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自决之书
费尔南多·佩索阿一生都以异名进行创作，他生前一直默默无闻，他的作品在他死后才受到追捧，不仅被认为是葡萄牙文学史上的重要作家，还被誉为“欧洲现代主义的核心人物”。《自决之书》是佩索阿的散文集，涉及到了“莎士比亚”、“感觉主义”、“无政府主义”等主题。佩索阿“称自己的缺点则是有始无终”，因此，在文中可以见到一些未完成的句子。佩索阿在散文中记述了他的主要异名的起源，他以异名书写孤独，直抵人的内心深处……
196 pages, Kindle Edition
Published November 1, 2015
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 106 reviews
January 25, 2018
Review found in a drawer.
I’m all of these things, like it or not, in the confused depths of my fatal sensibility.
Sou todas essa coisas, embora o não queira, no fundo confuso da minha sensibilidade fatal.
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet/Livro do Desassossego.
The Education of the Stoic is the only legacy of the Baron of Teive, a manuscript with which he took the mirror of abstractions and reflected himself to explain why he wasn’t able to produce superior art, to write the books he wanted to. Explanations to illustrate the unutterable. The commonplace vacuum that feels unique.
I had scruples where other men didn’t think twice, and after seeing what I didn’t do done by others, I wondered: Why did I think so much if it only made me suffer?
All the factors that lead to look at such tragedy in the eye and accept it unreservedly; dealing, with pride, with the rejection of life itself. Acknowledging the parcial defeat of reason in the sphere of emotions, as he, amid a plethora of contradictions, refuses to be like just anybody, while being like just anybody.
But powerful as thought is, it can do nothing to quell rebellious emotions. We can’t choose not to feel, as we can not to walk.
The aristocrat and the assistant bookkeeper. Bernardo Soares’ presence palpitates with silent vehemence all around this book. His thoughts intermingle with the Baron’s musings and disclose the similarities of two individuals of different backgrounds, equally unfit to live life. The ode to brevity. Or the impossibility of writing an elaborated chapter.
Sometimes it is only one sentence. And by the end of it, everything trembles.
Do with the brutality that doing entails; renounce with the absoluteness of renunciation.
Everyone is renouncing. And the reader sees them vanishing. A surge of innocuous unawareness leaving behind a wounded path. Things become real once lost. Things are lost unbeknownst to them. They have written on selfish air; the reader, on self-centered stone.
The Baron’s collection of thoughts and rejections to theories that reduce truth to simplicity, of regrets and a proud denial of ever having regrets, of silent competitions and unachievable art, of voices unheard and impracticable faith - this is his testament. A manuscript on how the idea of perfection eclipsed the author’s life, on the indignity of weeping before the world and other similar banalities. An analysis on the fatal nature of lucidity. Inconclusive, unconnected fragments to justify “the profession of nonproducer.”
These pages are not my confession; they’re my definition.
Pessoa, Tabucci and Zenith constitute the Appendix. Among the texts, there is an act of giving voice to the regular human nature that literary work set aside at times. Conclusions about the days that belong only to the writer. To the greatest novelist without a novel.
The weight of life overpowers everything, and at the threshold of annihilation, the Baron of Teive admits he has been conquered, and makes himself a conqueror. A raw complaint to a stoic succession of nothingness in the midst of ephemeral hope, as identities juxtapose, merge, and evanesce.
Easy, kiddo, no one will notice the voiceless outburst.
May 27, 17
* Also on my blog.
** Other reviews:
The Book of Disquiet
A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe: Selected Poems
The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa
El Banquero Anarquista (written in Spanish)
July 16, 2020
Pessoa es de mis grandes descubrimientos de este año y hacer una reseña de estas meditaciones o pensamientos resulta algo difícil, ya que es un libro muy cortito pero con bastante profundidad y solamente dejare algunos ejemplos de los que más me gustaron pera invitarlos a darle una oportunidad al autor.
