I must explain to you that I really did travel. But everything seems to indicate that I travelled without living. From one end to the other, from north to south and from east to west, I bore the weariness of having had a past, the disquiet of living the present, and the tedium of having to have a future. But I strive so hard that I remain completely in the present, killing inside me both past and future.
I strolled along the banks of rivers whose names I suddenly realized I didn't know. At the tables of cafes in foreign cities, it would dawn on me that everything had a hazy, dreamy air about it. Sometimes I even wondered if I weren't still seated at the table of our old house, staring into space and dazed by dreams! I can't be sure that this isn't actually the case, that I'm not still there, that all of this including this conversation with you isn't a pure sham. Who are you anyway? The equally absurd fact is that you can't explain...
A VOYAGEI NEVER M MADE (IV) (IV).
To sail without ever landing doesn't have a landing-place. To never arrive implies never arriving ever.
Appendix I: Texts Citing the Name of Vicente Guedes As explained in the Introduction, Vicente Guedes was for many years the fictional author of The Book of Disquiet, The Book of Disquiet, until he was replaced by (and absorbed into) Bernardo Soares. Perhaps to avoid confusion, Pessoa excluded the following three passages from the large envelope where he left material for until he was replaced by (and absorbed into) Bernardo Soares. Perhaps to avoid confusion, Pessoa excluded the following three passages from the large envelope where he left material for Disquiet. Disquiet.
AP- 1.
It was entirely by chance that I got to know Vicente Guedes. We often ate at the same quiet, inexpensive restaurant. Since we knew each other by sight, we naturally began to exchange silent greetings. One day we happened to be seated at the same table and we traded several remarks. A conversation ensued. We began to meet there every day, both for lunch and dinner. Sometimes we would leave together after dinner and stroll around for a while, talking.
Vicente Guedes endured his utterly grey life with the indifference of a master. A stoicism for the weak formed the basis of his entire mental outlook.
His natural temperament had condemned him to have every conceivable yearning; his destiny had led him to give them all up. I've never known another soul that startled me more. Without any kind of asceticism to spur him on, this man had renounced all the goals to which his nature had predisposed him. Born to be ambitious, he took languid pleasure in having no ambition at all.
AP- 2.
... this gentle book.
This is all that remains and will remain of one of the most subtly passive souls and one of the purest, most profligate dreamers that the world has ever known. I doubt that any outwardly human creature has lived their consciousness of self in a more complex fashion. A dandy in spirit, he promenaded the art of dreaming through the randomness of existing.
This book is the autobiography of a man who never existed.*
No one knows who Vicente Guedes was or what he did or.....
This book is not by him: it is him. But let us always remember that, behind whatever these pages tell us, mystery slithers in the shadows.
For Vicente Guedes, to be conscious of himself was an art and a morality; to dream was a religion.
He was the definitive creator of inner aristocracy that posture of soul which most resembles the bodily posture of a full-fledged aristocrat.
AP- 3.
The anguish of a man afflicted by life's tedium on the terrace of his opulent villa is one thing; quite another is the anguish of someone like me, who must contemplate the scenery from my fourth-floor rented room in downtown Lisbon, unable to forget that I'm an assistant bookkeeper.
'Tout notaire a reve des sultanes'*...
Every time I'm obliged by some official act to state my profession, I smile to myself at the irony of the undeserved ridicule when I declare 'Office clerk' and no one finds it all strange. I don't know how it got there, but that's how my name appears in the Professional Register Professional Register.
Epigraph to the Diary:Guedes (Vicente), office clerk, Rua dos Retroseiros,17, fourth floor.Professional Register of Portugal
Appendix II: Two Letters Pessoa planned to insert phrases and ideas from the following letters in The Book of Disquiet. The Book of Disquiet. This intention is clearly stated in the second letter, while the first letter or rather, Pessoa's typed copy of it was marked This intention is clearly stated in the second letter, while the first letter or rather, Pessoa's typed copy of it was marked B. of D. B. of D. at the top. at the top.
