Editor’s Long-Ass Note Attempting to Justify This Review as Relevant or Important Work: As a people, we almost lost an invaluable review of Fernando Pessoa’s The Book of Disquiet with the unheralded demise of reviewer ‘Chris’. His decision to end his life by firing himself from a canon through a fifty-foot long maze of razor wire ending at a brick wall would have probably gone unnoticed, if he hadn’t also made sure the brick wall was also conveniently placed at the edge of a pond full of alligators starved to the brink of cannibalism. This cruel treatment of the gators in preparation for his final act was immediately denounced by PETA, and his shameless disregard for their welfare was universally lambasted by all local media outlets.Luckily, for the few who enjoy reviews of Pessoa’s work, these posthumous 15 minutes of fame resulted in considerable attention to the state-auction of his property in order to recover past due taxes. Included in the auction was an unopened, dusty trunk, purchased by a college student looking for a cheap conversation piece. Upon taking possession of the trunk, it was discovered that it contained hundreds of envelopes and notebooks filled with senseless gibberish, which the student hastily discarded to make room for his collection of Pixie’s LPs, smoking pieces, and Girls Gone Wild videos. On this same day, a bumbling English professor announced he had ‘misplaced’ his students’ midterm reports, and a well-intentioned janitor mistook the junk discarded from the trunk as the missing documents, and delivered it to the faculty, where the papers remain under scrutiny to this day. It appears that ‘Chris’ never actually finished anything which he began, thus, all that we have are fragments of work, which were half-assedly organized (at best), and the contents of the trunk are still being labeled and classified. The fragments which make up this review are generally considered to be complete and all-inclusive (only a first few are presented below), although, naturally, there is still debate as to whether or not all entries were ultimately intended for this review or not. An even larger, lingering debate is why anyone is even bothering…..1 The Book of Disquiet may very well be the single best book which I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading, which is baffling, as it certainly does not fit in with my usual tastes. There is no awesome plot involving robots-gone-amok, no swashbuckling piracy on the high seas, and no senseless and depraved acts of copulation which make my sweaty paws turn the pages with eager anticipation. As a matter of fact, I don’t even think there is a plot, which, someway, somehow, only makes Pessoa’s rambling more interesting. There may be a sensible rebuttal to this claim, but in reading this, I certainly did not see any clear beginning or end of the ‘story’ which never existed; there was no conclusion that the writing was working towards that I could possibly conceive, and this might be supported by the introductory quote pulled from the work itself: "In these random impressions, and with no desire to be other than random, I indifferently narrate my factless autobiography, my lifeless history. These are my Confessions, and if in them I say nothing, it’s because I have nothing to say”. This is one of many similar statements which Pessoa makes within, but was the most convenient for me to quickly access. 2 Adding to the general weirdness of a completely plotless work, Pessoa decided to take an additional step over the line of convention, by writing the book from the point of view belonging to one of his many ‘alternate selves’, or heteronyms. I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried. According to the interesting introduction by Richard Zenith, Pessoa had a multitude of these heteronyms, each with a distinct style and background, although I am certainly not qualified to say if this gimmick works or not across his various scribbling, as I’m unfamiliar with all of Pessoa’s other work. What I can say, is that the concept alone initially struck me as mind-numbingly weird. In the The Book of Disquiet, Pessoa adopts the voice of Bernardo Soares, the heteronym most like himself, not so much a different personality as a “mutilation of his own”. To be honest, even with the elaborate introduction, I don’t know what the difference between a heteronym and a character is, I pretty much take it for granted that whenever I read a story in the first person, the author is attempting to replicate the thoughts and feelings of their creation; perhaps this is simply a matter of degree to the informed reader? Thanks, Fernando, for introducing me to this troubling mindfuck, which will plague me, unanswered, until my dying day.6I can easily agree with anyone who might call reading this book tedious, and that could be easily confirmed if ‘tedious’ meant “the repeated reading of the word tedium”. This word probably appears several hundred times in the course of the book. As if the repetition of this particular word isn’t enough, the book as a whole might be best described as the repetition of a few dreary sentiments via Soares’ well-wrought musings concerning his soul-destroying disillusionment, self-imposed (or perceived) alienation, and tortured thoughts on the futility of his days. Pessoa seems to agree: “I reread some of the pages that together will form my book….they give off, like a familiar smell, an arid impression of monotony.”