“para que un hombre pueda ser distintiva y absolutamente moral, tiene que ser un poco estúpido. Para que un hombre pueda ser absolutamente intelectual, tiene que ser un poco inmoral”
“no enseñes nada, ya que aún tienes que aprenderlo todo”
“me había vuelto objetivo para conmigo, pero no alcanzaba a distinguir si con eso me había encontrado o me había perdido”
“casi todas las reformas sociales son concepciones románticas, un esfuerzo por adaptar la realidad a nuestros deseos”
“los dioses actúan sobre nosotros del mismo modo que nosotros actuamos con los animales y todo cuanto sea inferior a nosotros”
“nacemos sin saber hablar y morimos sin haber llegado saber a decir”
"son muchas las cuestiones que tratamos, y mucho es el tiempo que perdemos en descubrir que nada podemos hacer al respecto. Dejarlas de lado, como quien pasa sin querer ver, seria mucho para el hombre y poco para dios; entregarnos a ellas, como quien se entrega a un señor, seria vender lo que no tenemos”
“para que un hombre pueda ser distintiva y absolutamente moral, tiene que ser un poco estúpido. Para que un hombre pueda ser absolutamente intelectual, tiene que ser un poco inmoral”
“no enseñes nada, ya que aún tienes que aprenderlo todo”
“me había vuelto objetivo para conmigo, pero no alcanzaba a distinguir si con eso me había encontrado o me había perdido”
“casi todas las reformas sociales son concepciones románticas, un esfuerzo por adaptar la realidad a nuestros deseos”
“los dioses actúan sobre nosotros del mismo modo que nosotros actuamos con los animales y todo cuanto sea inferior a nosotros”
“nacemos sin saber hablar y morimos sin haber llegado saber a decir”
"son muchas las cuestiones que tratamos, y mucho es el tiempo que perdemos en descubrir que nada podemos hacer al respecto. Dejarlas de lado, como quien pasa sin querer ver, seria mucho para el hombre y poco para dios; entregarnos a ellas, como quien se entrega a un señor, seria vender lo que no tenemos”
July 19, 2017
Another heteronym, a disparate vantage, a discarded entrée. Pessoa was myriad, his entrances were random and multiple. The titular character here is a stub, a runt, an admixture of about two ideas with a dangling quote to afford it a macabre sheen. I devoted all of two minutes to see if there was a decent biography in English. I couldn't find one. Is that suitable preamble for suicide? As I age the weighty issues are not Death and Peace, nor Sex and the Sublime. Matters these days require more of a technical manual. The heterodoxy on display in this Pessoa is foreign but hardly enticing.
Ash finished Infinite Jest and I feel as if he and I are speaking into soup cans--though these remain unlinked and thus boringly autistic. Much as this text ponders the poets of pessimism, Pessoa and DFW didn't allow the Void to temper their prolix output.
Where to go from here? Casanova is admittedly appetizing at the moment.
Ash finished Infinite Jest and I feel as if he and I are speaking into soup cans--though these remain unlinked and thus boringly autistic. Much as this text ponders the poets of pessimism, Pessoa and DFW didn't allow the Void to temper their prolix output.
Where to go from here? Casanova is admittedly appetizing at the moment.
August 8, 2025
'Don't teach others anything, as you yourself still have everything to learn'.
The Baron of Teive, who wrote the very short manuscript called The Education of the Stoic , is a curious figure, and his legacy in the shape of the manuscript feels pathetic in all its gruesomeness. Yet it is a very poignant study, and one touched by the cruel breath of realism. He is a coldly cynical hater of society. He is a fanatic, a sincere man, and impervious to every outside emotion. Because of that and much moreover this is an anarchist tale. The ending is 😉
The Baron of Teive, who wrote the very short manuscript called The Education of the Stoic , is a curious figure, and his legacy in the shape of the manuscript feels pathetic in all its gruesomeness. Yet it is a very poignant study, and one touched by the cruel breath of realism. He is a coldly cynical hater of society. He is a fanatic, a sincere man, and impervious to every outside emotion. Because of that and much moreover this is an anarchist tale. The ending is 😉
January 3, 2010
"I'm going to end a life that I thought could contain every kind of greatness but that in fact consisted only of my incapacity to really want to be great."
The Portuguese poet & essayist Fernando Pessoa is one of literature's Peculiar Characters, probably best known (to those to whom he's known at all) for his Book of Disquiet, a series of melancholy musings that lead absolutely nowhere but are a tonic one page at a time. Pessoa was fond of writing under "heteronyms" – authors distilled from various streams of his psyche. The Education of the Stoic is by the 14th (or 20th) Baron of Teive, the most pessimistic of the heteronyms. It was ostensibly discovered at the back of a desk drawer in a hotel room, but in fact discovered in one of Pessoa's notebooks. So it's an imaginary "found manuscript" that in reality really was discovered and pieced together.
Baron Teive's reflections are literally suicidal. His notes to himself sum up the failure of his life; once complete, he intends to finish himself off (and the book begins with a regretful obituary). It was the perfect book for the end of 2009, and no doubt it says something dire about me that when a friend met me at Peet's on New Year's Eve, I was chuckling over a self-castigatory epigram: "I have all the conditions for happiness, save happiness."
The Portuguese poet & essayist Fernando Pessoa is one of literature's Peculiar Characters, probably best known (to those to whom he's known at all) for his Book of Disquiet, a series of melancholy musings that lead absolutely nowhere but are a tonic one page at a time. Pessoa was fond of writing under "heteronyms" – authors distilled from various streams of his psyche. The Education of the Stoic is by the 14th (or 20th) Baron of Teive, the most pessimistic of the heteronyms. It was ostensibly discovered at the back of a desk drawer in a hotel room, but in fact discovered in one of Pessoa's notebooks. So it's an imaginary "found manuscript" that in reality really was discovered and pieced together.
