The Book of Disquiet

Dec 19, 2009 Chris rated it 5 of 5 stars

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...more

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Aug 19, 2012 Emilian Kasemi rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites, read-and-reread, non-plus-ultra, inspiring

My favourite book ever!
There's no need in fact to write a review for this book.Because every fragment of it represents separately a preface; the preface of a book that never begins,and never ends...

I don’t know how many souls I have.
I’ve changed at every moment.
I always feel like a stranger.
I’ve never seen or found myself.
From being so much, I have only soul.
A man who has soul has no calm.
A man who sees is just what he sees.
A man who feels is not who he is.

Attentive to what I am and see,
I becom...more

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Jan 21, 2012 Aubrey rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 5-star, reviewed, translated, 1001-06-12, authorness, books-are-the-best-invention, existential-bzns, portuguese

A trifecta of absolute favorites? Well, not favorites. Existence definers, then. I'll have to say though, this self-discovery wasn't nearly as enjoyable as it was with Of Human Bondage or The Magic Mountain. I'd turn a page, and there was one of my innermost thoughts, laid out on the page in all its proud solitude.

Solitude. It takes one intimate with this word and all its facets of life to appreciate this book. The author created an entire world of characters in himself, seeing no journey more i...more A trifecta of absolute favorites? Well, not favorites. Existence definers, then. I'll have to say though, this self-discovery wasn't nearly as enjoyable as it was with Of Human Bondage or The Magic Mountain. I'd turn a page, and there was one of my innermost thoughts, laid out on the page in all its proud solitude.

Solitude. It takes one intimate with this word and all its facets of life to appreciate this book. The author created an entire world of characters in himself, seeing no journey more important than that of the one into oneself. I have not created my own host of fellow souls, but I am intimately familiar with the ever present malaise, the hesitance toward human interaction, the constant worry over ones reputation with others (strangers on the streets to valued friends to all levels of knowing). Ever present dreaming, ever present distraction, ever present evaluation alongside analysis of the self. Proclaiming the uselessness of everything, yet never making the final step. Dreaming of the novel yet knowing that the novel will never happen so long as the familiar remains itself. Playing mental games to deal with the thinking, the feeling, the hopes and desires suffocated in a soul with myriad reasons for not chasing them.What is the cause of this? What chemical pattern of brain influenced by the combination of genes sinks the self down into introversion, into deep safe waters, always craving yet disdaining yet loving yet loathing the concept and existence of the sun. Who knows.

I have not gone as deep as this one here though, and I would have to say that this is better. I don't envy his existence. I see what he has written and can claim multitudes of passages as original thoughts, made by myself upon analysis of our similar existences. There is a quote that says loneliness conveys the sorrow of being alone, while solitude expresses the joy. I look at this book, twenty years of solitude, and I see no solution beyond that of a mindset that I am unwilling to embrace. Falling back on religion is not something I plan on doing anytime soon. Nor will I turn the pain of loneliness into pleasure. I am not so vindictive against humanity as of yet.

This book defines a patch of my soul, but I will not let that patch define me; reading this is just another milestone in my path of figuring out my self, and how to allow myself to live as I desire. A wake up call, of sorts. It will be worth rereading if I ever start sinking into this train of thought; it'll definitely be a sign that I need a change, a vacation of sorts. I haven't yet lost the appreciation of the novel, and I'll be using this book as a reminder of what can happen if I ever do so. A resource against calamity indeed.(less)

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Apr 23, 2012 Ben Winch rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: cult-of-pessoa, lost-modernists, portuguese, mainland-european

Sure, you've heard it before: 'experimental, unique, like no other novel', and occasionally (as with Beckett's The Unnamable or Walser's The Robber or - so I hear - Joyce's Ulysses) it's true. But if by mentioning him in the same breath as those other great modernists I've made Pessoa seem difficult, forget it. Difficult, yes - perhaps impossible - to read from cover to cover, The Book of Disquiet is, page for page, like all Pessoa, so supremely 'easy' that at times it almost seems nothing has b...more Sure, you've heard it before: 'experimental, unique, like no other novel', and occasionally (as with Beckett's The Unnamable or Walser's The Robber or - so I hear - Joyce's Ulysses) it's true. But if by mentioning him in the same breath as those other great modernists I've made Pessoa seem difficult, forget it. Difficult, yes - perhaps impossible - to read from cover to cover, The Book of Disquiet is, page for page, like all Pessoa, so supremely 'easy' that at times it almost seems nothing has been said. Yet so unlike other novels is it that it's not a novel at all. The work of half a lifetime, collected on scraps of paper and the backs of napkins and held together by a ruse so simple it almost seems irrelevant, The Book of Disquiet is a pillowbook for the dispossessed, the sort of book that you keep by the bed and read in small segments when you can't get to sleep. And yes, at times you'll wonder why you're reading it at all. You'll write off the 2-or-so short pages that introduce it, in which we meet the near-insignificant figure of Bernardo Soares, a fictional acquaintance of Pessoa's who has supposedly written this 'factless autobiography'. Yet strangely, the ghost of Soares will not be silenced. 'I noticed that a certain hesitant intelligence illuminated his features, but his face was so often clouded by exhaustion, by the inertia of cold fear, that it was usually hard to see beyond this.' Soares, like Poe's 'Man of the Crowd', is a character so barely-visible that he is virtually another species, and it is from behind this shadowed mask that Pessoa is able to utter words of yearning and self-doubt that would be trite in his own voice, his having been, after all, a self-aware genius whose emergence to fame must have (mostly) seemed inevitable. Yet at the same time, of course, he means it. And it is this balancing trick - this dancing-on-the-edge-of-its-own-negation - that makes Pessoa's masterpiece so magical. Because for all his fear - his 'am I the genius I think I am?' - Pessoa is a writer so confident, so indifferent, so certain of his own inner sense of direction, that he could spend twenty years inhabiting a shade in whose existence he (and the shade itself) only half-believed. Philosophically, the regions he takes us to in the process are as near to unexplored as anything in literature, and provide as intimate a portrait of the human creative impulse as I expect to encounter in my lifetime. Viva Pessoa! Never, never will this get old. For the Bernardo Soares in each of us.

