The Book of Disquiet (Penguin Modern Classics)

There are certain writers few and rare who make the reader see the world in a different way. There are certain writers who reveal to us hidden worlds in ourselves and teach us truths on the edge of our consciousness which we by ourselves alone could never bring to revelation. Pessoa is such a writer, a singularity among the singularities. He explores as he himself says his own subjectivity and is a person largely of his own inner world but that inner world never stops encountering and transforming the world its observes outside. Pessoa is a lover of Lisbon of its sights and characters , of its dreams and mysteries. For him each person is a question and at times he surprises us with a vast tenderness which he extends to all. But it is difficult to predict exactly what he is doing. For he is a thinker of the first order who always surprises in the new meanings he finds in the most ordinary and commonplace of experiences. In fact he shows us what Kafka and Pascal did that we do not have to leave our own rooms and mysteries will unfold themselves before our eyes. Solitary, depressed, most alive in his writing, yet finding in a commonplace job worlds of meaning which he also equates to dust, Pessoa plays endless games of meaning and meaninglessness. His writing is fragmentary and meditative, paragraphs of prose- poetry which cannot be read as narrative but must be contemplated in brief and deliberate rethinkings. His originality is unquestionable and the power of his thought apparent in a few sentences, but his world despite his love of weather and clouds and the disquiet they bring him extremely narrow. It is as if he is playing a great game with himself in which he deliberately excludes most of what other human beings care most of , including the love of other people. Nonetheless the distinctiveness is so great that he is one of those who seems to extend our understanding of Literature and life. Reading him is thus in a sense an opportunity for a new kind of development a new way of thinking and seeing - a freedom not given before. Slowly, slowly go through this book and read and reread the clerk- poet and master meaning maker who is Pessoa.

Considering my great love of philosophy, it's no wonder a friend recommended this book to me. Pessoa takes all the passionate techniques of fiction and poetry writing and paints, in vivid detail, a journey into the deepest depth of alienation.

Written in journal style, here we have the distillation of every single emotion possible. While admitting to a very deliberate non-life, Pessoa, a self-proclaimed prisoner of tedium, somehow captures all of the subtle and extraordinarily painful nuances of living -- detached, self-deprecating, opinionated, at times pompous and pretentious, yet we can feel Pessoa as he deconstructs his own soul and in reflection deconstructs humanity.

Vivid imagery, poetic prose, and a dire and lamentable viewpoint, this book stirs every emotion, stirs every thought to the logical and illogical at the same time. His musings address a wide variety of topics from love, politics, language, and writing to the day-to-day drudgery of a job, world travel, insomnia, self-doubt, and dreamy landscapes. Truth. What this book expresses is truth -- fitful, sleepless, a waling nightmare -- this is the truth of life exposed to its most intimate layers of grief and suffering. The writing, lucid contemplation at one turn and stream of consciousness at the next, is poetic in its rhythm yet cruel and villainous in its bite.

This book is Existentialism at is finest.

A famously amazing piece of writing. Bewildering and enlightening by turns. I saw an adaptation of this as a theater piece and was so haunted by bits of the dialog that I had to buy the book. The written prose is even more graceful - moody, sad, funny, and haunting. No real story here, but disjointed reflections of one character who holds many characters in his imagination. Not so easy to read. Utterly impossible to forget.

Is Pessoa just him? What about Soares? And Reis? Alvaro do Campo was there too? A book that defies intelligence, a challenge to your mind, that will let you wonder if we are only one, or many dwell inside of our soul, and, magically, combine their forces and brain to produce such a wonderful piece of art.
Difficult, moving, concentrate, follow Pessoa-Soares voice, travel thru Lisbon, and relax, like Calvino, and do not anything disturb the relationship between the heteronyms and yourself, and wonder about the other voices that live with you

Poetry often speaks to us; we see something in it, something recognizable, and it's like we are shown a piece of ourselves that had been hidden for a lifetime before. Finding Pessoa's *Book of Disquiet* was like finding a piece of myself. In the pages of this poetic novel you will find honesty, often self-disparaging, and you will find beauty in the smallest observation. However, be forewarned, this is not a book that should be picked up with the idea of light reading in mind. In fact, you may find that you have to put it down, repeatedly, to get away from it, to think, but you will always, always come back to it. Keep it close to hand.

I find the Richard Zenith translation to be much more lush and lyrical than Margaret Jull Costa's:
The Book of Disquiet (Penguin Classics)

That being said, translation is an art of interpretation; this has some of the same syntactical constructions found in her Saramgo work (excellent, by the way) that don't work quite as well with Pessoa lexical peculiarities.

