The Book of Disquiet (Penguin Classics)

"B of D" is a work of pure genius written in gloriously lyrical, existential prose: it wants to be poetry and, at times, it is.Pessoa is a profoundly introspective and honest writer who defined existential themes based upon his frank study of his own life and dreams: it's possible that Pessoa is the most honest writer who ever lived. He is highly self-critical, self-effacing and suffers from the "disquiet" of his simple life as a bookkeeper in Lisbon. He wrote "B of D" in that richly germinal literary era in Europe of Proust and Joyce.He composed 481 fragments about the absurdity of life by which he means the inability of man to understand his own existence."Each of us is a speck of dust that the wind lifts up and then drops."Pessoa's disquieting themes eventually grew into the philosophical worldview claimed by the existentialists but he was an existentialist before many of them. Pessoa writes with the passion of Nietzsche. He is Camus before Camus. He has Kafka's rich sense of the absurd. He experiences daily Sartre's nausea.I devoured every word of "B of D" by Pessoa who had the misfortune to remain largely undiscovered and unread until long after his death. His work is existential in the genre of Camus or Sartre ("I think, therefore, I am a mustache.") He is dark, at times, but his introspection is oceanic in its breadth, depth and turbulent existential Angst.His writing has been described as "semi-fiction" and "anti-literature" by his translator. Great writers inevitably challenge the logic of traditional syntax as well as the genres in which they write to transform their genres by the genius of their innovative literary styles which become legacies in themselves.Pessoa writes in fragments which are neither fiction nor poetry but are autobiographical and as such show his disconnect both with life and his own art -- there is no real flow between one fragment and the next like life itself in his existential worldview. He considered his life "an intermission with band music."He also wrote in heteronyms under several noms de plume as if to say he couldn't really even attest to his own single identity as a writer. His fragments are deep, consuming, intellectual dives into his own everyday life. Normally, autobiography is a sign of an immature writer, which Pessoa clearly is not. He writes about his dull job as an accountant among Lisbon's streets and his sightings while smoking at outdoor cafes as well as about thunderstorms, solitude, dreams, the absurdity and futility of life, art, sex, JJ Rousseau and his work.My only criticism of Pessoa comes from his odd observations and poor advice about sex. His translator, Richard Zenith, believes it was possible that Pessoa died a virgin. I make it a practice never ever to take advice on sex from priests, nuns and lifelong virgins.Richard Zenith's translation is truly luminous and he brings rich nuance into the discourse of every line. Like my copy of "The Recognitions" by William Gaddis, I have underlined fragments on nearly every page because it is so deeply relevant, honest and compelling in its pure intellectual grandeur.Here are a few favorite passages which stand out for me from "B of D":"Irony is the first sign that our consciousness has become conscious and it passes through two stages: the one represented by Socrates, when he says, "All I know is that I know nothing' and the other represented by Sanches, when he says, 'I don't even know if I know nothing.'""No one understands anyone else... However much one soul strives to now another, he can know only what is told him by a word -- a shapeless shadow on the ground of his understanding... I love expressions because I know nothing of what they express.""I don't know the meaning of this journey I was forced to make, between one and another night, in the company of the whole universe... We achieve nothing. Life hurls us like a stone, and we sail through the air saying, 'Look at me move.'""The only attitude worthy of a superior man is to persist in an activity he recognizes is useless, to observe a discipline he knows is sterile, and to apply certain norms of philosophical and metaphysical thought that he considers utterly inconsequential.""All life is a dream. No one knows what he's doing, no one knows what he wants, no one knows what he knows. We sleep our lives, eternal children of Destiny. That's why, whenever this sensation rules my thoughts, I feel an enormous tenderness that encompasses the whole of childish humanity, the whole of sleeping society, everyone, everything. It's an immediate humanitarianism, without aims or conclusions, that overwhelms me right now. I feel a tenderness as if I were seeing with the eyes of a god. I see everyone as if moved by the compassion of the world's only conscious being. Poor hapless men, poor hapless humanity! What are they all doing here?"He worked uselessly every business day for a brute capitalist and recognized by night that his writing was utterly hopelessly, inscrutably and irretrievably futile. The miracle, and the sense of this should not be lost upon you, is that every day he still writes anyway like Van Gogh painting despite making only one sale in his lifetime.I recognized Pessoa instantly from the first few fragments of his life in "B of D": I am Pessoa. And he is also you."Book of Disquiet" is life changing. I can't remember ever having been so disappointed to see a book come to an end: it's that good. I implore you to read this immortal literary work of genius by Pessoa. It may be absurd, and even futile, to do so but sometimes the best answer to both is simply to be just as absurd.

Pessoa adopts one of his fabled personae—an assistant bookkeeper in a colorless office in Lisbon, in this case--as a launch pad for observations about the neighborhood and the city, and for apercus about art, life, and everything else. Often contrarian and eccentric, they are almost always provocative. So I made my way very slowly through this dense diary/journal, chewing over passages and following mental tangents inspired by Pessoa. The best illustration might be some of the shorter passages themselves. These were culled from a mere 10 pages toward the end, though I flagged hundreds along the way. This was a unique reading experience, one of the monuments of my literary life.I killed my will by analyzing it. If only I could return to my childhood before analysis, even if it would have to be before I had a will!I’d like to be in the country to be able to like being in the city. I like being in the city in any case, but I’d like it twice over if I were in the country.It often happens that I don’t know myself, which is typical of those who know themselves.Having seen how lucidly and logically certain madmen justify their lunatic ideas to themselves and to others, I can never again be sure of the lucidness of my lucidity.I have never been able to lose myself in a book; as I’m reading, the commentary of my intellect or imagination has always hindered the narrative flow.Pride all by itself, unaccompanied by vanity, manifests itself in timid behavior.There’s no happiness without knowledge. But the knowledge of happiness brings unhappiness, because to know that you’re happy is to realize that you’re experiencing a happy moment and will soon have to leave it behind.

The melancholic Job said in the Book of Job: "My soul is weary of my life."The melancholic Fernando Pessoa said in his Book of Disquiet: "The whole of the human tragedy is summed up in this tiny example of how the people we think about are never the people we think they are." ...... "Each of us is two, and when two people meet, come into contact or join together, it's rare that the four of them can agree. If the man who dreams in the man who acts is so frequently at odds with him, how can he help but beat odds with the man who acts and the man who dreams in the Other?" ...... So "every coming together is a conflict." ...... LOVE is for Fernando Pessoa: SURRENDER! " The greater the surrender, the greater the love. But total surrender also surrenders its consciousness of the other. ...... The greatest Love is therefore Death ...... or forgetting, ...... or renunciation - all forms of love ...... that make love an absurdity." ...... Pessoa often is talking metaphysics. But isn't he right when he writes: ...... " [...] all of life is a metaphysics in the darkness, with a vague murmur of the gods and only one way to follow, which is our ignorance of the right way." ...... Fernando Pessoa's clarity in his "Book of Disquiet" helped me to respect 'my' dreams as "confessions" of the diaphanous spirit beyond semiosis.