a technical tour-de-force and an enchanting study of life as perceived by four different people — though that perhaps depends on your definition of people — as well as a charming collection of poetry in its most basic form, a little larger than the entire universe offers to the reader verses about life, nature, fate, destiny, and the self.

although i acknowledge that this is a staggering work of utter genius, i must confess that i took pessoa's project to heart and treated this as if it were really a collection of poetry from four people. as such, i grew to adore ricardo reis and would have welcomed more from him; so imagine my despair when all i got was pages and pages of alvaro de campo's unending chatter.

his section is literally all i detested in the book. i didn't care for his literary flourishes nor his subject matter. i would have skipped it, if i could, and i must say that my eyes glazed over in some key sections of his longer poems. don't get me wrong: there are some nice turns of phrase here and there, but overall i would have appreciated more of reis and less of de campo.

essentially, take de campo away and this is five stars, easily, for me. unfortunately, his inclusion dampened this anthology, and what could have been a terrific reading experience turned out to be rather okay at best.