Fernando pessoas the book of disquiet is aptly titled. The book of disquiet penguin modern classics ebook. The book of disquiet by fernando pessoa is one such modern masterpiece that i read last week. Of those prose pieces, more than four hundred ended up in the book of disquiet, an unfinished assemblage of brooding fragments pessoa began under one heteronym in 19, labored over for some seven years, dropped for nearly a decade, took back up under a fresh characters name in 1929, and kept expanding until his death. It is signed under the semiheteronym bernando soares. Like im sick of everything, and of the everythingness of everything. Livro do desassossego the book of disquiet, fernando pessoa the book of disquiet is a work by the portuguese author fernando pessoa 18881935. Imagination, reality and the pleasure of masking and dreaming rodica grigore1 the portuguese writer fernando pessoa complicates the idea of fictionality, by underscoring the fact that the personality of soares the fictional author of the book of disquiet is neither his own nor com. The book of disquiet manuscript, as well as most of pessoas work, was found in a trunk after his death he hardly published anything while alive. To read and then contemplate him is to be lifted a little bit above the earth in a floating bubble. Perhaps the most occult writer of the twentieth century and the one who best lived up to rimbauds dictum about becoming a medium was fernando pessoa.
When he died in 1935, pessoa left behind a trunk filled with unfinished and unpublished writings, among which were the remarkable pages that make up his posthumous masterpiece, the book of disquiet, an astonishing work that, in george steiners words, gives to lisbon the haunting spell of joyces dublin or kafkas prague. I want pessoa to be as great as the version zenith presents. Reading the book of disquiet by fernando pessoa as it appeared on the 2002 world librarys greatest books of all time list. I chat about my experience of the book of disquiet by fernando pessoa. The book of disquiet by fernando pessoa, paperback. Fernando pessoa will be an unknown name to many literary fans and, furthermore, the book of disquiet is untraditional to the extreme.
The book of disquiet by fernando pessoa book chat youtube. I had started to read it when i was wanting to read something that came in vignette form. Everyday low prices and free delivery on eligible orders. The book of disquiet by fernando pessoa the book of disquietude or the book of disquiet livro do desassossego in portuguese, published posthumously, is one of the greatest works by fernando pessoa. A modernist masterwork that has now taken on a similar iconic status to ulysses, the trial or in search of lost time, fernando pessoas the book of disquiet is edited and translated with an introduction by richard zenith in penguin modern classics. A prolific writer, ascribing his work to a variety of personas or heteronyms, pessoa published little in his lifetime and supported himself by working as a commercial translator. For its entire four hundred plus pages it offers a philosophy of a melancholic life, a philosophy of dreaming, and a philosophy of art.
The authors description of a consciousness experiencing what we call life is. The book of disquiet was found, in fragments, only after pessoas death. The narrator, perhaps a standin for pessoa himself, is clearly a distant literary relative of. I failed life even before i had lived it, because even as i dreamed it, i failed to see its. The absurd lie has all the charm of the perverse with fernando pessoa. Its barely a novel, in fact, and more a vast, endlessly intelligent selection of thoughts based on everyones favourite hobby existing. The book of disquiet,the even greater, ultimate charm of being innocent. Fernando pessoa became bernardo soares, channeling each scrap of paper making up the book of disquiet through his alter ego.
In lisbon there are a few restaurants or eating houses located above decentlooking taverns, places with the heavy, domestic look of restaurants in towns far from any rail line. The prose is truly some of the most gorgeous musings about everyday life and existence that any reader could ever find. Written over the course of fernando pessoas life, it was first published in 1982, pieced together from the thousands of individual manuscript pages left behind by pessoa after his death in 1935. Soares himself, in the only moment of being seen from the outside, looks. Fernando pessoa the book of disquiet,1988 art in fiction. An autobiography or diary containing exquisite melancholy observations, aphorisms, and ruminations, this classic work grapples with all the eternal questions. The chevalier of disquiet by max nelson the new york. As adorno famously said, the finished work is, in our times and climate of anguish, a lie. Fernando pessoa, william boyd, margaret jull costa. The book of disquiet is much more philosophical quandary than it is a novel, and retroactively engineered at that, where various editors and translators arranged the hundreds of fragments and diarytype entries. Pessoa was mostly a poet and the book of disquiet can be read, if you wish, as a series of notes for poems as yet unwritten.
