Cultural Appropriation

IT’S very exciting to see the publication of Richard Zenith's enormous biography of Fernando Pessoa, particularly when the author is responsible for having translated many of the poet's own works into English. However, the response from the media and publishing industry borders on pure arrogance. According to William Boyd, the work is "completely superb and magisterial. Finally, this extraordinary poet gets the great biography he deserves. Unsurpassable". Meanwhile, the Sunday Times describes it as "a revelation. Such a revolutionary literary discovery seems unlikely to be on offer again. It's that good." Sadly, like many of Portugal's literary treasures few people in the English-speaking world ever take the time to investigate whether people like Pessoa have already been discussed by their countrymen. There are even biographies of Pessoa by Brazilian-Portuguese writers such as Álvaro Cardoso Gomes and José Paulo Cavalcanti Filho, American-Portuguese writers such as George Monteiro, and Spanish authors like Ángel Crespo. All, it seems, are clearly irrelevant to an industry which is so consistently guilty of expressing such an extraordinarily biased attitude in favour of anglophone writers and their language. Nevertheless, despite Zenith failing to respond when I tried to pick his brains about another Portuguese writer three years ago, I still enjoyed his book.