O homem de Preto

The decisive moment in the life of the narrator of the unfinished short story O Peregrino, writtenin 1917, happens when he meets a strange man in black. This brief interaction instantlyreactivates an old melancholy and inspires the decision of departing from his parent’s homeand to go on a pilgrimage. Regarding what Freud says in The Uncanny (1919), this is so becausesuch an interaction is experienced as the revisitation of his long-gone psychic unity. In thisarticle, I not only argue that this pilgrim’s story is an allegorical account of Pessoa’s own privatecrisis, which originates immediately after he creates his heteronyms in the summer of 1914, butI also suggest that Caeiro’s appearance (and his companions’ appearance) is repeatedlyinterpreted by Pessoa as a revisitation of that sort.