Reading 1001 discussion

Rating: 5 stars


This isn't really a novel or even an intentional book. Instead, it is an unfinished work constructed from thousands of manuscript pages and poetry written by the author and compiled posthumously. That alone makes it sound unappealing. It is also translated. Despite this, I can honestly say that this is some of the best writing I have ever encountered.

The "novel" is narrated by an introverted bookkeeper who is an alias of Pessoa. There really isn't a plot though, since it isn't really a novel. All that doesn't really matter once you become immersed in Pessoa's words of wisdom. So absolutely beautiful. You'll find yourself stopping a lot to highlight the quotes. Here are some examples:

"Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life."

“The feelings that hurt most, the emotions that sting most, are those that are absurd - The longing for impossible things, precisely because they are impossible; nostalgia for what never was; the desire for what could have been; regret over not being someone else; dissatisfaction with the world’s existence. All these half-tones of the soul’s consciousness create in us a painful landscape, an eternal sunset of what we are.”

“My soul is a hidden orchestra; I know not what instruments, what fiddlestrings and harps, drums and tamboura I sound and clash inside myself. All I hear is the symphony.”

"My past is everything I failed to be."

“I bear the wounds of all the battles I avoided.”

“My soul is impatient with itself, as with a bothersome child; its restlessness keeps growing and is forever the same. Everything interests me, but nothing holds me. I attend to everything, dreaming all the while.

“There are ships sailing to many ports, but not a single one goes where life is not painful.”

“I've never done anything but dream. This, and this alone, has been the meaning of my life. My only real concern has been my inner life.”

“I'd woken up early, and I took a long time getting ready to exist.”

“Everything around me is evaporating. My whole life, my memories, my imagination and its contents, my personality - it's all evaporating. I continuously feel that I was someone else, that I felt something else, that I thought something else. What I'm attending here is a show with another set. And the show I'm attending is myself.”

“We never love anyone. What we love is the idea we have of someone. It's our own concept—our own selves—that we love.”

“In order to understand, I destroyed myself.”

“The value of things is not the time they last, but the intensity with which they occur. That is why there are unforgettable moments and unique people!”

“We worship perfection because we can't have it; if we had it, we would reject it. Perfection is inhuman, because humanity is imperfect.”

Many claim that this book, The Book of Disquiet, is a masterpiece from one of the greatest poets of Portugal. It is also a bunch of disjointed writings found in a trunk and assembled by the translator.

Our narrator, Bernardo Soares, is not our author Fernando Pessoa, but is very much like him. Pessoa had other heteronyms, characters who wrote in completely different styles than he wrote in. Soares, in contrast, evidently has a very similar voice to Pessoa. Nevertheless, Soares is a bookkeeper who lives in rented rooms on the fourth floor and who works for a wholesale company, which does not align with Pessoa’s life. Also, Soares lost his mother at a young age and is often nostalgic for her while Pessoa’s mother did not die young.

Soares writes that he is incapable of writing a novel (291) and The Book of Disquiet appears to be proof of that. In the appendix Pessoa also states that he wants the dreaminess and logical disjointedness of intimate expression. This book is disjointed, often contradicting itself and does not naturally build to a greater understanding of the world, although you do gain a greater understanding of Pessoa. The book could be half as long, or it could go on forever….