Baron Teive's reflections are literally suicidal. His notes to himself sum up the failure of his life; once complete, he intends to finish himself off (and the book begins with a regretful obituary). It was the perfect book for the end of 2009, and no doubt it says something dire about me that when a friend met me at Peet's on New Year's Eve, I was chuckling over a self-castigatory epigram: "I have all the conditions for happiness, save happiness."
August 16, 2022
Very strange book. With the Baron de Teive speaking, one of the many alter egos of Pessoa, but clearly his most mysanthropic one.
April 3, 2016
I tried to read Disquiet, and failed, which doesn't happen too often. I partially blame Pessoa himself, or perhaps just me, since I have a really, really hard time getting into pessimistic writings that don't seem to be ironic, or funny, and have nothing solid to fall back on: Auschwitz, say, or Communism, or slavery. I partially blame his translator and acolyte, Richard Zenith, not just because I refuse to believe that a man exists whose parents gave him the name Dick Zenith, but also because I just don't like the way he writes, whether that be his editorial materials (which tend to the endless plot summary, quite a trick given that these works have no plot; and also towards the hagiographic, whether the hagio is Pessoa's works, and they can do no wrong), or his translations. Of course, I know jack Portugese, so maybe that's how Pessoa writes: over-wrought, under-thought.
A friend suggested I start with the Baron of Teive, instead, and I'm very glad I did. It helps that this text is short, I won't lie; it also helps that there's so much more self-reflection about the pessimism; and it helps that the pessimism leads somewhere, i.e., suicide. That's grim praise, but nonetheless.
The Education comprises fragments, of course, but Dick Zenith has put them in a good order: a little bit of literary criticism of previous pessimists (Chateaubriand, Roussea, Quental, Leopardi), some 'biography' of the Baron, some general reflections. But it's the overall structure that helped me enjoy this so much: the Baron is writing his "definition" (not, he stresses, confession), which will end with his suicide. Why is he killing himself? Well, for the usual modern reasons: anomie, enforced atheism, Hamlet syndrome.
If it was just that, I wouldn't have enjoyed this any more than the few bits I read of Disquiet. However, Stoic goes on step further, at least implicitly: the Baron kills himself, not because of those things, but because the doctrine on which he relied--i.e., pessimism--turns out to be as empty and shallow as any other doctrine. He returns again and again to the excellent point that the pessimists who don't have any social complaints to make are just being ridiculous: "I am shy with women: therefore there is no God" is a highly unconvincing metaphysics, as Pessoa wrote in a fragment on Leopardi. As the Baron writes, "There's something vile--and all the more vile because ridiculous--in the tendency of feeble men to make universal tragedies out of the sad comedies of their private woes."
The blurbs and afterwords ask us to think that this book is far more grim than Pessoa's other work, because it ends in suicide. That's inaccurate. It's pretty grim for the Baron, but for the rest of us, it's a fascinating piece of self-criticism, in which the dregs of romanticism and pessimism are shown up for the sillinesses that they are, and the suicide of an individual is shown to be entirely personal. Nobody kills themselves because of cosmic indifference, and to profess otherwise is vile. The implication, of course, is that life is worth living, most of the time. Not something the pessimist wants to hear.
A friend suggested I start with the Baron of Teive, instead, and I'm very glad I did. It helps that this text is short, I won't lie; it also helps that there's so much more self-reflection about the pessimism; and it helps that the pessimism leads somewhere, i.e., suicide. That's grim praise, but nonetheless.
The Education comprises fragments, of course, but Dick Zenith has put them in a good order: a little bit of literary criticism of previous pessimists (Chateaubriand, Roussea, Quental, Leopardi), some 'biography' of the Baron, some general reflections. But it's the overall structure that helped me enjoy this so much: the Baron is writing his "definition" (not, he stresses, confession), which will end with his suicide. Why is he killing himself? Well, for the usual modern reasons: anomie, enforced atheism, Hamlet syndrome.
If it was just that, I wouldn't have enjoyed this any more than the few bits I read of Disquiet. However, Stoic goes on step further, at least implicitly: the Baron kills himself, not because of those things, but because the doctrine on which he relied--i.e., pessimism--turns out to be as empty and shallow as any other doctrine. He returns again and again to the excellent point that the pessimists who don't have any social complaints to make are just being ridiculous: "I am shy with women: therefore there is no God" is a highly unconvincing metaphysics, as Pessoa wrote in a fragment on Leopardi. As the Baron writes, "There's something vile--and all the more vile because ridiculous--in the tendency of feeble men to make universal tragedies out of the sad comedies of their private woes."