Its hard to describe this book. Amazing, beautiful, depressing, enlightening, pleasurable, magnificent, etc. One could go on. I found this book randomly on the shelf and could barely wait to read it all. I think its best read this slowly, as there is a lot to take it and ponder. Sometimes one needs to stop after reading just one phrase or idea; as its too much to take it at once. His choice of words are outstanding, as are his descriptions of Portugal and life in general. An outstanding book. I'm not sure why its not more popular and required reading in university. A must read.

The Book of Disquiet is a rhapsody of interior monologue. Living a seemingly mundane, monotonous or inglorious existence the main character muses endlessly. Unexpectedly and ironically, we slowly appreciate the hidden magnificence in the mind of a seemingly average person. Who are we beyond public perception? Some might say nothing. We all have that little voice with insecure thoughts and fixations on our human limitations. Naturally, we interact socially and push the voice to silence in deference to outside social perception. What I love about Pessoa is the intricate way he shows the working of the mind. We play and replay our stories full of the mundane and even in that repetitive cycle, a slight shift may occur over time and we might just slightly evolve. Or, we might not change, nothing could change. In contrast to the social pressure to value status and wealth, inside this character is the beauty in his language and the unalienable and invaluable ownership of self perception. We are ourselves beyond any outside social posturing. And then of course if you turn the self around there is also the possibility that all of the self reflection only can happen in relationship to the "Other" as opposition. I love this book and read its short musing again and again and my perception is never the same twice.

Pessoa/Bernardo Soares has an exquisitely sensitive mind and the power to communicate its despairs and ecstasies in the course of ordinary days. The sensation of looking out onto a freshly washed city street in the morning for instance. The torments of wondering if strangers have seen into his lonely soul. Enigmatic paragraphs that convey the tremors of an intense inner life.
This book will change you because of its utter disregard of the unspoken dogma that prose must concern itself with outwardness and activity in the social sphere. It concerns itself in intense and particular detail with the essence of one person's mind. It makes for exhilarating reading.

I had read that Pessoa was a brilliant Portuguese poet. The book was awful, frenetic, bizarre and hard to follow. I suggest you check one out from your local library to determine if you like his writing before you spend money as a screening measure.

The life - project of Pessoa in his making of multiple poetic alter egos, reminds of the life - project of Kierkegaard who explored various aspects of the religious life through use of alter egos often representing different faculties, approaches and moods of life. But if Kierkegaard's aim is to bring the reader to realization of what it might be to be in true connection with God, Pessoa's seems to be more to dissipate the notion of unique identity completely out of existence. Thus the fragments he shores around his own ruin and attributes to alter ego , heteronym Bernard Soares have within them a strong nihilistic self- and - world denying element.
Yet and here is the contradiction and the deeper truth they also reveal a kind of beauty both in perception and in the varied motion of the mental life itself. Lonely solitary lost fragmented Pessoa knows no human sacrifice like that of Kierkegaard with Regina, knows no dedication to his father's task of doing God's duty in the most ultimate way. He instead seems to reveal hidden realities as he conceals that beyond them all may well lie an eternal nothing. Kierkegaard is the many- selved servant of God, and Pessoa the many - selved servant of nothing more holy than human poetry.

What, in all sincerity, can be said of Fernando Pessoa's Book of Disquiet? The book presents us, as with any superb literary work, with a problem of translation. That is, of translating into value (good, bad, average) an expressive incoherence (the aphoristic style) that is manifested in the heteronyms that Pessoa was, in the dispersed identities, and in the fragmentary incursions into the absurd(real) that pervade the book and brings forth the 'disquiet-ness'. 'Conventional' writers need a 'plot'(could be a subject-person, an event etc) as an anchor in which to secure coherence and from which meaning is derived. Pessoa's genius (like Kafka, Beckett, Lawrence, Blanchot) lies in his deliberate abandonment of (monotonous)anchors and his intrepid embrace of diversity(in the most general sense imaginable) and immanence(one feels 'floating' within life). This author will, I am certain, be recognised as one of the greatest European literary genius.

Fernando Pessoa should be mandatory reading for World Literature classes.
Thru his writings he courageously, poetically and beautifully expresses what most of us feel uncomfortable with, let alone ponder or rip apart - the deep recesses of our minds and the not so pleasant frailties of the human soul. Carving from within and expressing his deepest feelings with outstanding poetic beauty, Pessoa loved life enough to leave us this (and other) outstanding literary legacies. Thru them, forever, he remains eternal, stunning us with the uniqueness of his soul.

Fernando...thank you for your brilliant mind, heart and for passionately living, writing and loving the city you and I shared from birth, the "muse" that forever inspired us both = beautiful Lisbon!