Regarding the translation, yes, I think Richard Zenith overrated, but I find this more of a problem in the poetry than the prose. Also, his introduction to the Penguin edition is useful and informative, and that edition more complete than any other English version so far. Still, Margaret Jull Costa's version (currently in an attractive Serpent's Tail edition) is undoubtedly more beautiful. As to Zenith's translations of the poetry, his Pessoa & Co. is the only book I own that I have covered in angry scribble. Awaiting the successor to Zenith's throne impatiently.(less)

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Oct 30, 2010 oriana rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I can only speak of this book in hushed, reverential tones. This is one of my most, most, most favorite books, which I've been reading for years and still have not finished. It's like an endless diary of daily life, written by the strangest, most deleriously unhappy (but sometimes happy), brilliant (but sometimes simple), intensely thoughtful old man.

Pessoa is best known for writing poetry using "heteronyms," meaning that essentially he had multiple personalities who all were writers. He never...more

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Dec 08, 2008 Chris rated it 4 of 5 stars

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 alligat...more

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Dec 29, 2012 David Lentz rated it 5 of 5 stars

"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 l...more

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Apr 25, 2013 Lee Foust rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I am so angry at Fernando Pessoa. In fact I am no longer speaking to him.

I am furious that he would write such passages of sublime beauty and brilliance and then throw them to the dogs of his own indifference, as well as tainting them with other semi-literary juvenile snit-fits, poorly reasoned passages of pop theology, and endlessly repetitious variations on the same themes that have given the word "tedium" a whole new meaning for me these last weeks. Even the junkie authors, Alexander Trocchi,...more I am so angry at Fernando Pessoa. In fact I am no longer speaking to him.

I am furious that he would write such passages of sublime beauty and brilliance and then throw them to the dogs of his own indifference, as well as tainting them with other semi-literary juvenile snit-fits, poorly reasoned passages of pop theology, and endlessly repetitious variations on the same themes that have given the word "tedium" a whole new meaning for me these last weeks. Even the junkie authors, Alexander Trocchi, Anna Kavan, and William Burroughs had more care and respect for their work than did Pessoa for The Book of Disquiet. Even the jailbirds Cervantes, Genet, and Boethius managed to leave us with amazingly coherent and complete works of great literature between torture sessions, amputations, and execution. Even authors who struggled and labored with day jobs, with poverty and neglect, with opium addiction and children in double-digits have managed to edit their work into sublime and coherent readability. But, you, Fernando, you locked your lopsided fragments into a trunk and pissed on it on your way to an alcohol-soaked early grave.

Why should I give your work any more respect than you gave it?

Your editors tried. At half the length of the original MS apparently this edition/translation of your alienated and misanthropic musings is still at least twice as long as it needs to be. Even so, you are still your own harshest critic--which one-ups me I will admit--so I hereby allow you to have the semi-last word on the agony that your book inflicted on me, the sorrow it made me feel for a lost great work of literature that never was because you refused to actually write it, preferring to hint at its greatness and then to toss it into the waste can of oblivion:

"During one of those periods of sleepless somnolence in which we entertain ourselves intelligently enough without recourse to our intelligence, I re-read some of the pages which, when put together, will make up my book of random impressions. And there rises from them, like a familiar smell, an arid sense of monotony..." (pg. 1167)

Beautiful, brilliant, often silly, misguided, tragic, proclaiming itself worthless, alienated, self-agrandizingly melodramatic at times, and finally, like a tug of war with itself, drowned in its own sludge, I will always think of you as the bi-polar book.
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Mar 19, 2013 Dolors rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: read-in-2013, best-ever

I have this habit of keeping a pencil close by when I'm reading a book which I know is going to have some passages I want to remember. So, whenever I come across a sentence or a paragraph that strikes me for some reason, I underline it.
Well now, what's mostly happened with my copy of the "The book of disquiet" by Fernando Pessoa is that there is something underlined in almost every page of the book. Which is the same to say that this is a memorable book on the whole. I'd even dare to say that th...more I have this habit of keeping a pencil close by when I'm reading a book which I know is going to have some passages I want to remember. So, whenever I come across a sentence or a paragraph that strikes me for some reason, I underline it.
Well now, what's mostly happened with my copy of the "The book of disquiet" by Fernando Pessoa is that there is something underlined in almost every page of the book. Which is the same to say that this is a memorable book on the whole. I'd even dare to say that this is more than a mere book, it is a gate to upper thinking, a new way of understanding the world, a new philosophy, a daring and maybe even scary but sincere approach to what is hidden in our human souls, if we are brave enough to look.

I knew a bit of Pessoa before I picked up this book. Vastly known Portuguese poet, famous for his ability to create different "personalities" and stick to them closely to perfection, writing in different styles according to the voice of each character. Schizophrenia? Or the mind of a genius who fooled everyone who knew him? Or a man who disguised himself out of boredom and who was able to live more than 70 different and complete lives through all these invented "characters" to become a complete real person? Maybe all these options at once. Maybe none. We'll never know.
Anyway, even though I knew about Pessoa, I wasn't prepared for this book.
Not only unconnected recollections of the "supposed" life of Bernardo Soares, one of Pessoa's characters, but also unanswerable questions which left me kind of anxious and peaceful at the same time, if that makes any sense...
Questions regarding consciousness, the almost obsession about dreams and the state of peaceful lethargy of sleeping, doubts aroused regarding deities, love and death. And about what it is to be happy or to feel nostalgia about a non existent past, or about egoism and solitude. But all this questions made even more intense with this overflowing passion for writing, and for literature. And for Lisbon.