The blurbs and afterwords ask us to think that this book is far more grim than Pessoa's other work, because it ends in suicide. That's inaccurate. It's pretty grim for the Baron, but for the rest of us, it's a fascinating piece of self-criticism, in which the dregs of romanticism and pessimism are shown up for the sillinesses that they are, and the suicide of an individual is shown to be entirely personal. Nobody kills themselves because of cosmic indifference, and to profess otherwise is vile. The implication, of course, is that life is worth living, most of the time. Not something the pessimist wants to hear.
July 18, 2018
I këndshëm, i veçantë, i sinqertë...por disi shumë i stërholluar për t'u përqafuar tërësisht. 3.5/5 ⭐️
January 26, 2021
Composed as the mirror opposite of Bernardo Soares from The Book of Disquiet, the Baron of Tieve is a perfectionist who is incapable of finishing anything he writes. Unable to sublimate his woes, the Baron’s logic ultimately leads him to desire suicide as a result.
Unfortunately, The Education of the Stoic is too much of a sketch to be any good as it suffers from a dearth of greater material, but it does, however, provide another insight into Pessoa, especially with regards to his sexual frustration. This book basically consists of autobiographical reflections on the heteronym’s failures coupled with suicidal thoughts. There are a couple of interesting fragments, but if you’re expecting something profound like The Book of Disquiet then you won’t find it here.
1.5-2
Unfortunately, The Education of the Stoic is too much of a sketch to be any good as it suffers from a dearth of greater material, but it does, however, provide another insight into Pessoa, especially with regards to his sexual frustration. This book basically consists of autobiographical reflections on the heteronym’s failures coupled with suicidal thoughts. There are a couple of interesting fragments, but if you’re expecting something profound like The Book of Disquiet then you won’t find it here.
1.5-2
December 8, 2018
جرعة أوتوبيوغرافية تتلخص في اثنين: كبرياءٌ، وعقلانية.
July 12, 2020
Portuguese author Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935) was a multitude of writers: his works were composed by “heteronyms,” alter egos with distinct biographies, ideologies, influences, even horoscopes. The Education of the Stoic is the only work left by the Baron of Teive, who, having destroyed all his previous attempts at literary creation, and about to destroy himself, explains “the impossibility of producing superior art.”
November 23, 2007
hundreds. he had hundreds of heteronyms. most people can't even count to a hundred.
November 13, 2025
Wat een spijt dat er weinig geschreven is onder dit heteroniem. Als je begint met lezen word je voorgesteld met de zelfmoord van het heteroniem. Hierdoor verwachte ik, zoals we van Pessoa gewend zijn, en vrij pessimistische redevoering. Had ik de titel van het boek beter onthouden, dan was het mij opgevallen dat dit heteroniem een stoïcijn is. Er zitten in het boek wel pessimistische aforismen, overigens, maar in mindere mate vergeleken andere werken.
Baron van Teive, het heteroniem, is rationalistischer van aard dan ik had verwacht. Omdat Baron van Teive zijn volledig gebruik heeft gemaakt van de rede neemt hij zijn leven. Iets wat weer slaat op zijn stoïcisme, het is een daad niet vanuit het gevoel, maar een wel doordacht besluit.
Baron van Teive, het heteroniem, is rationalistischer van aard dan ik had verwacht. Omdat Baron van Teive zijn volledig gebruik heeft gemaakt van de rede neemt hij zijn leven. Iets wat weer slaat op zijn stoïcisme, het is een daad niet vanuit het gevoel, maar een wel doordacht besluit.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 20, 2025
Supongo que es el equivalente de ‘Hábitos atómicos' y 'El monje que vendió su ferrari' para los intelectuales del siglo XX.
