The Duke of Parma: Intersections

The characteristics of Fernando Pessoa’s writing, inferable from the documents in his archive, challenge elements that are taken for granted: the traditional concept of the work as a closed object with clearly identifiable boundaries and the traditional concept of edition. Instead, Pessoa’s work unfolds diachronically as a succession of synchronicities, connecting multiple works, in an overall network. The Duke of Parma, alongside other works with a broad diachronic projection, has the role of a central axis, around which one can reconstruct the synchronic layers of Pessoa’s writing. The opportunity represented by an edition is unique, because it may represent the prototype of a new way of proceeding, the aim of which is not only to arrive at an internal reconstruction, but to connect the work with other contemporary works and their respective diachronies. The idea is to propose a new model, open and connected, in which intersections with other works and their respective editions are enhanced.