A privileged mind which opens for us, humble readers who want to witness an amazing transformation of the world surrounding us, seeing for the first time what our lives really are, or what they aren't and what we should expect them to be.
An experience which will leave you exhausted but with renewed energy to face this extenuating and unavoidable journey which we call life.(less)

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Apr 27, 2013 Huda Yahya is currently reading it · review of another edition

Shelves: fernando-pessoa, philosophy, nihilism

In utter solitude ..
With a red pen in my hand , as irony is my blood
I reread this sacred piece of art <3

========================================
Sadly I write in my quiet room, alone as I have always been, alone as I wil always be. And I wonder if my apparently negligible voice might not embody the essence of thousands of voices, the longing for selfexpression of thousands of lives, the patience of milions of souls resigned like my own to their daily lot, their useless dreams, and their hopel...more

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Aug 12, 2010 Tyler rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Fans of Literature

Recommended to Tyler by: Many Reviews

The black and white photo on the cover of this book poses two men in the same shot. In few other books does a cover so strikingly portray the actual content. These two are in fact the same person, symbols of the fractured identity of the book’s only character and his startled quest to vent his inner life.

Like most readers, I find this book hard to explain. It reminds me of Against Nature because it’s about a single man whose disaffection with life has seeped into his psyche. It’s also like Jour...more The black and white photo on the cover of this book poses two men in the same shot. In few other books does a cover so strikingly portray the actual content. These two are in fact the same person, symbols of the fractured identity of the book’s only character and his startled quest to vent his inner life.

Like most readers, I find this book hard to explain. It reminds me of Against Nature because it’s about a single man whose disaffection with life has seeped into his psyche. It’s also like Journey to the End of the Night in its utter honesty. But where Journey aims at the cruel facts about the other people who haunt our periphery, this book excavates the seams of a particular man’s own inward being. Herein lies the genius of its author, Fernando Pessoa.

Neither novel nor memoir nor diary, the book fits no category. It is, in fact, a non-book. It was stitched from Pessoa’s unpublished manuscripts fifty years after his death, the author having left no instructions as to what to include or how to assemble it. So the selection and editing process, quite fittingly, is a subjective, ever-changing judgment by Pessoa scholars. Every new edition, then, will be the labor of a different aesthetic.

What we’ll always find is set of observations, some only a line long, others two or three pages. The pseudo-author of the first part of the Penguin edition is a stand-in for Pessoa. Most of the book expounds the man’s "factless autobiography," but the final part, the "disquiet anthology," brings in a series of longer musings by Pessoa, who for his part has split into at least two inner identities, using the second person in many sub-sections to address different parts of himself.

Neither Pessoa nor his shadow author accepts a shred of the idea of free will. They live a deterministic credo to the utmost and both parts of the book trace it out. A sense of fatedness, even solipsism, bewitches each page. The author is an observer, not an actor, both to the outside and to himself. He doesn’t live; he just exists. Life takes on a dream quality, and he lives on the cusp between awake and asleep. This margin provides the escape he seeks from life – can the transitory beauty of a real sunset ever compare to the eternal perfection of an imagined one?

The book captures these passing moments along the edges. The dissociated thoughts of this dreamscape hold the collection together in an "aesthetic of despair." Our writer, whoever he is, scarcely sleeps; tedium – by which he means the routine of everyday life – assails him; his lack of volition invokes his unconscious. He describes the pure present and the ethereal past; the future exists neither in mind nor in possibility.

Yet what’s so strange about all this is that I felt little of the so-called despair and all of the aesthetic. It brings to mind some experimental movie. Yet it’s a literary art, a chronicle of colors, rain and wind, moonshine and shadows. It’s almost poetry in prose, so much so that I found reading it aloud gave me what you might call an interactive experience.

I was surprised to be drawn in by a state of mind so opposed to my own. A book that can do that has an element that marks the boundary between good and great. The penetrating reach of Pessoa’s opus ranks it at the top. The author’s inimitable style and bull’s-eye descriptive prowess maintain a magnetic aura that pulls in readers. I’m glad to recommend The Book of Disquiet to every fan of literature. For those who have read this book already, might I suggest a related one, The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis?
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Feb 01, 2013 Ruze rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: books-i-own, favorites, personal-favourites

A mere collection of ramblings, a beautiful melancholic documentation of nothing in particular, an inspiring and profound journey with no apparent destination... there are many ways one could describe this book.

Fernando Pessoa has delivered, through his heteronym, Bernando Soares, a wonderfully self-indulgent masterpiece. An honest and free flowing collection of seemingly undiluted short excerpts straight from the mind of a thoughtfully placid if at times, sad mind.

It should be read cover to co...more

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Apr 21, 2013 K.D. Oliveros rated it 4 of 5 stars

Recommended to K.D. by: 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die (2008-2012)

Shelves: modernist, 1001-core, europe, challenging, philosophical

In your mind, picture an old man who dines in a nearby cafe everyday. He works in an office as a bookkeeper, probably few years before his retirement. He is living alone in his apartment a block away from that cafe. You oftentimes eat in that restaurant and whenever you do, you see him on that chair facing the window, silently eating the same meal, talking to no one except nodding to the waitress and once in a while glancing at the view outside.

You hesitate to talk to him. Probably he seems to...more In your mind, picture an old man who dines in a nearby cafe everyday. He works in an office as a bookkeeper, probably few years before his retirement. He is living alone in his apartment a block away from that cafe. You oftentimes eat in that restaurant and whenever you do, you see him on that chair facing the window, silently eating the same meal, talking to no one except nodding to the waitress and once in a while glancing at the view outside.

You hesitate to talk to him. Probably he seems to be too old for you to befriend. Probably his wrinkles, his worn-out suit and his silence make him seemingly unapproachable. Probably he will just ignore you because you are like a shallow-minded spring chicken to him if you try to get his attention. Probably, probably.

