The Book of Disquiet, written by Fernando Pessoa, a Portuguese poet, is considered an early classic of existential writing. The Book of Disquiet Fernando Pessoa, Author, Maria Jose De Lancastre, Editor, Maria J. “The Book of Disquiet” by Fernando Pessoa is one such modern masterpiece that I read last week. I can’t outrun that, outthink that—and I also can’t be anyone else. The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa – review This collection of existential meanderings is perfect to dip into during sleepless nights Essays of alienation: Fernando Pessoa in 1914. An “autobiography” or “diary” containing exquisite melancholy observations, aphorisms, and ruminations, this classic work grapples with all the eternal questions. In this series, writers present the books they’re finally making time for. Photograph: Apic/ APIC, postmodernist poet posthumously adopted as part of the Portuguese canon, Fernando Pessoa (below) adopted a series of voices – or "heteronyms" – in which to write . The publication was credited to Bernardo Soares, one of the author's alternate writing names, which he called semi-heteronyms, and had a preface attributed to Fernando Pessoa, … It’s not the melancholy, really, that I’m finding comfort in: it’s the insistence on a self, on the self. There’s a dizzying, and occasionally terrifying and paralyzing kind … There are flashes of sly humour, too, moments when The Book of Disquiet reads like an existential Diary of a Nobody. Read honest and unbiased product reviews from our users. The Book of Disquiet is one of the great literary works of the twentieth century. There are characters and events, but I can find no thread to follow, no causes and effects. A look into one of literature's biggest tragedies and triumphs, The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa. With Cláudio da Silva, Pedro Lamares, Ricardo Aibéo, Suzie Peterson. Under the orthonym “Fernando Pessoa” he did write an introduction, but he credited the texts themselves to two different authors, his semi-heteronyms “Vicente Guedes” (who “endured his empty life with masterly indifference”) and “Bernardo Soares,” an assistant bookkeeper. During his lifetime, his only fame was as a minor literary figure who co-founded the short-lived publication. Directed by João Botelho. Disquiet book. . Finden Sie hilfreiche Kundenrezensionen und Rezensionsbewertungen für BK OF DISQUIET: The Complete Edition auf Amazon.de. Decadence is the total loss of unconsciousness, which is the very basis of life.” It's an odd, occasionally exasperating and sometimes beautiful book and one that will be your friend at 3am on a sleepless night. During his lifetime, his only fame was as a minor literary figure who co-founded the short-lived publication Orpheu; after his death in 1935, 25,000 documents – essays, plays, poems, even horoscopes – were found in his attic and the academic scramble to assemble them began. The way I see, the way I hear, the way I remember, the way I let inanimate things touch me, and -- most importantly -- the way I write have been forever changed by reading this strange … New York: New Directions. Soares’s loss—because it is in some ways a loss—felt like a message. One section describes how "the office boy left today", the phrase repeated until it is a lament. 'Book Of Disquiet' Reveals A Reclusive Author's Soul Author Fernando Pessoa may have been a loner who lived most of his life in a single room in Lisbon, Portugal. He employed more than 70 different characters, imaginary identities that read one another's writing and wrote one another's obituaries. I couldn’t properly recall the small details that mattered—the pattern of the flower beds in the Heather Garden, the weathering of the steps that lead up to the terrace, on which particular bench I last sat. The Book of Disquiet, by the Portuguese writer Fernando Pessoa, is properly speaking perhaps not a book at all, and I imagine Pessoa would not necessarily be pleased to have his name so prominently affixed to it. The Book of Disquiet (The Complete Edition). In The Book of Disquiet, though, there seems thus far to be no plot to lose. He is a man on first-name terms with tedium and despair, but he challenges these in his writing, dedicating himself to describing the nebulous, abstract and sometimes terrifying nature of consciousness with the exactitude of a divine book-keeper: "But there are also moments, like now, when I feel too oppressed and too aware of myself to be conscious of external things and everything then becomes for me a night of rain and mud, alone and lost in an abandoned railway station, where the last third-class train left hours ago and the next has yet to arrive.". Fernando Pessoa's meditative, poetic, melancholic, infuriatingly-apolitical The Book of Disquiet should be savored and read slowly to your sequential selves, the multitude that Pessoa has convinced me reside within all of us. A postmodernist poet posthumously adopted as part of the Portuguese canon, Fernando Pessoa (below) adopted a series of voices – or "heteronyms" – in which to write . Thanks for making it available."--K. For its entire four hundred plus pages it offers a philosophy of a melancholic life, a philosophy of dreaming, and a philosophy of art. Join the writers and staff of The Paris Review at our next event. He takes a simple gesture, a familiar place and transforms it magically into something more. He employed more than 70 different characters, imaginary identities that read one another's writing and wrote one another's obituaries. Every fragment feels self-contained, its connections to those on either side tenuous at best. 309, one of Bernardo Soares’s, in which he “daydreams” the journey from the capital to Cascais and back. The Book of Disquiet is incredibly aphoristic – one can take almost any sentence at random and use it as an aphorism… “And so, not knowing how to believe in God and unable to believe in an aggregate of animals, I, along with other people on the fringe, kept a distance from things, a distance commonly called Decadence. Maybe it is true that books find you when you need them: The Book of Disquiet sat on my shelf for at least a year before I took it down, sometime in February. An assembly of sometimes linked fragments, it is a mesmerising, haunting 'novel' without parallel in any other culture. I always lived an isolated life, which became more and more isolated the more I came to know myself.”. Maybe Pessoa had a plan in mind for his fragments, maybe there was a structure that we just can’t divine—the version I have, Margaret Jull Costa’s 2017 translation of Jerónimo Pizarro’s 2013 edition, is, I think, the first in English to present them as close to chronologically as scholars can figure out—but if any hypothetical order exists I’d rather not know: these are scattered times. Attributed to the heteronym Bernado Soares, THE BOOK OF DISQUIET is perhaps best described as an 'anti-literature'. David Jackson, Yale University. This collection of existential meanderings is perfect to dip into during sleepless nights, Essays of alienation: Fernando Pessoa in 1914. (The putative author of The Book of Disquiet is ``Bernardo Soares, Assistant Bookkeeper in the City of Lisbon.'') It feels churlish in these times to be bothered by slow internet, frustrated by a bad hair day, annoyed with a friend over something trivial when I can’t remember the last time I saw him. With its astounding hardcover reviews Richard Zenith's new complete translation of "The Book of Disquiet" has now taken on a similar iconic status to "Ulysses, The Trial" or "In Search of Lost Time" as one of the greatest but also strangest modernist texts. The Book of Disquiet review – a beautifully crafted Van der Aa theatre piece. In The Book of Disquiet, though, there seems thus far to be no plot to lose. 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