Fernando Pessoa's artistic birth develops over two periods. The first moment: March 1914, the apparition, as decisive as opaque, of the four heteronymous poets, Alberto Caeiro, Ricardo Reis, Alvaro de Campos, and Fernando Pessoa himself. The second moment: the dramatic intellectual crisis of 1915-1916, during which the idea of the avant-garde and the meditation on the complexity and separation of metaphysics and art willingly battle and entangle themselves. This is a crisis of philosophy Pessoa experiences with anxiety, and which is the origin of the multiple births of the poet. From then on, the task of separating poetry from metaphysics begins. ----about the author Judith Balso has taught seminars on Fernando Pessoa, Wallace Stevens, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Osip Mandelstam, and Dante at the College International de Philosophie in Paris, France. She currently teaches poetry and philosophy at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland. Her latest book, Affirmation de la poesie is published by NOUS editions, France.

Here as Virilio states, "all one can do is guess." But Virilio's position is not one of pure guessery. His extrapolationist position against his delirium state, has the architecture of a 23rd century scientist: three parts - fractal geometry, two parts - theory of general relativity, one part - Philip K. Dick. One must step back and stare down the medusa of progress with a mirror. This is Virilio's call for a grey ecology.

Here as Virilio states, "all one can do is guess." But Virilio's position is not one of pure guessery. His extrapolationist position against his delirium state, has the architecture of a 23rd century scientist: three parts - fractal geometry, two parts - theory of general relativity, one part - Philip K. Dick. One must step back and stare down the medusa of progress with a mirror. This is Virilio's call for a grey ecology. PAUL VIRILIO is a renowned urbanist, political theorist and critic of the art of technology.Born in Paris in 1932, Virilio is best known for his 'war model' of the growth of the modern city and the evolution of human society. He is also the inventor of the term 'dromology' or the logic of speed. Identified with the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty, the futurism of Marinetti and technoscientific writings of Einstein, Virilio's intellectual outlook can usefully be compared to contemporary architects, philosophers and cultural critics such as Bernard Tschumi, Gilles Deleuze and Jean Baudrillard. Virilio is the author, among other books of Speed and Politics, The Information Bomb, Open Sky, and most recently, The Original Accident.

----Henri Bergson is the author of numerous works including Matter and Memory, Creative Evolution and Time and Free Will. His work has been influential for many thinkers such as Walter Benjamin, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Gilles Deleuze. ----Drew Burk is a graduate and technical director at the European Graduate School. He is the translator of such philosophers as Jean Baudrillard, Jacques Derrida and Paul Virilio. ----What does laughter mean? What is the fundamental element of the laughable? What common ground can be found between the grimace of a clown, a play on words, a similar situation in a burlesque and a scene of high comedy? What method of distillation will invariably yield us the same essence from which so many different products borrow either their obtrusive odor or their delicate perfume? The greatest of thinkers, from Aristotle on down, have tackled this tiny problem, which has a knack of baffling every effort, of slipping away, escaping only to pop up again, as a lively challenge to philosophical speculation.