A. Frias, Fernando Pessoa and the Fifth Empire of Love. Quest for Desire and Alter-Sexuality - Philosophy, Anthropology and Ideas

French Literature Reviews - 2026

A. Frias, Fernando Pessoa and the Fifth Empire of Love. Quest for Desire and Alter-Sexuality
Philosophy, Anthropology and Ideas

Anibal Frias, Fernando Pessoa and the Fifth Empire of Love. Quest for Desire and Alter-Sexuality

Preface by Robert Bréchon

Pétra, "Comparative Literature / History and Criticism" collection, 2013.

EAN 9782847430516.

408 p.

30EUR

Publisher's presentation:

As a poet of suspicion, Fernando Pessoa plays with identities, bodies, and sexualities in order to "be everything in every way." His literary odyssey is all too often reduced to a cerebral theater, a disembodied work, a repressed desire. In verse or prose, with the Book of Disquiet, his adventure transports us to the heart of desire, in its ebbs and flows, from the cracks in his ego and the multiplicity of his being. The poet's traveling sensations release the potential of a full creation, leading to a reinvention of the self.
Pessoa sketched a "cycle of love" which he poetically organizes into five "empires", from the Greece of Antinous to pan-erotic modernity, and where the variable and evolving figure of Eros unfolds. The final stage, named the "Fifth Empire", is the reign of Anteros. This deified character embodies, in a dreamed future, a neo-pagan Beyond-Love –
a love that is both other and projected beyond sexuality and gender divisions. This work inaugurates an in-depth reading of this cycle, highlights its poetic richness and intellectual scope in relation to other major writings, and establishes that Anteros is the personified name of a singular and universal Fifth Empire of Love to be built.
Anibal Frias innovates by bringing Pessoa into dialogue with Proust, Merleau-Ponty, Rimbaud, Foucault, Freud, and Nietzsche. His original study makes a decisive and critical contribution to the brand-new paradigm of Pessoa studies, based on embodiment, gender, and sexuality. It also aims to be a clear and lively journey through the known, and especially lesser-known, work of a writer who wished to be "a whole literature."

A researcher in anthropology and literature, Anibal Frias holds a doctorate in ethnology and degrees in philosophy, sociology, and Arabic. He is affiliated with several European research centers: LAS (Collège de France), IEMO (New University of Lisbon), CEIS20 (University of Coimbra), and IHU (University of Salamanca).

EXTRACT FROM THE PREFACE BY ROBERT BRÉCHON

Since Pessoa's death three-quarters of a century ago, hundreds of books have been published on his work, but none, to my knowledge, deals exclusively or systematically with the role played by sexual desire. I myself, having written extensively about him, never dared to venture there, so many uncertainties, ambiguities, and contradictions were in my mind. Anibal Frias's work is therefore a first. I love all first times, in culture as in life. It feels like starting from scratch, reconsidering everything with fresh eyes. Pessoa himself loved first times.
[...] He was the first to have the simple and luminous idea of comparing the two great myths forged by Pessoa, mapping them onto each other: the myth of the Fifth Empire, which is at the heart of Message, and that of the "cycle of love" through the ages, which inspires "Antinous" and "Epithalamium".

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Preface by Robert Bréchon

Preamble

Introduction: Pessoa, Poet of Suspicion
› The Sexual Question and Sexuality in Question
› The Quest for Desire and Desire as Quest

PART I
Sexuality and the Art of Feigning: Questions of Method
1. Heteronymy and the Art of Feigning
› Sincerity as Fiction and Falsehood as Truth
› Letters to the Fiancée: Role-Playing
› Heteronymism: I Vary, Therefore I Am
2. The "Other Love": From Sexed Embodiment to Its Transcendence
3. Pessoa and Sex: A Confession?
4. Freeing Ourselves from Ourselves: Decentering Our Gaze
› The Invention of Sexuality and Its Margins
› Pessoa Beyond Norms
5. Sexualities, Creation, and Intolerance
› Modernity, Anti-Feminism, and Sexualities
› Genealogy and Archaeology of Alter-Sexualities
› The Art of Telling
› Prejudices

PART II
Antinous: On the Other Side of the Sexual Mirror
1. "Antinous": A Homosexual and Obscene Poem?
› A Link in the "Cycle of Love"
› Obscenity as Literary Artifice
› Masks and Confessions Within Language
2. Memoirs of Hadrian
› Landscape of Death and Rain
› "In Memoriam"
› Requiem of Words and Marble
› The Chorus of the Tragedy

PART III
From "Antinous" to "Anteros": The Fifth Empire of Love

The "Cycle of Love". The Path of the Serpent: Cycle, Circle, Wheel

1. Greece, "Antinous"
› "The Greek Concept of the Sexual World"
› Infinite Maneuvers: Caresses, Desires, Pleasures
2. Rome, "Epithalamium"
› The Roman Scenario
› Man-(Man)-Woman: Cleavages, Narcissism, and Asymmetries
› Phallocentrism, Roman Decadence, and Obscenities
› "The Gods Have Departed"
3. Christendom, "Prayer to a Woman's Body"
4. Modern Empire, Pan-Eros
› A "Literature of Masturbators"
› Beyond Freud
› Álvaro de Campos, Modern and Anti-Modern
› From Culture to Cultural Nature
› The Impossible "Homecoming"
› Álvaro de Campos, Master and Slave of His Pleasures
5. Fifth Empire, "Anteros"
Ante-Eros
The Fifth Empire of Love: The Return of a God
The Return of a God... as a Poet

Opening

Bibliography

Anibal Frias situates Fernando Pessoa within modern intellectual traditions by engaging the Portuguese master with key thinkers such as Michel Foucault, Sigmund Freud, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Marcel Proust. By examining the poet's multi-layered approach to identity through heteronymy, the study intersects with literary theory, philosophical anthropology, and gender studies. It sheds light on how aesthetic creation and the art of feigning allow writers to transcend conventional norms, positioning Pessoa as a vital figure in the evolution of modern European literature and poetic experimentation.

This monograph offers a comprehensive reading for scholars, researchers, and enthusiasts of modern poetry seeking to move beyond traditional, disembodied interpretations of Pessoa's corpus. It directly addresses questions surrounding the intersections of sexuality, philosophy, and myth, particularly through the analysis of works like The Book of Disquiet and Message. Readers interested in comparative literature, the history of sexuality, and the theoretical frameworks of alter-sexuality will find this volume an innovative resource for rethinking the boundaries of poetic identity.