The Book of Disquiet is a revelation about a man similar to what I have just described above. During his lifetime, Fernando Pessoa, using one of his many heteronyms (fictional names of writers with points of view and literary styles different from that of Pessoa's) of Bernardo Soares wrote his thoughts and feelings on sheets of papers or even napkins and put these writing in one box. When he died, his relatives saw these sheets of papers and 50 years after his death, this book was published.

And oh boy, if you only have the courage to befriend an old man and ignore your personal bias about having a friend a lot older (or younger) than you, it would have been an exhilarating experience. The man sitting in that cafe is a wonderful guy with deeply philosophical thoughts. He is a dreamer and in his dreams he does all sorts of mind-boggling thinking that I end up dogearing half of the pages of this book because there are so many beautiful, beautiful passages about life. Those quotes seem like poetry in prose to me.

So far, the best 1001 book that I've read this year. Thanks to my brother Joselito for highly recommending this book to me. He read this in his Kindle last year and when he saw a copy in Powerbooks, he texted me right away saying that I must go to that bookstore immediately and buy (because I don't have a Kindle) this lone copy. He said that this book was the best 1001 he read last year. This book is not for everyone though. One has to slow down while reading to savor the beauty of Pessoa's prose. In fact, it took me almost a full month to finish this book but I must say that all the many hours I spent in it were all well-spent.

Highly recommended to all those who have the patience to know fragmented yet beautiful thoughts of an old philosophical man.(less)

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May 18, 2013 Nick rated it 3 of 5 stars

I'm not quite sure what to make of this book, or how to recommend it. It's haunting, and beautifully written. But it goes nowhere; it's essentially unreadable except as something you dip into from time to time when you want a dose of something like this: "If we knew the truth, we'd see it; everything else is systems and approximations. The inscrutability of the universe is quite enough for us to think about; to want to actually understand it is to be less than human, since to be human is to real...more

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Nov 28, 2011 Hayfa Qahtani rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

هذا الكتاب للحياة ، هذا الكتاب ليس لقراءة واحدة . . كنت اعرف بيسوا من زمن، كنت اعود لشعره ، ونثره الذي يحبّ ، واتذكر انه ذات المجنون الذي ابتكر اربعة شعراء يتنافسون بحروفه هو ، أي دهشة يصنعها ؟
كتاب اللاطمأنينة، يشبهنا جميعاً بصورة متفاوتة ، كتاب يكتبه بيسوا بلا خوف من اظهار نقائص حياته ومخاوفه وغضبه ، اعتقد انه احدى تلك الكتب التي تشجعك على اخذ الكتابة جدياً ، ليس لأنه يشجعك وحسب ، بل لأنك تعود لتقرأ قصاصاتك المضطربة الغير مطمئنة وتقرر .. انتِ كذلك لك الحقّ في العيش .
احببت الكتاب لأنني عبرت الط...more

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Apr 18, 2009 Bruce rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935) was arguably the preeminent Portuguese man of letters of the 20th century and worked in a variety of genres, using a variety of pseudonyms (which he called “heteronyms”). This work, The Book of Disquiet, was purportedly written by “Bernardo Soares,” each of his heteronyms having distinct personalities, each personality often writing in distinct genres. The Book of Disquiet is a collection of musings, or more precisely reveries (not necessarily in chronological order),...more Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935) was arguably the preeminent Portuguese man of letters of the 20th century and worked in a variety of genres, using a variety of pseudonyms (which he called “heteronyms”). This work, The Book of Disquiet, was purportedly written by “Bernardo Soares,” each of his heteronyms having distinct personalities, each personality often writing in distinct genres. The Book of Disquiet is a collection of musings, or more precisely reveries (not necessarily in chronological order), on a variety of subjects, the common thread seeming to be Soares’ exploration of his own psyche; thus, the work is highly introspective, although, because of the way in which Pessoa utilizes his heteronyms, it is unclear whether or not the work is actually autobiographical or not. Nevertheless, it does seem like a diary or, perhaps more precisely, a journal, although to label it so suggests more linearity than there is, themes appear, reappearing, and weaving in a cumulative way. Soares uses common, everyday events and observations – and indeed, it is hard to imagine a character more common and everyday than Soares – to reflect and write on a myriad of subjects, including life, art, literature, writing, religion, politics, history, social relationships – the list could go on and on. Soares is conservative, socially isolated, somewhat melancholic, superficially unremarkable; he uses his journal to expand his life and world into the life of the imagination, ever plumbing the recesses of his own responses and reactions. One wonders if such a work could have been written before the 20th century, before the age of psychological awareness launched by Freud and others. At the very least, the book inevitably causes the reader to begin similarly reflecting on his own life, becoming more aware of how he is like and unlike other people, of how other people might also feel and think. Pessoa has created a work that is difficult to categorize, harder to summarize; he invites the reader to bite off small portions at a time, chewing slowly and carefully, tasting and appreciating deeply before swallowing and moving on; don’t bolt this one down in a few gulps.(less)

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Oct 07, 2012 Kirstie rated it 5 of 5 stars

It might be possible that there is no book as profound, poetic, insightful, intelligent, and moving as this one. Pessoa's exploration of the human consciousness and all of the dilemmas of life are presented as an enchanting yet turbulent sort of dream which mesmerizes in a way few authors have destined to do. Kundera and Hesse have some elements of this in their writing but it isn't quite the same. The reader becomes quite immersed in the Disquietude stream of thoughts that our protagonist share...more

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Feb 20, 2012 ميّ أحمد rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: فلسفة

...بداية يجب أن أذكر أني تعرفت على بيسوا مصادفة لم أكن أعرف هذا الشاعر ولم أسمع عنه قبل أن أمد يدي في معرض الكتاب على ديوانه رباعيات والذي كتب فيه أرق وأعذب قصائد الحب وهي القصائد الوحيدة التي كتبها في الحب لقد شدتني عذوبة هذا الشاعر وروحه الشفيفة وتصويراته الرقيقة كأن يقول
المريول الذي أخذته من الدرج
أليس له جيب
لأضع نفسي فيه
لأكون قربك دائما !

