The Conservative Resources of the Political Innovation in the Work of Fernando Pessoa

In the last decade, the world has witnessed the advance of a conservative wave that, although endowed with a transnational breadth, is fed locally by national political forces. If it has been clear for a long time that the development of history cannot be thought in a linear way; the work of some writers appears as a privileged space to think about the interbreeding between different rationalities – one of a political character and another of an aesthetic character – which point into different historical developments. This communication will focus on the apparent fracture between the conservatism of the political writings and the aesthetic vanguardism of the poetry of Fernando Pessoa, the emblematic character of Portuguese modernism. In the intersection between these two planes of the Portuguese poet's work, it will be possible to see how the author articulates a conservative political ideology for the construction of a political innovation plan for the nation, while it will be possible to show how the force of tradition continues to strengthen the language innovation project of that moment of successive vanguards. Thus, both politically and aesthetically, the relationship between conservation and innovation is so intertwined that it makes it difficult to conceive politics and aesthetics as autonomous spheres, as proposed by Max Weber.