June 14, 2016
not my favorite Pessoa, but such a quick little read that I can't help but appreciate it enough to give it 5 stars. honestly its so comic, this portrait of stoicism. Cato as a pun, almost. It seems a lot of people take this seriously as some sort of tragic expose of the existential royal, but its sarcasm is self-evident. maybe the english translation is too lighthearted but Zenith i believe usually does a very good job at keeping with Pessoa's tone. Now keep in mind that this version of Pessoa is upper-class, compared to Disquiet's middle-class bookkeeper, and this actually does inform the reader I believe in recognizing the lightness. The reality of Tieve is characterized by extreme lightness, whereas Soares has presumably more real-life worries since he is not a royal who has nothing to do but BE/eat/survive/sleep. The baron of tieve is a caricature of high society that reminds me a lot of Waugh's characters in a handful of dust. dark comedy, damn
June 4, 2018
لقد سمعت عن بيسو كثيرا وجذبني العنوان بشدة لكن لم يرقى هذا الكتاب لمستوى التوقعات. وجدته ضائع جدا او ربما ضاع كل شيء في الترجمة ولكن في غمرة هذا الضياع ما زال بالإمكان ايجاد احساس عالي وافكار جميلة
September 21, 2017
One possible title that Fernando Pessoa considered for the work published as The Education of the Stoic was The Profession of Nonproducer. The Baron of Teive is one of Pessoa's many "heteronyms," and according to Richard Zenith, the editor and translator of this edition, one of Pessoa's most important heteronyms, one that he considered as a collaborating author for his best-known work (that I've yet to read), The Book of Disquiet. Zenith, in his afterword to this work, links the heteronym who authored The Book of Disquiet, Bernardo Soares, together with Teive and Pessoa himself in many ways -- philosophically, with regard to the details of their personal lives and in terms of their work. If Pessoa adopted his heteronyms to free himself of certain thoughts or ideas, he was also bound to them, and they to him. And while no heteronym was entirely Pessoa, Zenith makes the compelling case that he (as could be said of many authors) became in some ways like his creations over time, absorbing some of their fictional characteristics into his real life: "The masks . . . had become almost indistinguishable from the man who had fashioned them."
Like the Baron of Teive, whose only manuscript is this fragmented work (The Education of the Stoic), so Pessoa wrote prolifically but his output was always unfinished, consisting of many fragments, never (or rarely at best) entirely completed (what is ever entirely complete?). The same, of course, could be said of many writers -- I thought of Fitzgerald's sketches contained in The Crack-Up and his Last Tycoon, of Proust and of Joyce, though in the latter cases it was the sureness of death that cut them short rather than waning interest or other distractions. I was, in reading this, left wondering, if there can be so much profundity packed into this unfinished sketch of a suicidal Baron, how brilliant might a completed work have been?
In the Appendix to this work, Pessoa includes the following musings on Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Kubla Khan", which I copy here despite the length of this passage:
The marginal notes to the history of literature record, as a curiosity, the manner in which Coleridge composed and wrote his 'Kubla Khan.' This quasi-poem is one of the most extraordinary poems of English literature. . . .
The poem -- Coleridge tells us -- was composed in a dream. . . . One day, after taking a pain reliever, he fell asleep for three hours, during which (he says) he composed the poem, whose images and corresponding verbal expressions arose in his spirit together and without effort.
Once awake he proceeded to write down what he composed. He had already written thirty lines when a visitor -- 'a man from Porlock' -- was announced. Coleridge felt obliged to receive the visitor, who detained him for about an hour. When he went back to transcribing what he'd composed in his dream, he realized he had forgotten the rest of what he had to write. All he could remember was the poem's conclusion . . . .
And so we have this fragment or these fragments known as 'Kubla Khan' -- the beginning and the end of something wondrously otherworldly, couched in mysterious terms that our imagination cannot humanly picture, and we shudder before our ignorance of what the plot might have been. Edgar Allan Poe (Coleridge's disciple, whether he knew it or not) never, in verse or prose, touched the Other World in such a spontaneous way or with such frightful plenitude. In Poe's writings, with all of their coldness, something of our world remains, albeit negatively; in 'Kubla Khan' everything is foreign, from the Beyond, and this no-one-knows-quite-what takes place in an Orient that's impossible but that the poet positively saw.
Coleridge gives us no details about that 'man from Porlock' whom so many, like me, have cursed. Was it by sheer coincidence that this unknown interrupter showed up and obstructed communication between the abyss and life? Or was the apparent coincidence born of one of those real, occult presences that seem to deliberately thwart even the intuitive, lawful revelation of the Mysteries, as well as the transcription of dreams in which some such revelation might lurk?
Whatever the case, I believe that Coleridge's experience is an extreme example, serving as a vivid allegory of what happens to all of us when in this world we try, with the sensibility that goes into art, to communicate -- like false pontiffs -- with the Other World of ourselves.
All of us compose our works in a dream, even if we compose them while awake. And 'the man from Porlock,' the inevitable interrupter, inwardly visits all of us, even if we never have any visitors. All that we truly think or feel, all that we truly are -- as soon as we try to express it, even if only to ourselves -- suffers the fatal interruption of that visitor who we also are, that person from the outside who is inside us all, more real in life than we ourselves, than the living summation of all we've learned, all we think we are, and all we'd like to be. . . .
We all, because we're weak, must receive that visitor, that interrupter -- forever unknown since he's not 'someone,' although he's us; forever anonymous since he's 'impersonal,' although alive . . . And all that really survives, whether we be great or small artists, are fragments of we don't know what but which would have been, if realized, the very expression of our soul.