. Taking into consideration the admirable amount of introspection and analysis performed on his dreams, and his juxtaposition and measurement of those dreams against what he is able to classify as actual ‘life’, I couldn’t help but sympathize with Soares, who wants as little interaction with the real world so that he can participate and celebrate the existence he is perfecting in the imaginary.24Today was pretty uneventful; I can’t say I accomplished a whole hell of a lot. Sure, I made a pretty wicked mix on iTunes (which, of course, wouldn’t burn to CD after laboring over this task for hours), and I might have moved a few things around in my room to give the impression it had been recently cleaned, but that’s about it. In order to make sure existing today was worthwhile, I’m going to spike up the hair on the back of my cats’ heads with some styling wax, they look all cute and punky with spiky little heads. This may help me feel like I have achieved something; the cats will probably feel differently, but hell, let’s keep in mind who has papers certifying they own the other.52It seems quite possible that I confuse profundity with mere commonplace grievances so long as they seem relevant to me. Every few pages I thought that Pessoa was making some great statement, be it through bouts of venomous savagery or fluid dreaminess, although I couldn’t ignore that for the most part, each of these declarations was simply a re-wording of his universal desire to cowardly distance himself from the cold and brutal realities of life and escape to the lofty comfort of his ideals. “All I asked of life is that it ask nothing of me” Soares often states in many different ways while alternately commenting on his mundane life versus the grandeur of his fantasies.69“All of a sudden, as if a surgical hand of destiny had operated on a long-standing blindness with immediate and sensational results, I lift my gaze from my anonymous life to the clear recognition of how I live. And I see that everything I’ve done, thought, or been is a species of delusion or madness. I’m amazed by what I managed not to see. I marvel at all that I was and that I now see I’m not.” Personally, I think that is awesome.86Soares’ criticisms of society are numerous, which isn’t surprising seeing how badly the guy wants to separate himself from its inanity. This is perhaps the only book in which I was 100% sold on a character’s skewed system of beliefs, as he not only builds a foundation for his feelings, but goes on to construct a multi-storey house with countless wings and els growing from it, spreading forth like an indiscriminating pestilence. “Nothing irks me more than the vocabulary of social responsibility…the terms ‘civic duty’, ‘solidarity’, ‘humanitarianism’ and others of the same ilk disgust me like rubbish dumped out of a window right on top of me. I’m offended by the implicit assumption that these expressions pertain to me, that I should find them worthwhile and even meaningful. I recently saw in a toy shop window some objects that reminded me exactly of what these expressions are: make-believe dishes filled with make-believe tidbits for the miniature table of a doll” And this juicy goodness is just the tip of the iceberg.98Iberian Lassitude. It doesn’t surprise me that Pessoa never bothered to ‘finish’ this awesome work, the people of his peninsula aren’t really celebrated for their ability to follow through with anything. These are also the same folks that invented the siesta, as a way to help make the typical, grueling work day more manageable by adding a nice nap right in the middle (after a few slugs from a jug of wine, no less). 24601To sum it all up, this book is awesome in the strangest of ways, and this doesn’t detract from its majesty one damn bit. Sure, the image I’m left with of Soares is a decrepit, disgruntled, and lonely geezer with a lazy eye and a stack of losing lottery tickets in lieu of a life, but to be honest, this doesn’t really bother me at all, if anything, it set a new goal for me to aspire to.
Humans are social beings, to the extent that those who prefer solitude to the company of others are usually perceived as troubled individuals, outside of the norm; it took me a long time to feel comfortable with being alone, with dampening the guilt that flared up in me every time I begged off going out with a group of friends. It is always a welcome reinforcement when I come across a book penned by a fellow recluse—and The Book of Disquiet could be a solitary soul's bible, so powerfully does it speak in the language of single-place table settings, corner-chair cobwebs and bachelor apartments. It has achieved pride of place on my bedside stack, where I can ladle myself servings of Pessoa's wisdom at leisure.This book's voluntarily alone author is Fernando Pessoa, a Portuguese poet, writer, and polylinguist who invented fully-fleshed out heteronyms—distinct and separate personalties of differing nationality and gender—in order to pursue his writing in various idiosyncratic shades and styles. The Book of Disquiet is a collection of the aphoristic prose-poetry musings of one such heteronym, that of Bernardo Soares, assembled from