ويقول

أدرتِ وجهك ِ حين
هممت أن أقول لكِ في النهاية
بأنك ِ لو أدرت ِ وجهك
لن يضايقني ذلك !

أيضا
أجيء وحدي إلى الشاطىء
أجي إلى الشاطىء , أفكر
بالحركة التي...more ...بداية يجب أن أذكر أني تعرفت على بيسوا مصادفة لم أكن أعرف هذا الشاعر ولم أسمع عنه قبل أن أمد يدي في معرض الكتاب على ديوانه رباعيات والذي كتب فيه أرق وأعذب قصائد الحب وهي القصائد الوحيدة التي كتبها في الحب لقد شدتني عذوبة هذا الشاعر وروحه الشفيفة وتصويراته الرقيقة كأن يقول
المريول الذي أخذته من الدرج
أليس له جيب
لأضع نفسي فيه
لأكون قربك دائما !

ويقول

أدرتِ وجهك ِ حين
هممت أن أقول لكِ في النهاية
بأنك ِ لو أدرت ِ وجهك
لن يضايقني ذلك !

أيضا
أجيء وحدي إلى الشاطىء
أجي إلى الشاطىء , أفكر
بالحركة التي تثيرها تنورتك
عندما تجيئين أنتِ إلى الشاطىء !

وهكذا نشأت بيني وبين بيسوا علاقة حب فطاردت حرفه حتى وجدتُ له ديوانه حارس القطيع وبحثت أيضا فوجدت له أيضا ديوان آخر بترجمة المهدي أخريف نسخة إلكترونية وأخذت أعبّ من نهل هذا الشاعر الممتلىء بالإحساس حتى قرأت مؤخرأ عن كتاب اللاطمأنينة وهو عبارة عن شذرات نصوص وتأملات , والحمد لله تيسر لي الحصول على الكتاب من خلال إحدى الصديقات التي جلبته لي من مصر ..

كتاب اللاطمأنينة عبارة عن مقاطع أطلق عليها بيسوا الوضع الراهن للاكينونة , وهي ليست يوميات كما يعتقد البعض إنما كما يقول المترجم هي حفريات في الذات , كتاب من الإحساس والتأمل الذي يمضي بالإفكار إلى أبعد حافاتها القصوى مطلا بقهقة واهنة على هاويات لم يختبر قرارها سوى بيسوا , هو كتاب نثر ولكنه كتب بلغة شاعرية وقد استغرق ظهوره للنور أكثر من عشر سنوات بسبب العراقيل التي وجدها المترجم , ويذكر أن الكتاب لم ينشر في حياة بيسوا بل هو مادة خام لم يتمكن بيسوا من التعديل أو الإضافة أو تحقيق الكتاب , إن الجهد الذي بذله المترجم فاق كل حدود التصور , كما يجب الإشارة إلى إن هناك الكثير من المقاطع الغير مكتملة والتي إضطر المترجم إلى ترك فراغ يشبه هذا ( --- ) إشارة إلى أن جزء من النص مفقود أو () إشارة إلى أن هناك إضافة من الناشر ..

يقول بيسوا في تقديمه لكتابه: واحدة من مآسي الروح الكبرى أن تنفذ عملاً ثم تدرك، فور انتهائك منه، أنه ليس من الجودة في شيء، تكبر المأساة خصوصاً عندما يدرك المرء أن هذا العمل هو قصارى ما يستطيع بذله، ولكن، أن تكتب عملاً، وأنت تعرف مسبقاً أنه مختل وناقص، وأنت تكتبه، مختلاً وناقصاً فهذه ذروة العذاب والذل الروحيين، لست راضياً عن القصائد التي أكتبها الآن فحسب؛ بل أعرف إني لن أرضى أيضاً عن القصائد التي سأكتبها في المستقبل، أعرف هذا فلسفياً وبلحم جسدي، من استشراف ضبابي لا أدرى من أين استقيته، فإذن، لماذا أستمر بالكتابة؟ لأني لم أتعلم بعد المزاولة التامة للتخلي الذي أعظ به، لم أتمكن بعد من التخلي عن ميلي إلى الشعر والنثر، عليّ بالكتابة، وكأنني أنفذ عقوبة ما، والعقوبة القصوى هي أن أعرف أن كل ما أكتبه عديم الجدوى، ناقص ويفتقد إلى اليقين

بيسوا اختلق شخصية برنارد سوارش الذي تسبب له وللقارىء الكثير من الإرباك فهو كثيرا ما يتساءل هل هو أنا آخر له، أم مجرد شخصية أدبية، والملاحظ إن هناك الكثير من الحوارات التي دارت بينه وبين هذه الشخصية المختلقة حتى إنها أحيانا تطغى على وجوده حتى يختفي هو ويبرز الآخر
و يوضح الناقد أنخيل كريسبو أن شخصية سوارش اخترعها بيسوا في أيامه الأخيرة،وهي تبدو مكتوبة بالأسلوب الأنضج والأكثر تطوراً، مما يستدعي التفكير بأنها كُتبت خلال أيامه الأخيرة ..

إن المتأمل في حياة بيسوا يرى أن أغلب كتاباته تميل للعزلة وتكشف عن معاناة حقيقية عاشها الشاعر وهو يتسكع في شوارع لشبونه أو وهو يطل على العالم من خلال نافذته في الطابق الرابع
( ثمة شيء يغمني , قلق مجهول رغبة غير محددة في شيء غير محدد , إحساسي بأنني حي ربما جاءني متأخرا , وعندما أطللت من النافذة العالية جدا على الشارع الذي رأيته بدون أن اراه , أحسستني فجأة واحدا من الخرق الرطبة المخصصة لتنظيف أشياء متسخة توضع على النافذة لتجف , لكنها تُنسى ملفوفة على الجدار الذي تمضي ملطخة إياه ببطء ! )

إن هذا الكتاب لا يمكن أن تتماشى معه أي تسمية أخرى هو كتاب خالي من الطمأنينة التي يبحث عن أي إنسان على وجه الأرض ستصلك أحاسيس الشاعر من خلال حرفه السوداوي وربما ينقلك لحالة من الكآبة والحزن والشعور باللامعنى !