If only we knew how to be children, such that we wouldn't have visitors, nor feel obliged to receive them if we did! But we don't want to keep that nonexistent visitor waiting; we don't want to offend that 'stranger,' who is us. And so, instead of what could have been, we're left with merely what is: instead of the poem, or the opera omnia , just the beginning and end of something lost -- disjecta membra which, as Carlyle said, are what remain of any poet, or of any man.
And, yes, this is true of art and also of life. 'What is' never is quite as rich as what could have been. But what could have been can never be realized, because even what could have been is just one of many possibilities. To the imagination, what could be is always better than what is. In the end, though, we must make the best of it. "One must," as Camus says, "imagine Sisyphus happy." Otherwise we end up like the sexually and artistically frustrated Baron of Teive, captive to reason and pride, and the authors of our own doom (because only this can we control).
Like the Baron of Teive, whose only manuscript is this fragmented work (The Education of the Stoic), so Pessoa wrote prolifically but his output was always unfinished, consisting of many fragments, never (or rarely at best) entirely completed (what is ever entirely complete?). The same, of course, could be said of many writers -- I thought of Fitzgerald's sketches contained in The Crack-Up and his Last Tycoon, of Proust and of Joyce, though in the latter cases it was the sureness of death that cut them short rather than waning interest or other distractions. I was, in reading this, left wondering, if there can be so much profundity packed into this unfinished sketch of a suicidal Baron, how brilliant might a completed work have been?
In the Appendix to this work, Pessoa includes the following musings on Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Kubla Khan", which I copy here despite the length of this passage:
The marginal notes to the history of literature record, as a curiosity, the manner in which Coleridge composed and wrote his 'Kubla Khan.' This quasi-poem is one of the most extraordinary poems of English literature. . . .
The poem -- Coleridge tells us -- was composed in a dream. . . . One day, after taking a pain reliever, he fell asleep for three hours, during which (he says) he composed the poem, whose images and corresponding verbal expressions arose in his spirit together and without effort.
Once awake he proceeded to write down what he composed. He had already written thirty lines when a visitor -- 'a man from Porlock' -- was announced. Coleridge felt obliged to receive the visitor, who detained him for about an hour. When he went back to transcribing what he'd composed in his dream, he realized he had forgotten the rest of what he had to write. All he could remember was the poem's conclusion . . . .
And so we have this fragment or these fragments known as 'Kubla Khan' -- the beginning and the end of something wondrously otherworldly, couched in mysterious terms that our imagination cannot humanly picture, and we shudder before our ignorance of what the plot might have been. Edgar Allan Poe (Coleridge's disciple, whether he knew it or not) never, in verse or prose, touched the Other World in such a spontaneous way or with such frightful plenitude. In Poe's writings, with all of their coldness, something of our world remains, albeit negatively; in 'Kubla Khan' everything is foreign, from the Beyond, and this no-one-knows-quite-what takes place in an Orient that's impossible but that the poet positively saw.
Coleridge gives us no details about that 'man from Porlock' whom so many, like me, have cursed. Was it by sheer coincidence that this unknown interrupter showed up and obstructed communication between the abyss and life? Or was the apparent coincidence born of one of those real, occult presences that seem to deliberately thwart even the intuitive, lawful revelation of the Mysteries, as well as the transcription of dreams in which some such revelation might lurk?
Whatever the case, I believe that Coleridge's experience is an extreme example, serving as a vivid allegory of what happens to all of us when in this world we try, with the sensibility that goes into art, to communicate -- like false pontiffs -- with the Other World of ourselves.
All of us compose our works in a dream, even if we compose them while awake. And 'the man from Porlock,' the inevitable interrupter, inwardly visits all of us, even if we never have any visitors. All that we truly think or feel, all that we truly are -- as soon as we try to express it, even if only to ourselves -- suffers the fatal interruption of that visitor who we also are, that person from the outside who is inside us all, more real in life than we ourselves, than the living summation of all we've learned, all we think we are, and all we'd like to be. . . .
We all, because we're weak, must receive that visitor, that interrupter -- forever unknown since he's not 'someone,' although he's us; forever anonymous since he's 'impersonal,' although alive . . . And all that really survives, whether we be great or small artists, are fragments of we don't know what but which would have been, if realized, the very expression of our soul.
If only we knew how to be children, such that we wouldn't have visitors, nor feel obliged to receive them if we did! But we don't want to keep that nonexistent visitor waiting; we don't want to offend that 'stranger,' who is us. And so, instead of what could have been, we're left with merely what is: instead of the poem, or the opera omnia , just the beginning and end of something lost -- disjecta membra which, as Carlyle said, are what remain of any poet, or of any man.