notes, entries, and jottings made over a span of some thirty years and left unpublished at the time of Pessoa's death in 1935. Richard Zenith, the editor and translator of this stunning, haunting, and achingly beautiful paean to the imaginary potentiality of man, has compiled the definitive edition of this tome in a truly outstanding translation that captures the expressive eloquence of Pessoa and his magical, metaphorically rich manner of constructing word images to portray his unique way of life.There is no finer encomium to the shattering melancholy and bracing affirmation of loneliness and solitude than the five hundred plus entries that make up The Book of Disquiet; and few better descriptions of existential nausea, of the desperate efforts to perceive a reason to continue with the painful disappointments, shadow terrors, and numbing meaninglessness of human existence. As Pessoa—writing as Soares—quietly and unassumingly goes about his daily rituals of walking, working as a book-keeper and inhabiting the well-trod spaces of his rented room in the real world, he is living a rich existence within the wildly creative contours of his mind: as a knight errant, a rich merchant, a pirate, a voyager, a lover of countless women, a guide to the cosmos, an inhaler of sunrises and embracer of sunsets, the guiding hand of every drop of Lisbon's morning showers, the leaves shaken by a sudden burst of wind. Having been sentenced to a term of life by an errant universe, Pessoa decided to renounce action and ambitions in what we hold to be real life to pursue a variegated and abundant existence within the realm of dreams. As our life is measured through the archived clippings of one's memory, whether one actually performed the deeds recalled matters less than the detail and substance they contain.Such, at least, is the defense offered by Pessoa; yet often his solipsistic persuasions are contradictory, defensive; and when the mask slips we can see the depth of pain and loneliness underneath the placid surface of his imaginary life. There is much repetition and mulling over of themes from different angles, but the writing is so expressive and raw and honest that, to myself at least, it never becomes tedious—even as the tedium of existence, the stretching of the soul on the rack of time, is one of the principal ideas that populate Pessoa's thoughts and entries. It is as if tedium was experienced as a box of chocolates, each colour and coating, each form and flavour, each taste and texture, mulled over, pondered, drawn out and examined, and then set to paper as a running record to remind of an eccentric daily pleasure.This is a book to be mused upon and savored, one that can be imbibed in different ways: it can be read straight through—the way I approached it, drawn into a white heat of blistered enthrallment—or sparingly sampled over weeks, months, even years. The order the aphorisms are assembled in is purely a construction of Zenith; he stresses such in his introduction and encourages each reader to create their own sequence for the collected entries. However the reader decides to approach The Book of Disquiet, they will be rewarded with the inventive honesty of a hale and wounded man from a work that is truly sui generis. *******************************************************I've recently picked up the Serpent's Tail Extraordinary Classic edition, which features a translation by Margaret Jull Costa, who performed similar duties for José Saramago's last half-dozen books. Distinct from Zenith, obviously, but just as potent and powerful—and the differently parsed words and sentences only serve to present Pessoa's incomparable poetry of loneliness in a new light, equally fulgent and searing, just focussed from an alternate angle. A richly marbled interiority of immanent pain and transcendent beauty. *******************************************************Revisiting the disquietude of early modern Lisbon, I'm reminded anew how this collection of Pessoa's dispassionate passion is one whose title is so perfectly matched to the content within that one can sit there (all by oneself, of course) cushioned within the utter silence of an unvoiced existence, serving as an unexciting urban renewal zone for migratory dust motes and unimpressive highland anchored lethality for predatory silken arachnids, with a nigh sardonic set to the tight-lipped, hesitantly-committed smile of satisfaction that imprints itself upon one's otherwise stoney visage, and marvel at how much one man's textually decanted imaginative impressions and gossamer ruminations running the interior gauntlet of unlived memories, unacted performances, unconsummated affairs, unshed tears, unwatched observations, unwinged flights, ungrounded fears, unfelt kisses, untouched caresses, uninvolved emotions, unexercised exertions, untasted repasts, unliked friendships, unmet acquaintances, untold stories, unpoured libations, undone happenings, unannounced recollections, unlit umbrages, unformed expressions, untraveled journeys, unnoticeable leavenings, unhoused guilts, and unarticulated speechifications resonate, to the fullest extent, with the plucked strings ever aquiver within the utterly empty, lonely, and withdrawn chambers of the mind- and/or house-bound soul.
Do You like book The Book Of Disquiet (2002)?