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Feb 11, 2013 M. rated it 5 of 5 stars

"Книга на безпокойството" е нещо като псевдодневник. Чете се трудно: хем е фрагментарна, хем многократно експлоатира едни и същи (мъчителни) теми; текст, с който се бориш, не го поглъщаш жадно, нетърпелив как ще се развие сюжетът. Защото сюжет няма.

Героят на Песоа и негов (полу)хетероним Бернарду Суареш съществува като че ли само на границата между себе си и външния свят, анализирайки и двете – Аз-ът е сведен до съзерцателното, орязан от емоции, разсъждаващ върху битието, по-точно еднообразието...more

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Mar 03, 2009 Keleigh rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: schooldaze, truth

Pessoa – "Dreams Without Illusions"

I am free and lost.
I feel. I have fever, chills. I am myself.

In Pessoa I have made a lifelong friend. Rarely do I find an author who speaks to my wild adoration of words as well as my spiritual hunger. The word "spiritual" does not even really say it, it is the unveiling of things as they are, and the raw bare telling of it. My last big love was an unsettled scribbling philosopher who used to write things like "Everything is ourselves and we are everything, but...more Pessoa – "Dreams Without Illusions"

I am free and lost.
I feel. I have fever, chills. I am myself.

In Pessoa I have made a lifelong friend. Rarely do I find an author who speaks to my wild adoration of words as well as my spiritual hunger. The word "spiritual" does not even really say it, it is the unveiling of things as they are, and the raw bare telling of it. My last big love was an unsettled scribbling philosopher who used to write things like "Everything is ourselves and we are everything, but of what use is it, if everything is nothing?" (47) and reading his seemingly nonsensical rants I would scoff. Then I started doing some serious work and met some real teachers and everywhere began hearing the same thing: this life is a dream. We are caught in the illusion. Everything and everyone we see is a reflection of ourselves. A projection of our minds. We are the creators of everything we experience. True self is no self. We are everything, we are nothing, indeed.

"Whenever I see someone sleep, I remember that everything is asleep. Whenever someone tells me he dreamed, I wonder if he ever thought he did anything but dream" (81)

Pessoa's insistence on dreams, the very literal dream-quality of existence, the awareness of our everyday disguises in the clothing of identity, the happiest hours of no-thought, his acutely detached observations of the unconscious humans around him—all of these reveal a being who is awake in the dream. He states that he never had anyone he could call "Master" (67), but somehow, at some point probably early in his life, the curtain of illusion was yanked back to expose Reality. No wonder then that he spent the majority of his life in solitude, connected but not relating to his fellow humans. Writing, I suspect, created outlet and purpose, and of course companionship, in a life alienated from the ignorant dramas and delusions of the sleeping world. He was not, however, enlightened/released from suffering; or maybe he was, who knows? Either way, he succeeded in conveying both a vivid and undeniable appreciation of life, and an abysmal yet matter-of-fact longing for death. To see things as they are and continue to be: I'm sure this must have been a challenge. But Pessoa renewed my faith in the possibility of communicating the unreligious ineffability of waking up, of seeing through the illusion of separation, doubt and fear which surrounds us. Without sentimentality or agenda. Simply to express, to create, to pass on a written artifact of understanding for those, like me, to come across and treasure.(less)

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Feb 24, 2013 Hadeel rated it 5 of 5 stars

Are you kidding me?
I don’t know what to say because words will seem meaningless but I think I’m okay living the rest of my life not reading anything else or writing anything else for I’d be staring off into space the whole time processing the 262 immaculately-written pages of this book, and its effect on everything else

I’m bewildered, jaw-dropped by every word, when I started reading the first page, I was like ‘oh there goes a line I want to write in my notebook’ so I wrote it, but then, I sho...more Are you kidding me?
I don’t know what to say because words will seem meaningless but I think I’m okay living the rest of my life not reading anything else or writing anything else for I’d be staring off into space the whole time processing the 262 immaculately-written pages of this book, and its effect on everything else

I’m bewildered, jaw-dropped by every word, when I started reading the first page, I was like ‘oh there goes a line I want to write in my notebook’ so I wrote it, but then, I shooed my notebook away because I realized that I will be copying it – the whole book is quotable and I had to stop for a bout and just pause for a while to absorb the beauty of what I have just read, how could such a book portrays every feeling I have ever harbored, every word I wanted to express but failed terribly in doing so, how he lived life alone but in a sea of people who never understood him.. seclusion, sleep, day-dreaming, imagination, dreams, love, solitude.. however people used those things, he used differently and in such a way that introduces a new definition of the world, he created his own world and lived in it to the point of disturbance that it saddened him when he in those seconds was touched by reality.

I don’t know what to say but I have a feeling that hasn’t been quite invented yet to give this book its rightful review.. this book will move you and makes you just aware of things that lived at the back of your mind but you never knew it was there, somebody stealthily had to crack open the window of your brain and make you realize that these things exist but you never knew how to spill it out because you thought it was insane if somebody knew you think that way, that you probably belong to the nuthouse, but I realized that its others that belong to the nuthouse.

I wont tell you to go read this book because I don’t really care, all I know that I will be forever mesmerized by it and in a constant state of indifference to the reality of stuff.
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Jan 30, 2013 Manuel rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012, favorites

Rate = original in portuguese = 6 stars (in terms of the Goodreads' rating system, I gave it 5 stars)
Rate = Zenith's translation (the one I've just read) = 3 stars

I’ve read this book in Portuguese a long time ago, and I still remember vividly some of the passages, eg, “ Deus é existirmos e isto não ser tudo” (God is being and this is not all”- my translation)… Marvelous or what????