Fernando Pessoa was an exquisite hard to find gem, and totally Portuguese,to this day he still shyies away from the spotlight, yet deserving the notoriety of a MAJOR writer. This is mandatory reading for the masses....

One of my favorite books ever ever ever. Have read it over and over and over - like sea air washing over with a silence of taint & beauty, hinge-ing away from madness, bereft of meaning and yet super ordinary, sad and enlightening, gorgeous, melancholy, stunning, opaque. A strange haunting simplicity, honesty so ferocious, resilient, stubborn, provocative, disinterested, adamant, delicate, sustaining.

Doing a review on Fernando Pessoa is extremely difficult, or better it is not absolute possible caught up in words his 72 fictive identities, they posses distinct temperaments, philosophies, appearances, different voices.
They are not any kinds of surrogates they are defined "Heteronysm" one of them is Bernardo Soares (Semi- Heteronysm) defined by himself "A simple mutilation of my personality" and the main character of "The Book of Disquiet"

The particularity is those of not having a design, in this context he is similar to "Alberto Caiero" he sees things with the eyes only.

The difference between Alberto and Bernardo is that, the second one is more reflexive and conscious that the particularity of his mentality led him to analyse the situation i.e. a great threat because he is conscious that in order to understand he will destroy himself.

An explanation is that our personality is complex, equal and in the same time unequal, if we reasoning unilaterally (as usually we do) we will build a wall made of rubber between Me and the others, in other words will be confined forever, in order to avoid this situation it is wise to live in a context of disquiet, all this to stigmatise that our self is not singular but it is multiple.

"Each one of us is an assembly of subsidiary psyches, a badly made synthesis of cellular souls"

The main doubt of Soares is thinking that our world is like a theatre made of actors improvised of above all there is an hidden director which affects our behaviours, if so I am currently thinking about the following sentence i.e.

"I reasoned that God, while improbable, might exist, in which case he should be worshipped: whereas Humanity, being a mere biological idea and signifying nothing more than the animal species we belong to, was no more deserving of worship than any other animal species...and so not knowing how to believe in God and unable to believe in an aggregate of animals I along with other people on the fringe kept a distance from things, a distance commonly called Decadence"

After having reading this period my idea is that to affirm that I am a credent or an atheist is wrong because our minds are not enough intelligent to affirm the existence of not because our paradise is lost, in the sense that does not more exist in our minds. (Milton)

In conclusion the best thing to do looking outside the window without asking to ourselves where they are going, what they are doing, and why they are here in this particular moment, if so we will destroy ourselves, this is not mean to turn to a simplistic and aseptic word but we should ask to ourselves our metaphysical questions BUT without cross the border of disquiet.

Next Reading: Paradise Lost (Milton)

Cheers

Italo

Pessoa was a true acrobat of the imagination. The Book of Disquiet is a collection of epiphanic journal or diary prose kept by Pessoa and found decades after his death. The prose is truly some of the most gorgeous musings about everyday life and existence that any reader could ever find. The poet's world is laid out exquisitly and paradoxically for the entire benefit of those who read.I can't say I've ever found such beauty in the pages of a book before. If you like literature albeit simple or complex this book is something that you will immediately cherish for a very long time.

I am making the journey through The Book of Disquiet with much care and fear, and I think all that you can expect from literature is delivered here with unflinching honesty and heart-breaking tenderness.

Penetrating insight into social affairs, acute awareness of the chaotic absurdity behind the facade of human orderliness, sophist interrogations about universal truths, sadistic playing with one's own feelings, descriptive analysis of the tragic futility of all beings, unfathomable sadness in all human souls. All that was, all that is and all that will be are presented here in the lamenting prose from one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century.

there are few poets able to assume so many diferent personalites as Fernando Pessoa. But Bernardo Soares is not a diferent personality, is just the other side of his personnal mirror, an escape to his tortured soul. Probably that is why The Book of Disquiet is so universal, a portait of the human fears, an example of a lonely man,travelling across his own mind, looking at the world through the most ironic eyes. Fernando Pessoa was able to understand dissapointment and regreat in a intemporal way, as a natural part of human nature. So, this book has the ability to make you look inside yourself, guide by one of the best poets of all times!

I picked up this book based on the recommendation from British pop icon, Morrissey. Previously, I had never heard of Pessoa. Morrissey commented in a magazine that once you start reading this book, you won't put it down. And he was right!