I read a review in which someone said that this book should be read like a tincture, just a tiny bit at one time and I tend to think that that is true. There are wonderful descriptions of the sky and the weather over Lisbon (189). Our narrator tells us that he lives completely in the life of his dreams, both regular dreams but also intricate and detailed daydreams where he travels and interacts with activities he does not do in real life. However, he rarely shares these travels or the interactions with us. We hardly ever are introduced to anyone else, real or dream. We meet his work mates briefly but do not come to know them. We learn that he hates the office boy and yet is in devastated when the office boy leaves. We hear a singer from a faraway country. We meet the King of Bavaria and his coming to know death. We also share a rainy day with Soares and his mother when he was a child. Yet most of the book is about Soares estrangement from life and from his soul’s interaction with any life other than his dreams and we do not even have the pleasure of hearing about these dreams. At times he champions this life, and sets out to make a mastery of such a life. When he leans toward the life of the mind over action, I could at least understand this perspective, although it is not my own. However, he will sometimes lean all the way over to rejecting the life of the mind, reading, and ideas while proclaiming that the true and wisest life is one without reading or ideas and that only in dreams can one find the perfect balance of tedium which is the greatest one can expect from life. (89 – The only attitude worthy of a superior man is to persist in an activity he recognizes is useless) or (91 – The dreamer is the true man of action). His general philosophy in which the common man is regarded as little more than a beast of burden and in which he does not credit them with any life of the mind is so sad given that our narrator is a bookkeeper and believes he is a superior person because of his philosophies. In general, Soares is simply not interested in understanding anyone except himself and yet believes that is not truly possible. Soares admits that he is a failure at life. Over and over and over again, we hear his despair, his sadness, his being captured by tedium. He is almost Buddhist in his focus but completely not Buddhist in that he never gives up his dreams but instead nurtures them. Quote: We are drunk on not being anything, and our will is a bucket poured out on to the yard by the listless movement of a passing foot.

There are moments of true splendor, even if he is describing being lost and in despair and there are moments of laugh out loud funny even though he did not mean them to be funny (Advice to Unhappily Married Women). There are remarkable insights that I said “yes” to, such as the day after a sleepless night and 433’s “To realize that who we are is not ours to know...” More often, I found myself saying; “no” (To want is to be unable to achieve 392), (Imaginary figures have more depth and truth than real ones 415), although I did believe that they were true for Soares.

Soares says that: (215) “I’d like the reading of this book to leave you with the impression that you’ve traversed a sensual nightmare”. However, ultimately I found the book to reflect the main characters sadness and tedium too closely and I grew tired of the book. I agreed with him when he writes:

“The poem I dream has no flaws until I try to realize it “
And
“Everything, all that I’ve written, is grey”

This book is an enigma. It doesn't go anywhere, there is no plot, it is simply a collection of thoughts which were collected in a trunk and have been published without really understanding the author's intentions. Nevertheless the writing is beautiful, those thoughts are interesting, it is just not a work which one can read for long periods of time. It is something to be dipped into and savoured in small morsels.

This is a slog for me. I did not enjoy it as a novel because it is not a novel. It is a collections of one man's thoughts. Fernando Pessoa is a Portuguese man and this so called book was published posthumously. Yes there are some interesting sentences, prose, but it is not a novel. It used up an entire month which I can only regret. This man may have been deeply depressed and I can only think that his family wants to make money off his writings. I am not sure the man would have wanted it published.

Some quotes;
1. Each autumn that comes brings us closer to what will be our last autumn;
2. How am I to know what evils I may cause when I give alms, or if I attempt to educate or instruct? In case of doubt, I abstain. I believe, moreover, that to help or clarify is, in a way, to commit the evil of intervening in someone else’s life.
3. Yes, tedium is boredom with the world, the malaise of living, the weariness of having lived; in truth, tedium is the feeling in one’s flesh of the endless emptiness of things.

This book is "tedium". I will not go back to read this though I could see using it to find some great quotes perhaps.

Rating is less than 1 star but slightly more than 0.

"To read is to dream, guided by someone else's hand." - The Book of Disquiet

This is a long and dreamy mixture of fragments of life, philosophy, dreams, and soul-searching, told by Bernardo Soares, one of Pessoa's alter egos or heteronyms. According to the introduction and his own letters, Soares wrote and thought like Pessoa (or like him in a certain mood), but he had different life circumstances. Pessoa had a small private income that allowed him to live by his writing, while Soares worked as an accounts clerk whose office life sometimes inspires reflections in the book.

This is an amazing and fragmentary work, which Pessoa never finished and perhaps never would have, no matter how long he had lived. It is broken up into short sections and can either be dipped into or read slowly from start to end. I read 20 pages a day which worked for me. Loved it.