I find a strong resemblance between Rilke and Pessoa, but I never really thought about it, that is, I cannot demonst...more

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Jan 20, 2008 Adam rated it 4 of 5 stars

Pessoa is sort of a downer, but this is a great book. The wandering, nigh-plotless Book of Disquiet is probably best read in bits and pieces. In fact, the story behind it (included in the introduction to this edition and the book description here on Goodreads) shows that reading through this book randomly is literally just as "correct" as reading it straight through. Seriously, you really ought to read it, or at least check it out and read some bits of it. Just look at the other reviews for God'...more

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Jul 27, 2008 R. marked it as to-read

Shelves: dipped-into-from-time-to-time

Update: It was revealed, recently, that Pessoa was quite the penpal with...Aleister Crowley: The dossier includes voluminous correspondence with Crowley, and hundreds of pages of an unfinished novel about Crowley's faked suicide. The work is called Boca do Inferno, (Hell's Mouth) after a rocky inlet near the Portuguese resort of Cascais.

Sounds like something straight out of a Bolano vignette.

Speaking of black magick; yesterday I bought a book about a car crash called Travesty...the same day th...more

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Nov 22, 2007 jeremy rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: translation, fiction

Relatively unknown during his lifetime (having published only a single book of poems), Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935) has since been recognized as a literary genius. A national hero in his native Portugal, he developed a style of writing based on the use of "heteronyms," of which he developed dozens. Following his death, a trunk was discovered containing over 25,000 pages of unpublished material from which this book was culled. Not a novel in any traditional sense, The Book of Disquiet, subtitled "...more

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Sep 23, 2007 Silvia Chenault rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: classics, non-fiction

I read this book often. It's the kind of book that you can open up anywhere and read it; the kind of book that never gets lost in the piles and somehow finds its way onto my nightstand when there is a lull in my reading. I met one of my greatest friends the day i bought this book. Her phone number is still inside the front cover. I didn't know I'd be opening this book over and over since then. It is a staple. I need to feed from it every once in a while. It is full of rich ideas, philosophies, p...more

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May 18, 2007 Jared Colley rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, poetry

This is the journal of one of Pessoa's many alternate personages. This is the documentation of an everyday, poetical philosopher. The book actually felt more like poetry than anything else. It is absolutely beautiful.

"I'm handed faith like a sealed package on a strange-looking platter and am expected to accept it without opening it. I'm handed science, like a knife on a plate, to cut the folios of a book whose pages are blank. I'm handed doubt, like dust inside a box - but why give me a box if a...more

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Aug 27, 2010 Seham rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

http://www.4shared.com/document/YeEgL...

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Mar 20, 2013 Ileen rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2013, scrittori-portoghesi

