The literary life of Pessoa’s alter ego (2020)

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33 points·prismatic··2 comments

From the Book of Disquiet: "I see life as a roadside inn where I have to stay until the coach from the abyss pulls up. I don’t know where it will take me, because I don’t know anything. I could see this inn as a prison, for I’m compelled to wait in it; I could see it as a social centre, for it’s here that I meet others. But I’m neither impatient nor common. I leave who will to stay shut up in their rooms, sprawled out on beds where they sleeplessly wait, and I leave who will to chat in the parlours, from where their songs and voices conveniently drift out here to me. I’m sitting at the door, feasting my eyes and ears on the colours and sounds of the landscape, and I softly sing – for myself alone – wispy songs I compose while waiting."

Also from the Book of Disquiet:

> Put your hands together, place them between mine and listen to me, my love.

> In the soft, consoling voice of a confessor offering advice, I want to tell you how the desire to achieve something far outstrips what we actually achieve.

> I want to recite to you the litany of despair while you listen intently.

> There is no work of art that could not have been more perfect. Read line by line, no poem, however great, has no single line that could not be improved upon, no episode that could not be more intense, and the whole is never so perfect that it could not be even more perfect.

> Woe betide the artist who notices this, who one day thinks this. His work can never again be a joy, he will never again sleep peacefully. He’ll become a young man bereft of youth and grow old discontentedly.

Good luck on those projects in 2023 everybody!

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