And, yes, this is true of art and also of life. 'What is' never is quite as rich as what could have been. But what could have been can never be realized, because even what could have been is just one of many possibilities. To the imagination, what could be is always better than what is. In the end, though, we must make the best of it. "One must," as Camus says, "imagine Sisyphus happy." Otherwise we end up like the sexually and artistically frustrated Baron of Teive, captive to reason and pride, and the authors of our own doom (because only this can we control).
October 30, 2022
Es muy probable que esté escribiendo una burrada porque no conozco lo suficiente de Pessoa, pero en este libro es más larga la explicación editorial sobre su valor (en la que hay mucha referencia al resto de su obra) que el texto mismo. Eso ya me pone en guardia.
Se supone que vendría siendo otro de sus heterónimos (el Barón de Teive), un tipo que comienza comentando sus intenciones suicidas ("Soy libre y estoy decidido. Matarme; ahora voy a matarme. Pero quiero dejar, al menos, con la precisión con que pueda realizarla, una memoria intelectual de mi vida, un cuadro interior de lo que fui"), luego nos cuenta que tuvo un día la ocasión de casarse, "acaso de ser feliz, con una muchacha muy sencilla, pero entre ella y yo se interpusieron en la indecisión de mi alma catorce generaciones de barones, la visión del pueblo riéndose de mi boda, el sarcasmo de los amigos que nunca fueron íntimos, un desaliento hecho de nimiedades, pero de tantas nimiedades, que me pesaba como si hubiera cometido un crimen. Y así fue cómo yo, hombre de inteligencia y desprendimiento, perdí la felicidad por causa de los vecinos a los que desprecio", y finalmente insiste e insiste en su vocación por el análisis racional frente al dolor de la existencia.
Menos que meh.
Se supone que vendría siendo otro de sus heterónimos (el Barón de Teive), un tipo que comienza comentando sus intenciones suicidas ("Soy libre y estoy decidido. Matarme; ahora voy a matarme. Pero quiero dejar, al menos, con la precisión con que pueda realizarla, una memoria intelectual de mi vida, un cuadro interior de lo que fui"), luego nos cuenta que tuvo un día la ocasión de casarse, "acaso de ser feliz, con una muchacha muy sencilla, pero entre ella y yo se interpusieron en la indecisión de mi alma catorce generaciones de barones, la visión del pueblo riéndose de mi boda, el sarcasmo de los amigos que nunca fueron íntimos, un desaliento hecho de nimiedades, pero de tantas nimiedades, que me pesaba como si hubiera cometido un crimen. Y así fue cómo yo, hombre de inteligencia y desprendimiento, perdí la felicidad por causa de los vecinos a los que desprecio", y finalmente insiste e insiste en su vocación por el análisis racional frente al dolor de la existencia.
Menos que meh.
February 19, 2019
"ما أن ينوجد الذكاء، تصبح كلّ الحياة مستحيلة".
في كل مرة أقرأ لـ "بيسوا" أشعر أنني متورط به لأنني لا أستطيع الفكاك من طبيعة قلقه الذي يشبهني، أشعر أنه يتقمصني ويعيد كتابتي على الورق، مثلما يجيد التنكر في شخصيات أخرى ليتمكن من خلالها التعبير عن نفسه، وهو شعور يندر أن أصادفه مع من أقرأ لهم حتى وأن كانوا من كتابي المفضلين. أنها ميزة لا تنعكس إلا في كتابات "بيسوا" وتعابيره وحدود لغته، ولهذا أنا ممتنٌ له وللغته وفلسفته في تجريد قلق الفرد وإعادة صياغته بطريقة سلسه على الفهم وعميقة في المعنى وشكل المفردة. تشربت النصيّن الأخيرين من الكتاب بكل جوارحي، وقد تكون من أبرز النصوص الطويلة التي كتبها "بيسوا" ولا يوجد فيها فقرة واحدة لا تشعر من خلال قرائتها بأنها لا تنعكس عليك. تجربة القراءة لـ "بيسوا" دائماً ما تكون خفيفة وممتعة وسريعة بالنسبة ليّ، لذلك لا أصاب بحالة التخمة والضجر حينما أقرأ له، ولا أعرف لذلك تفسيراً إلا أنني من المتعصبين لأسلوبه وفلسفته، بالنهاية هي مسألة ذوق ومزاج معين.. وهنا تكمن صعوبة فهم ذلك وتفسيره.
