Sentire è creare': Fernando Pessoa, il Sensazionismo e i silenzi bianchi dell'aforisma

Aphorisms represent a privileged literary form in Fernando Pessoa's work. They provide us with a focal point between literary criticism and a open definition of the poetic form. In this contribution, the opening aphorism (“feeling is creating”) of a series dedicated to the definition of the avant garde aestehetic of the “Sensationism” is studied and discussed in Pessoa's theoretical context. Already defined as a formula, the intentionally partial and anti-systematic excerpts of the reflection can be assumed as effective aphorisms. They were set out in a very relevant epoch of the cultural Portuguese scene, in the corrispondence with the the ephemeral issue of the Portuguese, Modernist journal Orpheu. The circumstance leads to reflect both on the form of the aphorism itself and on the use of this short and strong sentence -characterized by the element of the “force”- in order to define the sensation as the basis of a new modern aesthetic. Expressing it actually through the exceptional form of the aphorism as “the smallest possible integer”.