A Rose for Aphrodite: The Story of the Goddess and Fernando Pessoa's Message

Abstract

 Starting from a dialogue proposal between poetry, history, and anthropology - proper of both compared literature and cultural history - I present in this article a critical reading of Fernando Pessoa's Message, having as an analytical object, the Rose, which is a convergent imaginary element of this work. In this sense, the Rose is compared to the image of Aphrodite composed by Greek poets of antiquity: Safho, Hesiod, and Homer. The objective of the analysis is to reveal similarities between Rose in Message and the goddess Aphodite, as well as understand the history of the goddess through time in the West.