“My soul is a hidden orchestra; I know not what instruments, what fiddlestrings and harps, drums and tamboura I sound and clash inside myself. All I hear is the symphony.”An Orchestra of over 70 musicians, playing their own instruments, each producing an individual sound, a discrete voice, adding up from each corner, playing the distinctive notes of solitude, dream, rain and tedium, rising at one place while falling at another and producing a symphony so striking in its completion that it cannot be complete, like a painting frozen in time, striving for an expression it cannot possibly attain, and not because the painter isn’t skillful enough but because he chooses not to part from one, deliberately made imperceptible in the strokes, which is inherently his own. So while he did create 81 heteronyms* , each distinctly dissimilar in their style, we do not yet know who Pessoa actually was or what he believed in. Fernando Pessoa, strictly speaking, doesn’t exist.*Pessoa called this work as his “factless biography” I also came across the words “Psychography” and “geography of self awareness” for the book. In my opinion, it has distinct tones of the absurd, and can be looked upon as an absurdist writing albeit on an altogether different level, though the hints of stoicism and cynicism are apparently evident too. You will not notice the “babble/despair” - characteristic of Beckett’s writing or “Rational absurd” (view spoiler)[(My opinion, but I am not sure if there is such a term) (hide spoiler)]
—Rakhi Dalal
A man who sees and cannot not see. Having had a normal childhood and adolescence the banality of life appeared, even in his dreams. He sees no way out, tt"Living seems to me a metaphysical mistake on the part of matter, an oversight on the part of inaction." However, he needs daily life-it is like a "mother" to nurture him after he has flown so high in the transcendent light of soaring poetry. Clearly he recognized that being here, in the no moment of existence, his future is his past already flown by and distorted from what it was - memory and its convoluted affirmations. From the natural order of earth he sees others protecting themselves from this fright by their participation in the banality of life's process: hopes, useless ambitions, false consolations. Life is simply using some measure of these false foils as a struggle to avoid seeing the fiery template of uselessness which surrounds them. The danger is at some point the weight of this protection will come crashing down on the frail soul.Therefore keeping his self at safe distance, observing self observe, Pessoa may never be impinged upon,tt"This denaturing of instincts is utterly instinctive in me." He feels bad for not being able to feel. However there are times that he does not feel because it would not be truthful and sincere but doing the false that society expects of him! Even the writing of the book, its poetic prose and style is at times monotonous as a means of distancing, doubting, seeking confirmation within himself. A star was lost since this section might have had a sharper impact if cut shorter. These entries were found after his death and published. It is left up to us to consider whether Pessoa wanted this section to stand or be clipped. None of this subtracts from the grace of his transcendent poetic prose.The book begins and continues, as Pessoa himself says, it is him minus reason and affect. Bernardo Soares, one of his seventy two heteronyms, lays out page after page of monotonous whiny voiced argument justifying his existence of isolation both from the world and himself. It disquiets forms of humanism, fulfillment, the sacristy of emotional content to life, relationships, learning, progress. He continues to prove a self obsessed narcissism. Until, the reluctance of a dawning where at the core, in its pure form and centering life's reach, to be the emancipation and freedom from life, self, any and all strictures. This is the goal-less goal.His use of heteronyms, where each is the signed author of the piece and writes in their own singular style is an amazing accomplishment. It is not an act of sorcery or a playful trickery. I believe it is his only means of expressing in writing his passionate philosophical belief without committing the very faults his philosophy rails against. It is someone else doing the writing. The name Pessoa is nowhere to be found. The strangulation of circularity has been shifted.Writing this in all its present moments including this one now passing I am aware of my strictures; my need to be liked, thought intelligent, be accepted, my philosophy, experiential history and its order of evolution, my prejudices and awe of this book in part conceived from its content and in part from its reputation precluding it and who sponsored such impressions. I will need to rewrite this review many times making additions, erasures, further clarifications. This need be considered only the first episode.In the end Pessoa wrote a love poem to philosophic inquiry. It disbarred the adherence to any belief or system of beliefs, providing an emancipation, liberty. Hated the book for its personal disruption. Loved the book for its personal disruption.
—Stephen P
بيسوا هو ذلك الذي جاء ليعبر عني أخيرابرغم مرور سنوات عديدة على قراءة الكتابإلا أنني وحتى الآن لا أستطيع استجماع شتات نفسي لأكتب عنهصعب أن تكتب عن شيء يحفر فيك عميقا بهذه الطريقةصعب أن تتخطى مرحلة الانبهار وتحاول أن تشكل بالحروف انطباعا أو تعليقا أو وصفا للحالة التي تتركني عليها كلماتهمنذ فترة بدأت في قراءة النسخة الإنجليزيةوللحق الترجمة هذه أفضل بسنوات ضوئية من الترجمة العربيةصرت أرتشف الكتاب سطرا بسطرأقرأ صفحة أو اثنين اسبوعيالا أريده أن ينتهيلذاوحتى إن أردت مراجعة هذه النسخة فماذا يا ترى أكتب عنها وأنا لم أعد قراءتها حتى الآنربما علي إعادة قراءة هذه النسخة مجدداثم استكمال النسخة الانجليزيةو لكن ساعتها سيلجم لساني مجدداوسأحاول قدح قريحتي لأكتب شيئا عما أحس بهإلا انني سأكون قد نسيت ما أود كتابته عن النسخة العربيةوأنا مستغرقة في قراءة الإنجليزيةفأقرأ العربية ثانيةمممممممخطة تضمن لي ألا أترك هذا الكتاب ما حييتتعجبني هذه الخطة =)طيبوحتى أجد كلمات مناسبةسأترك ما يروقني من اقتباسات هناhttps://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
—Huda Yahya
