Dear friend of Arkadia, You are most heartily welcome to “Pessoa – a poet of many selves” by Helena Palha on Wednesday 9.6 at 6pm. .   It promises to be a fascinating evening. Join us! Warm regards, Ian www.arkadiabookshop.fi – Entrance is free and green tea will be served. A donation of €2 (or more!) is suggested and would be VERY welcome. – If you wish to become of a fan of the bookshop you can become one by heading to the link below and clicking in the right places. http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Helsinki-Finland/Arkadia-International-Bookshop-Ian-Bourgeot/114962855198875?ref=mf Pessoa – a poet of many selves by Helena Palha I am going to talk to you about the work of Fernando Pessoa – the most important figure of modern Portuguese literature. It is said that his work reflects much of what is nowadays the idea of portugality. Pessoa gives the reader a window to the understanding of the collective mentality of the Portuguese. A Finnish reader might be surprised to see how many similarities can be found between the Portuguese and the Finns. To talk about Pessoa is not to talk about just one poet, but rather about many. His degree of schizophrenia is still the cause of much debate. To this day, not even the connaisseurs know exactly what led Pessoa to develop such a full range of heteronyms, providing each of them with strikingly different personalities and literary styles. All in all, regardless of why or how, the truth is that Fernando Pessoa managed to embody all of the relevant poetry styles of the early 20th century. Helena Palha My name is Helena Palha, and I left Lisbon for Helsinki in August 2009. What made me move to Finland was a series of fortunate coincidences. So far, the experience has been extremely positive. Apart from the serious things that I get to learn just by living here, there have also been other nice surprises. For example, for the first time ever I too can clearly understand what the different names for “snow” mean, how nasty it can be to fall on ice, how much fun it is to go sledding or how it can be bright and sunny outside until late at night – all concepts that were foreign to me up until just recently. However, being a language-freak by birth, I do have one frustration – the fact that I still haven´t been able to grasp the basics of Finnish language. Any help with this would be absolutely welcome. I am a trained translator and conference interpreter. I have worked for a large media group in Portugal, mainly in the area of audio-visual translation, and I have been a volunteer interpreter for Portuguese and Spanish NGO´s on different occasions. Last year I was lucky enough to spend some time at the European Institutions in Brussels as an apprentice. At the moment I work mostly as a Portuguese Language and Culture lecturer at the University of Helsinki. Being able to tell others about the country and the culture I come from is a very gratifying experience.