An assembly of sometimeslinked fragments, the book of disquiet is a mesmerising, haunting novel without parallel in any other culture. Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life. The book is an aggregation of disparate diary entries that are abstract, dense, and at times, eccentric. I cant tell which of the three englishlanguage editions of the book of disquiet ive read. The book of disquiet is written by one of his personas, bernardo soares, an assistant bookkeeper in an inconsequential office, as a diary or journal of ruminations on a life that, by his own admission, is truly not worthy of ruminating about. From what i understand this book is a collection of prose snippets from over 40 years that were compiled after the portuguese poets death. The book of disquiet contains much of his prose writing of which this edition has around half of them.
The private meditations of one of modern portugals most celebrated poets and critics, set down pseudonymously in the form of a journal spanning some 20 years. The book of disquiet is a collection of epiphanic journal or diary prose kept by pessoa and found decades after his death. He wrote of holding inside himself all the dreams of the world and wanting to experience the whole of the universe its reality inside himself. Pessoas rapid prose, snatched in flight and restlessly suggestive, remains haunting, often startling, like the touch of a vibrating wire, elusive and persistent like the poetry.
Inspirational quotes by fernando pessoa from the book of disquiet and on themes such as life, success, potential and other things. As for guedes, pessoa opens, this book is not by him, it is him. For the first timeand in the best translation everthe complete book of disquiet, a masterpiece beyond comparison. The book of disquiet is the portuguese modernist master fernando pessoas greatest literary achievement.
It was to bernardo soares that pessoa ascribed his book of disquiet, first made available in english in a. Fernando pessoa, one of the founders of modernism, was born in lisbon in 1888. The book of disquiet is funny, lifeaffirming, and, of course, desperately sad. The book of disquiet is a work by the portuguese author fernando pessoa 18881935. A bookkeeper and journalist, he lived quietly in lisbon and published much of his poetry under assumed names. A postmodernist poet posthumously adopted as part of the portuguese canon, fernando pessoa below. The book of disquiet by fernando pessoa this almostautobiographical story tells of the sombre majesty of splendours no one knows in the very private life of its hero. Illustration by riccardo vecchio if ever there was a writer in flight from his name, it was fernando pessoa. After vermeer the astronomer, philip caramazza oil on linen the sensibility of mallarme in the style of vieira. The book of disquiet is one of the great literary works of the twentieth century.
The book of disquiet was penned by bernardo soares, an assistant bookkeeper and unpublished poet and writer. Imagination, reality and the pleasure of masking and dreaming article in theory in action 41. Was 18 march 1914 the most extraordinary date in modern literature. Buy the book of disquiet penguin modern classics new ed by pessoa, fernando, zenith, richard isbn. Disquiet refers to a feeling of anxiety, and this story has plenty of unease for both its narrator and readers. Ironically for a man whose real name was pessoa, which translates from portuguese into english as person, he wrote in a variety of heteronyms. The book of disquiet by fernando pessoa professional moron.
Fernando pessoa 18881935 was born in lisbon and brought up in durban, south africa. Published posthumously, the book of disquiet is a fragmentary lifetime project, left unedited by the author, who introduced it as a factless autobiography. The book of disquiet by fernando pessoa librarything. Pessoa 18881935 is not well known outside of portugal. If all this sounds rather vague then that is because pessoa wished it so. This edition includes notes on the reconstruction of the text, appendices containing material omitted from the final version and letters which pessoa intended to incorporate into the text. He is described by pessoa in his introduction, which is the one of the few concessions to literary conventions in the book, as in his thirties, thin, fairly tall, very hunched when sitting though less so when standing, and dressed.
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