The text was put together by the editor from papers that were found after Pessoa’s death. I know of three different versions in English, all very different, all put together from papers found after Pessoa’s death. My discovery of the book was the Richard Zenith translation available as a Penquin Classic. I’m not qualified to compare translations from the Portuguese and that’s not really an issue here. The version under revue has different texts than the Zenith version. It starts with a different narrator, who is not in the Zenith edition at all, and radically alters the conception of what readers heretofore thought was the Pessoa they knew. Well about half of the Pizzaro/Costa isn’t the same as the Richard Zenith book. The editor/translator says that Pessoa’s posthumous papers included this second narrator and should be included. Perhaps. But the Zenith edition is cohesive while this edition, presenting two narrators who presumably are the same person (but couldn’t be, having different sensibilities), makes this version confusing and unsatisfying. Part one that Pizzaro includes is painful to read and had I come across this as my introduction to Pessoa I would have forgotten his name. Have I belabored this point? It needs belaboring. A third edition from Maria Jose de Lancastre and translated by Costa, published by Serpent’s Tail in 1991, exists. It’s text is similar to Zenith’s but much abbreviated. Zenith’s edition, published in 2001, supersedes it. Pessoa's poetry is best left un-translated, as is all poetry from other languages. But that's just my opinion! If you loved 'Disquiet' you'll like 'The Education of the Stoic.' Addition to above review: I just reread my review at a later date. It may not immediately be clear but my review is not for the Zenith translation. I would give the Zenith translation 100 stars (or realistically, five). The Pizarro-Costa edition published by New Directions, being the one my review was written for, deserves one star. And yet another addition to the review of the New Directions edition of the book. Thinking I might have been to severe on the Costa translation (the edition with the ugly cover) I re-examined it. Well, I wasn't severe enough! Let me reiterate; the Zenith translation, published by Penguin, is the version to read. The Costa version includes 164 pages written by the heteronym Vincent Guedes that are not in the Zenith translation. These pages are written in a Symbolist style which served well the Symbolist poets of the late 1800s but is ill adapted in a long prose work. It is almost like Pessoa is parodying himself. It reads like a third rate version of early Henry Miller. The Zenith version gives us 481 entries by Bernardo Soares (another heteronym) and 381 pages, while Costa gives us only 137 entries. Clearly the sensibility of Soares is the one you'll want to wrap yourself in. Also, there are 114 additional pages containing related material that you'll want to gobble up after digesting the main offering. You will note that each of the three different editions each has 144 reviews. Those are the same reviews for what is in essence three different books. Amazon, why don't you hire some idealistic English Major graduate to correct these computer made mistakes. After all, aren't we dealing here with the 'Humanities?'