Heteronym (literature) - Ricardo Reis

Ricardo Reis

This heteronym was created by Pessoa as a Portuguese doctor born in Oporto, in September 19, 1887. Reis supposedly studied at a boarding school run by jesuits in which he received a classical education. He was an amateur latinist and poet; politically a monarchist, he exiled in Brazil after the defeat of a monarchical rebellion against the Portuguese Republic in 1919. Ricardo Reis reveals his Epicureanism and Stoicism in the «Odes by Ricardo Reis», published by Pessoa in 1924, in his literary journal Athena.

Since Pessoa didn't determine the death of Reis, one can assume that he survived his author who died in 1935. In The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis (1984), Portuguese nobel prize José Saramago rebuilds, in his own personal outlook, the literary world of this heteronym after 1935, creating a dialog between Ricardo Reis and the ghost of his author.