AP- 4.
LETTER TO HIS M MOTHER.
5 June 1914 My health has been good and my state of mind, oddly enough, has improved. Even so, I'm tortured by a vague anxiety that I don't know what to call but an intellectual itch, as if my soul had chicken-pox. It's only in this absurd language that I can describe what I feel. But what I'm feeling isn't the same as those sad moods I sometimes tell you about, in which the sadness has no cause. My present mood has a definite cause. Everything around me is either departing or crumbling. I don't use these two verbs with gloomy intent. I simply mean that the people I associate with are or will be going through changes, marking an end to particular phases of their lives, and all of this suggests to me as when an old man, because he sees his childhood companions dying all around him, feels his time must be near that in some mysterious way my life likewise should and will change. Not that I think this change will be for the worse. On the contrary. But it's a change, and for me a change to pass from one state to another is a partial death; something in us dies, and the sadness of its dying and its passing on cannot help but touch our soul.
Tomorrow my best and closest friend* is leaving for Paris not for a visit but to live there. And Aunt Anica (see her letter) will probably leave soon for Switzerland with her daughter, who will be married by then. Another good friend is going off to Galicia for a long while. Still another fellow, my next best friend after the first one I mentioned, is going to Oporto to live. Thus everything in my human circle is coming together (or apart) to force me either into isolation or else on to a new, uncertain path. Even the circumstance of publishing my first book will alter my life. I'll lose something: my unpublished status I'll lose something: my unpublished status. To change for the better, because change is bad, is always always to change for the worse. And to lose something negative be it a personal defect or deficiency, or the fact of being rejected to change for the worse. And to lose something negative be it a personal defect or deficiency, or the fact of being rejected is still a loss is still a loss. Imagine, Mother, how someone who feels this way must live, overwhelmed by such painful daily sensations!
What will I be ten years from now, or even five? My friends say I'll be one of the greatest contemporary poets they say this based on what I've already written, not what I may yet write (otherwise I wouldn't mention what they say...). But even if this is true, I have no idea what it will mean. I have no idea how it will taste how it will taste. Perhaps glory tastes like death and futility, and triumph smells of rottenness.
AP- 5.
LETTER TO M MaRIO DE S Sa-CARNEIRO*
14 March 1916 I'm writing to you today out of an emotional necessity an anguished longing to talk to you. I have, in other words, nothing special to say. Except this: that today I'm at the bottom of a bottomless depression. The absurdity of the sentence speaks for me.
This is one of those days in which I've never had a future in which I've never had a future. There's just a static present, surrounded by a wall of anxiety. The other side of the river, as long as it's the other side, is not this side; that is the root cause of all my suffering. There are many boats destined for many ports, but no boat for life to stop hurting, nor a landing-place where we can forget everything. All of this occurred a long time ago, but my grief is even older.
On days of the soul like today I feel, in my awareness of every bodily pore, like the sad child who was beaten up by life. I was put in a corner, from where I can hear everyone else playing. In my hands I can feel the shoddy, broken toy I was given out of some shoddy irony. Today, the fourteenth of March, at ten after nine in the evening, this seems to be all my life is worth.
In the park that's visible from the silent windows of my confinement, all the swings have been wrapped high around the branches from where they hang, so that not even my fantasy of an escaped me can forget this moment by swinging in my imagination.
This, but with no literary style, is more or less my present mood. Like the watching woman of The Mariner The Mariner,* my eyes sting from having thought about crying. Life pains me little by little, by sips, in the cracks. All of this is printed in tiny letters in a book whose binding is falling apart.
If I weren't writing to you, I would have to swear that this letter is sincere, that its hysterical associations of ideas have flowed spontaneously from what I feel. But you know all too well that this unstageable tragedy is as real as a teacup or a coat hanger full of the here and now, and passing through my soul like the green in a tree's leaves.
That's why the Prince never ruled. This sentence is totally absurd. But right now I feel that absurd sentences make me want to cry.