في كل مرة أقرأ لـ "بيسوا" أشعر أنني متورط به لأنني لا أستطيع الفكاك من طبيعة قلقه الذي يشبهني، أشعر أنه يتقمصني ويعيد كتابتي على الورق، مثلما يجيد التنكر في شخصيات أخرى ليتمكن من خلالها التعبير عن نفسه، وهو شعور يندر أن أصادفه مع من أقرأ لهم حتى وأن كانوا من كتابي المفضلين. أنها ميزة لا تنعكس إلا في كتابات "بيسوا" وتعابيره وحدود لغته، ولهذا أنا ممتنٌ له وللغته وفلسفته في تجريد قلق الفرد وإعادة صياغته بطريقة سلسه على الفهم وعميقة في المعنى وشكل المفردة. تشربت النصيّن الأخيرين من الكتاب بكل جوارحي، وقد تكون من أبرز النصوص الطويلة التي كتبها "بيسوا" ولا يوجد فيها فقرة واحدة لا تشعر من خلال قرائتها بأنها لا تنعكس عليك. تجربة القراءة لـ "بيسوا" دائماً ما تكون خفيفة وممتعة وسريعة بالنسبة ليّ، لذلك لا أصاب بحالة التخمة والضجر حينما أقرأ له، ولا أعرف لذلك تفسيراً إلا أنني من المتعصبين لأسلوبه وفلسفته، بالنهاية هي مسألة ذوق ومزاج معين.. وهنا تكمن صعوبة فهم ذلك وتفسيره.
April 29, 2015
This short work is a collection of observations and reflections of life by the Baron of Tieve, the fictional "quasi-author" who contributed to Pessoa's famous novel The Book of Disquiet. The baron was a sensitive and tortured soul, who spent much of his life in solitude and ultimately committed suicide due to his immense unhappiness and inability to find love with a woman. Although this book has a high rating on Goodreads I could not connect with it, as I found the baron's comments to be obtuse, morbid and banal. Your mileage may vary with this one.
July 30, 2021
"حين استبد الخوف بيسوا، اخترع هذا البارون كي ينقذ نفسه هو. لقد حول كلّ وضوحه الصارم إلى هذا النبل الحزين، الذي لم يستطع تحمله، لأنه كان يشعر بثقل هذا الوضوح، حيث أن تحمله لم يكن يشكل جزءًا من دوره. لقد ولد بارون تيف من أجل أن يموت."
"آمن بيسوا بأنه أشياء كثيرة."
أُحب بيسوا، أُحبه إلى حدّ غير معقول. أحب أن أقرأه، أن أعرفه، أن أستمع إلى أفكاره وأن أراه.. كُلُه دون نقصان.
"آمن بيسوا بأنه أشياء كثيرة."
أُحب بيسوا، أُحبه إلى حدّ غير معقول. أحب أن أقرأه، أن أعرفه، أن أستمع إلى أفكاره وأن أراه.. كُلُه دون نقصان.
March 4, 2013
«Confesándome vencido, me declaro vencedor»
August 11, 2015
Sin duda uno de los autores más significativos por estos días.
March 30, 2018
"لقد ولد بارون تيف من أجل أن يموت"
April 27, 2018
يصف ريتشارد زينت
هذا الكتاب بأنه كتاب الأنتحار - لا أنتحار لرجل واحد فقط بل أنتحار المبدع الذي يصدم بإمكانياته المحدودة .
October 12, 2021
بارون تيف هو أحد أنداد بيسوا، يعتبر هذا كتابه الوحيد أو مجموعة مقالاته الوحيدة عن شخص سمته الكبرياء والعدمية.
December 15, 2024
il Barone di Tieve si spaventò. O meglio: Pessoa spaventato, creò il Barone per salvare se stesso. Trasferì tutta la sua implacabile lucidità al povero nobiluomo che non fu in grado di sopportarla, perché la lucidità era troppa e perché sopportarla era qualcosa che non era previsto nel suo ruolo. Il Barone di Tieve nacque per morire (tratto dalle conclusioni ‘post-mortem’ di Richard Zenith)
February 4, 2020
Otro libro de un alter-ego de Pessoa (si así podemos llamarlo) y como en libro del desasosiego, la complicación de su escritura y traducción no impiden disfrutar de algunas frases de las que no se olvidan.
Un libro que no lleva leerlo con calma más de un par de horas y que deja ideas grabadas.
Un libro que no lleva leerlo con calma más de un par de horas y que deja ideas grabadas.
February 1, 2023
Hay páginas [...] que me angustian; parecen escritas, no diría por mí -aunque serían para mí un absurdo familiar- sino por un hermano gemelo que no tuve, alguien que es lo mismo que yo soy de forma diferente.
Es la misma sensación antes descrita la que despierta con zozobra en mí, es a la vez, el libro que el Barón no pudo concluir y que probablemente yo jamás sea capaz de escribir.
Es la misma sensación antes descrita la que despierta con zozobra en mí, es a la vez, el libro que el Barón no pudo concluir y que probablemente yo jamás sea capaz de escribir.
April 23, 2020
Uma completa psicologia do pensamento de Fernando Pessoa, com direito a boas referências freudianas.
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