Poem fractal

Portuguese Sea

by Fernando Pessoa

13 June 1888 to 30 November 1935 (~47)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“I don't write in Portuguese. I write myself.”

Expressing the intimate connection between language, authorship, and selfhood · Letter to Adolfo Casais Monteiro

More remarks (4)

Drawing the boundary…

Read the poem Another poem

A fractal is a shape that keeps its pattern when you look closer. Coastlines, trees, shells, and weather do this. A poem can be drawn the same way.

The poem’s constant is read from the build of its lines: their length, the size of the stanzas, and the share of vowels. Poems whose constants lie closer together are built more alike. The same poem always draws the same picture. Change the length of a line, the stanza, or the vowel share, and both the number and the picture move.

Primunia is the name for the source of that order: the pattern under the pattern, already there in a tree, a shell, and a verse.

Poems nearby in the constant

A smaller distance means the lines are built more alike.

  1. Manuel Machado · 1.1762 − 0.6126i · 0.194 away · Compare side by side
  2. Emily Dickinson · 1.2898 − 0.9028i · 0.202 away · Compare side by side
  3. Edna St. Vincent Millay · 1.2888 − 0.9582i · 0.256 away · Compare side by side
  4. Manuel Machado · 1.2680 − 0.9572i · 0.260 away · Compare side by side
  5. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. · 1.1309 − 0.5344i · 0.276 away · Compare side by side
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