If I don't post this letter today, then perhaps tomorrow, on rereading it, I'll take the time to make a typed copy, so as to include some of its sentences and grimaces in The Book of Disquiet The Book of Disquiet. But that won't take away from all the sincerity I've put into writing it, nor from the painful inevitability of the feeling behind it.
There you have the latest news. There is also the state of war with Germany, but pain caused suffering long before that. On the other side of Life, this must be the caption of some political cartoon.
What I'm feeling isn't true madness, but madness no doubt results in a similar abandon to the very causes of one's suffering, a shrewd delight in the soul's lurches and jolts.
What, I wonder, is the colour of feeling?
Thousands of hugs from your very ownFernando Pessoa P.S. I wrote this letter in one go. Rereading it I see that, yes, I'll definitely make a copy before posting it to you tomorrow. Rarely have I so completely expressed my psychology, with all of its emotional and intellectual attitudes, with all of its fundamentally depressive bent, with all the so characteristic corners and crossroads of its self-awareness...
Don't you agree?
Appendix III: Reflections on The Book of Disquiet from Pessoa's Writings from Pessoa's Writings A. TWO NOTESNote concerning the actual editions(AND WHICH CAN BE USED IN THE PREFACE) Collect later on, in a separate book, the various poems I had mistakenly thought to include in The Book of Disquiet The Book of Disquiet; this book of poems should have a title indicating that it contains something like refuse or marginalia something suggestive of detachment.
This book, furthermore, could form part of a definitive collection of dregs, the published depository of the unpublishable allowed to survive as a sad example. It would be somewhat analogous to a book of unfinished poems by a poet who died young, or the letters of a great writer. But the book I have in mind would include material that is not only inferior but also different, and it is this difference that would justify its publication, which obviously couldn't be justified by the fact it shouldn't be published.
B. of D.(NOTE) The organization of the book should be based on a highly rigorous selection from among the various kinds of texts written, adapting the older ones which lack the psychology of Bernardo Soares to that true psychology as it has now emerged. In addition, an overall revision of the style needs to be made, but without giving up the dreaminess and logical disjointedness of its intimate expression.
It must also be decided whether to include the large texts with grandiose titles, such as the 'Funeral March for Ludwig II, King of Bavaria' or 'Symphony of the Restless Night'. The 'Funeral March' could be left as it is, or it could be made part of another book, one that would gather together all the Large Texts.
B. EXCERPTS FROM LETTERSTo Joo de Lebre e Lima* 3 May 1914 3 May 1914 The subject of tedium reminds me of something I wanted to ask you... Did you happen to see, in an issue of aguia aguia that came out last year, a piece by me titled 'In the Forest of Estrangement'? If not, let me know. I'll send it to you. I'd very much like you to read it. It's my only published text in which I make tedium and the sterile dream that wearies of itself even before it starts dreaming a motif and the central theme. I don't know if you'll like the style in which it's written. It's a style quite my own, which various friends jokingly call 'the estranged style', since it made its first appearance in that text. And they talk of 'estranged writing', 'estranged speech', etc. that came out last year, a piece by me titled 'In the Forest of Estrangement'? If not, let me know. I'll send it to you. I'd very much like you to read it. It's my only published text in which I make tedium and the sterile dream that wearies of itself even before it starts dreaming a motif and the central theme. I don't know if you'll like the style in which it's written. It's a style quite my own, which various friends jokingly call 'the estranged style', since it made its first appearance in that text. And they talk of 'estranged writing', 'estranged speech', etc.
That piece belongs to a book of mine for which I've written other, still unpublished passages, but I have a long way to go before finishing it. The book is called The Book of Disquiet The Book of Disquiet, since restlessness and uncertainty are the dominant note. This is evident in the one published passage. What is apparently the narration of a mere dream, or daydream, is actually and the reader feels this at the outset and should, if I've been successful, feel it throughout his entire reading a dreamed confession of the painful, sterile rage and utter uselessness of dreaming.