Let me first say this book is astonishing in every way. Written in a prose/poetry/diary format, the images and landscapes invade your imagination and stay with you. With imagary such as: "To drag my feet homeward weighs like lead on my senses. The caress of extinction, the flower proffered by futility, my name never pronounced, my disquiet like a river contained between the banks, the privilege of abandoned duties, and - around the last bend in the ancestral park - that other century, like a rose garden." (page 391)

At times, it reads like a beautiful suicide note. But just when you think he's ready to do himself in, he says: "In certain particularly lucid moments of contemplation, like those of early afternoon when I observantly wander through the streets, each person brings me a novelty, each building teaches me something new, each placard has a message for me." (page 297)

I would say that Pessoa was the greatest writer to never publish. And the greatest of poet-philosophers to never exist. His place in history is long overdue. He should stand with the likes Baudelaire and Goethe and tower over most 20th century authors.

In summary, Pessoa has invented a new language for the forgotten, the alienated, the damned, the dispossessed, the "disquieted". The "Book of Disquiet" is the greatest masterpiece never finished. Read it with caution. You may find yourself in love with words again.

IN THE popular literary imagination, Lisbon is famous for only earthquakes and fires. Quartet has transformed this reputation forever with the first British publication of Portugal's greatest 20th century writer. Reading it in 1991, one gets an exaggerated sense of what it was for Camus and Sartre to discover Kafka.

Devoid of a narrative line, this is really only half of the actual book. Most of Pessoa's writing was published posthumously: this is merely a selection of writings grouped by themes. Pessoa paints a picture of an existence blighted by boredom, decadence and despair.

At times some of it feels almost banal. It probably is. But some of it is simply more beautiful than anything i ever read. There is no plot and i like to read no more than a page a day. A recurring feeling of tiredness, a sense of no purpose in life, of immeasurable melancholy, but foremost a sense of being lost, alone, in a world one is not really part of, but can neither part from, is what informs Pessoa. It's probably not possible to express feelings like that in words, it certainly isn't possible to rationalize them, but never has anyone failed more beautifully at attempting than Pessoa.

Fernando Pesoa's genius lies within who Pesoa was as nil and not. He wasn't anyone. Only somene who continually writes in "disquiet" his persona's variable exegesis. The writing is in the book but the author who wrote it, Fernando Pesoa does not "feel himself" as actually being who he is. So, maybe he's actually a different author, with a different name who begins to write a different book. There's all of the writing there, its genius evident in the mystery of the writing itself. All the writing invested with absolute revelation of numinous absence. The absence is that of the author's presence. Magic? Truly. The author is not there. But he must be "there" because he has no choice but to write. What's the answer for the author who is finds himself as absent? He must undertake the creation of the abent author's presence. How? By literally creating a utterly unique form of literature. A literature whose grammar is of being literal by making it possible to write of the absence of an author to himself into a presence to be known as the once absent identity. Writing through a textual hermeticism capable of transmutation through written words of the emanation of an author as "logos," or the Word. "In the beginning there was the Word." Through the Word as logos, all identity is created in the appearance, ex nilho, of the writer mediated solely through himself in this the new logos of writing itself. Pesoa is not himself. He's a man who achieves glimpses of a unmanifest self-referential identity only through his books. In the work of writing these books, this identity is made manifest as the author's anamnesis. Seemingly he finds out (remembers) he is, and always was, a certain author he now "remembers" as himself as a manifested presence. An absolute genius manifested as the author himself being (repeatedly) annihilated through radical self-doubt. Only later remembering who he was as absolute presence never to be lost again. Until this is accomplished all of the laborious, literal negotiations must of necessity begin anew, and are written as literature whose search arises from absence's discontent becomes the new discourse as the art and improvisation of real identity forged in the alchemy of narrative. This peculiar narative reaveals itself as a lived experience of self-discovery. One man of many parts dismembered in his own identity become self-inflicted and religious. Pesoa's own holy inquisition seeking and finding the indentity he is spurious, a phantasm of derealized personality perpetually guilty of having a persona found lacking, Wriiten out in texts as being found guilty of the "heresy" of having an identity. Never before Pesoa has an identity crisis of infinite magnitude been witnessed in Pesoa absence made real presence in some of the 2OTH century's finest writing and poetry. of the 20TH century in The writing of a man named Fernando Pesoa. A man lost to himself, in search of the "person" underneath the name. Personality and identity as reality grounded in a mystery only to be known by itself: self found through words that are the artifacts of the self discovered. A genius lost to himself and calling his absent identity into gradual existence by a person's absence fading into a personality that's presented in multiple, shifting Heteronyms, or cases of terminal identity lost and regained.

TOTALLY misleading book!!

My copy hasn't disturbed me with a single peep. I'M COMPLETELY AT EASE!!!

*For those who couldn't figure it out, this review is a joke, playing on the name of the book. I actually love this book. Have to explain everything to the plebians.