Back in 1996, when I launched Disquiet.com, part of its foundation was an ongoing experiment in comparative literature focused on the poet from whom the website derives its name: Fernando Pessoa, best known for his The Book of Disquiet.
Part of that subsite, available at disquiet.com/pessoa, is a side-by-side series of multiple renditions in English by various translators of one single, brief Pessoa poem, “Autopsicografia.”
Thanks to reader Douglas Storm, there are now 16 different versions of the poem — well, 17, including Pessoa’s original, in Portuguese.
Storm forwarded the translation to me this morning. It’s by Richard Zenith. The comparison is posted at disquiet.com/thirteen.