Fernando Pessoa intitola questo libro Il libro dell’inquietudine, ma forse sarebbe stato meglio chiamarlo Il libro del nulla. Il protagonista, Bernardo Soares, lo dice chiaramente a pagina 48: “In questi miei appunti sconnessi, e che non ambiscono ad avere un nesso, racconto con indifferenza la mia autobiografia priva di avvenimenti, la mia storia priva di vita. Sono le mie confessioni, e se in esse non dico niente è perché non ho niente da dire”. Ancora più preoccupante è che Bernardo Soares no...more Fernando Pessoa intitola questo libro Il libro dell’inquietudine, ma forse sarebbe stato meglio chiamarlo Il libro del nulla. Il protagonista, Bernardo Soares, lo dice chiaramente a pagina 48: “In questi miei appunti sconnessi, e che non ambiscono ad avere un nesso, racconto con indifferenza la mia autobiografia priva di avvenimenti, la mia storia priva di vita. Sono le mie confessioni, e se in esse non dico niente è perché non ho niente da dire”. Ancora più preoccupante è che Bernardo Soares non esiste, è tutto frutto della mente di Pessoa. Appunti sconnessi in primis. È lui stesso a presentarlo, come se fosse una persona vera, e definendolo poi così: una semplice mutilazione della mia personalità: sono io senza il raziocinio e l'affettività. Non è un romanzo, non è un’autobiografia. È un diario rivolto a se stesso tanto quanto ad un ipotetico lettore. Fa molto Beckett in questi monologhi che vogliono essere dialoghi con qualcuno. In attesa che giunga Godot. Disorientata dalle prime pagine mi sono fermata e ho letto l’introduzione di Tabucchi nella speranza di trovare la Stella Polare. Ma navigare in questo mare è difficilissimo… tuttavia devo riconoscere che l’introduzione mette in guardia molto chiaramente il lettore riguardo ciò che lo attende, ciò che troverà nelle 200 pagine successive. Spiega molto bene la prospettiva dalla quale Bernardo vede la sua esistenza, rammenta al lettore quante analogie ci siano con altri scrittori che hanno trattato gli stessi temi dalle stesse prospettive. Ma in tutte queste spiegazioni, che aiutano il lettore ad accettare quello che leggerà, non c’è spazio per la vera e propria comprensione del testo. E il lettore si domanda: perché? Perché ha scritto queste cose? Cosa lo muove a scrivere così? Tabucchi non ci illumina. Ma forse non è nemmeno compito suo. L’intermediario ti da gli strumenti, il risultato dipende da te. Così ho cercato di capire qualcosa di più della vita di questo poeta e scrittore portoghese che non conoscevo; ho cercato di capire cosa possa muovere una persona ad annotare pensieri come questi, completamente svicolati da fatti. Nonostante i miei sforzi l’unica cosa che sono riuscita a estrapolare è il fatto che forse Fernando avrebbe voluto essere uno nessuno e centomila, come dimostrano i suoi innumerevoli eteronimi. Forse aveva quest’uomo un animo talmente sensibile e volatile da sentire la necessità costante di cambiare nome, attitudine, pensiero, togliere un pregio, aggiungere un difetto, cambiare gli ingredienti e vedere quale nuova gustosa ricetta di sé era in grado di ottenere. Ho continuato la lettura, con qualche elemento in più e ho provato a non vedere dietro quelle righe una persona che in realtà non esiste. A vederlo come un esperimento. Forse a Fernando farebbe piacere questo mio modo di vederlo. Così mi sono spogliata di tutto e ho continuato. Non posso definirla una lettura difficile né nella lingua né nei contenuti, non è ostile, né tanto meno inquietante come ispira il titolo. No. È una lettura rassegnata e depressa. Attenzione non deprimente! Solo depressa. Ho ritrovato atteggiamenti molto simili a quelli che avevo ahimè sperimentato nella depressione, in questa malattia che rende incapaci di vivere e ti rilega in un limbo che sembra non finire mai; ed ecco che ti trasformi in spettatore della tua vita, non te ne accorgi, ma guardi la vita, la tua vita, scorrerti davanti e non sai nemmeno che è tua. Forse, ti sembra di non averla mai avuta. Sono discorsi difficili da fare ed impossibili da recensire. A pochi è dato l’onore di capire. E grazie a Dio! La depressione non è proprio quello che sia augura agli altri!!! Voi, a questo punto, però, vorrete anche sapere di cosa parlano questi famosi appunti sconnessi… mettiamola così: parlano dell’anima di Bernardo vista dal di fuori, come se l’anima di Bernardo, la sua coscienza e Bernardo fossero entità diverse. Tabucchi dice: come se l’anima guardasse dalla finestra. Vero. Più o meno così. Sono sensazioni non fatti, impressioni, non eventi. Nulla è concreto in questo libro. Nemmeno la città, perennemente avvolta dalla nebbia e senza contorni. Offuscata. Come l’anima di Bernardo. Bernardo che non dorme ma che parla di sogni e della dimensione onirica costantemente e quel poco di luce che appare a contrastare la notte è data dal cielo, non dal sole. Bernardo si perde a guardare le nuvole: sono sempre state lì? E forse diventa la nuvola stessa…
E poi lo dice: “ho cercato in me varie personalità. Creo costantemente personalità […]. Per creare mi sono distrutto; mi sono così esteriorizzato dentro di me che dentro di me non esisto se non esteriorizzato. Sono la scena viva sulla quale passano svariati attori che recitano svariati drammi”. Bingo. Ci avevo visto giusto e lungo. Procedendo nella lettura i toni pessimistici aumentano ed in alcuni passaggi sembra di sentire Seneca (che non era pessimista, solo realista, ma su certi concetti non era proprio il massimo della solarità). Ogni tanto evinciamo dal racconto di Bernardo che anche lui nasconde parvenze umane: fa viaggi, ha amici da visitare, partecipa a cene e pranzi.. insomma volendo stare a spaccare il capello in quattro, anche lui ha una vita sociale. Ma questo non basta a farci un’idea della sua vita; l’unica cosa di cui possiamo farci un’idea è il suo male di vivere, della sua necessità del sonno visto come la cessazione della fatica e della sofferenza. Bernardo non vuole vivere, non ne ha voglia o forse ne ha paura, esattamente come non ha voglia di comprare quelle banane dal grande giallo che vede ordinatamente nella loro cassetta. In un libro pieno di ossimori Soares è la litote per eccellenza, ci dice cosa è dicendoci tutto quello che non è. Capiamo cosa fa da tutto quello che non fa.

Tirando le somme non è un libro facile e non è scorrevole. Ci si deve un po’ forzare a leggere appunto per appunto e ci si deve sforzare di estrapolarne un significato. Tuttavia non posso definirlo né brutto né poco interessante poiché contiene moltissimi spunti di riflessione. E qui cito me stessa: “più che un romanzo è un quaderno per gli esercizi. Matita alla mano mi siedo accanto a Bernardo e vedo se riesco a fare i compiti”.
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Nov 21, 2012 [P] rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: superfluous-men

Imagine that you have been given a beautiful watch, disassembled into its individual parts, and some instructions on how to put it back together again. You labour at your task until it is complete, and it is at this point that you realize some of the important parts are missing. Yeah, it isn’t completely worthless, it still looks nice, is still usable as a decorative item, but something of the essence of the watch has been lost. For me, The Book of Disquiet is a little bit like this, one can’t h...more Imagine that you have been given a beautiful watch, disassembled into its individual parts, and some instructions on how to put it back together again. You labour at your task until it is complete, and it is at this point that you realize some of the important parts are missing. Yeah, it isn’t completely worthless, it still looks nice, is still usable as a decorative item, but something of the essence of the watch has been lost. For me, The Book of Disquiet is a little bit like this, one can’t help feeling when reading it that although what we have is wonderful, it isn’t really what it ought to be, it isn’t a fully realized version of itself.

Pessoa’s book is a a sort of compendium of prose fragments, which, if experts are to be believed, the poet intended to be woven together to create a more conventional novel. There is some kind of framing idea behind some of them, but not all. Most editions begin with a prologue that explains that these are the thoughts of a clerk, Bernardo Soares, but only a portion of them are obviously attributable to him. The majority aren’t in any way tied to a particular character or situation, or even to each other, and this gives them a kind of baselessness, a randomness, that is occasionally tedious.

Bernardo Soares' thoughts are, to a large extent, ruminations on life, work, and our place in the world. If that sounds as though there is a danger that the book may paddle into greeting card territory [or think of those 'clever' this-is-what-life-is-like style slogans that people post on facebook], then, unfortunately, it sometimes does. Don’t get me wrong, Pessoa is a very fine writer, is witty and capable of profound insight, but occasionally he lapses into morose philosophising [I am like a flower, without its petals etc] and comes across like Forest Gump suffering from an existential crisis. In any case, this is well worth your time, if you approach it in the right frame of mind, and with the appropriate expectations. (less)

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