The Book of Disquiet

Lately I’ve been reading the Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa, in the Margaret Jull Costa translation that Serpent’s Tail just put out. I’ll be writing about the book more in the future, I imagine, but in the meantime check out this amazing quote that I just found, copied into my journal from the beginning of this month:

Now, as many times before, I am troubled by my own experience of my feelings, of my anguish simply to be feeling something, my disquiet simply at being here, my nostalgia for something never known, the setting of the sun on all emotions, this fading, in my external consciousness of myself, from yellow into grey sadness.

Who will save me from existence? It isn’t death I want, or life: it’s the other thing that shines at the bottom of all longing like a possible diamond in a cave one cannot reach. It’s the whole weight and pain of this real and impossible universe, of this sky, of this standard borne by some unknown army, of these colours that grow pale in the fictitious air, out of which there emerges in still, electric whiteness the imaginary crescent of the moon, silhouetted by distance and indifference.

It’s the other thing that shines at the bottom of all longing like a possible diamond in a cave one cannot reach. Never seen it put better than that.

Also I just noticed this Believer article on Pessoa by Benjamin Kunkel, from 2003. I will be reading it soon…

posted: 11 March 23
under: Open Folio