Pessoa's voluptuous skepticism

Fernando Pessoa devoured English literature in his early education in South Africa, and his early fictitious author Alexander Search wrote around 115 poems in imitation of poets from Wyatt to Byron, before and after Pessoa's return to Lisbon in 1905. Search's reading of English poetry across time, his imitation of variable styles in English, and his search for an aesthetic ideal characterize a youthful period of voluptuous reading and skeptical despair that may be compared to FitzGerald's pursuit of classical translation through poetic imagination