Pessoa's The Book of Disquiet

Several writers are mentioned in António Lobo Antunes' novel, including Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935), Portugal's greatest poet, whose longest work of prose, The Book of Disquiet, has recently been published in a new edition by the same translator as The Land at the End of the World.

In his poetry, Pessoa used a number of different voices, or heteronyms, each of which had their own name, personality and style. Only one of these, Bernardo Soares, narrates The Book of Disquiet, and Pessoa's introduction tells us that Soares is a writer working as a clerk in Lisbon.

The form of the book has been the subject of much dispute since it was first published posthumously in 1982. Because Pessoa wrote these short prose pieces on disparate scraps of paper and in notebooks, they have been shuffled numerous times by scholars with numbers to delineate each new piece, none of which are titled, not unlike Emily Dickinson's poetry.

The result is a patchwork that reads like the existential diary of a sensitive, intelligent, lonely man who happens to be a gifted writer.

"What I feel above all else is weariness and the disquiet that is the twin of weariness when it has no other reason to exist than the fact of existence itself."

This would be dreary reading were it not for Pessoa's exquisite style. For Soares, life is a series of lost connections that can be rejoined only in literature. As a result, writing takes primacy over everything else: "For me words are tangible bodies, visible sirens, sensualities made flesh."

Stephan Delbos can be reached at
sdelbos@praguepost.com