To Armando Cortes-Rodrigues* 2 September 1914 2 September 1914 ... I haven't written anything worth sending along. Ricardo Reis and futurist alvaro have been silent. Caeiro has perpetrated a few lines that will perhaps find refuge in some future book... What I've mainly written is sociology and disquiet. The last word, as you'll have guessed, refers to the 'book' of the same name. I have, in fact, written a number of pages for that pathological production, which thus continues to go complexly and tortuously forward.
To Armando Cortes-Rodrigues 4 October 1914 Nor am I sending you any of the other little things I've written in recent days. Some of them aren't worth sending; others are incomplete; the rest are broken, disconnected pieces of The Book of Disquiet The Book of Disquiet.
My present state of mind is of a deep and calm depression. For some days now I've been at the level of The Book of Disquiet The Book of Disquiet. Just today I wrote almost an entire chapter.
To Armando Cortes-Rodrigues 19 November 1914 My state of mind compels me to work hard, against my will, on The Book of Disquiet The Book of Disquiet. But it's all fragments, fragments, fragments.
To Joo Gaspar Simes* 28 July 1932 28 July 1932 My original intention was to begin the publication of my works with three books, in the following order: (1) Portugal Portugal,* a small book of poems (41 in all) whose second part is 'Portuguese Sea' (published in Contemporanea 4 Contemporanea 4); (2) The Book of Disquiet The Book of Disquiet (by Bernardo Soares, but only secondarily, since B.S. is not a heteronym but a literary personality); (3) (by Bernardo Soares, but only secondarily, since B.S. is not a heteronym but a literary personality); (3) Complete Poems of Alberto Caeiro Complete Poems of Alberto Caeiro (with a preface by Ricardo Reis and, at the end of the volume, alvaro de Campos's 'Notes for the Memory of my Master Caeiro'). A year after the publication of these books, I planned to bring out, either by itself or with another volume, (with a preface by Ricardo Reis and, at the end of the volume, alvaro de Campos's 'Notes for the Memory of my Master Caeiro'). A year after the publication of these books, I planned to bring out, either by itself or with another volume, Songbook Songbook (or some other equally inexpressive title), which would have included (in Books IIII or IV) a number of my many miscellaneous poems, which are too diverse to be classified except in that inexpressive way. (or some other equally inexpressive title), which would have included (in Books IIII or IV) a number of my many miscellaneous poems, which are too diverse to be classified except in that inexpressive way.
But there is much to be revised and restructured in The Book of Disquiet The Book of Disquiet, and I can't honestly expect that it will take me less than a year to do the job. And as for Caeiro, I'm undecided...
To Adolfo Casais Monteiro* 13 January 1935 13 January 1935 How do I write in the name of these three? Caeiro, through sheer and unexpected inspiration, without knowing or even suspecting that I'm going to write in his name. Ricardo Reis, after an abstract meditation which suddenly takes concrete shape in an ode. Campos, when I feel a sudden impulse to write and don't know what. (My semi-heteronym Bernardo Soares, who in many ways resembles alvaro de Campos, always appears when I'm sleepy or drowsy, so that my qualities of inhibition and rational thought are suspended; his prose is an endless reverie. He's a semi-heteronym because his personality, although not my own, doesn't differ from my own but is a mere mutilation of it. He's me without my rationalism and emotions. His prose is the same as mine, except for a certain formal restraint that reason imposes on my own writing, and his Portuguese is exactly the same whereas Caeiro writes bad Portuguese, Campos writes it reasonably well but with mistakes such as 'me myself' instead of 'I myself', etc., and Reis writes better than I, but with a purism I find excessive...) C. FROM THE UNFINISHED PREFACE TOFICTIONS OF THE I INTERLUDE.
I place certain of my literary characters in stories, or in the subtitles of books, signing my name to what they say; others I project totally, with my only signature being the acknowledgement that I created them. The two types of characters may be distinguished as follows: in those that stand absolutely apart, the very style in which they write is different from my own and, when the case warrants, even contrary to it; in the characters whose works I sign my name to, the style differs from mine only in those inevitable details that serve to distinguish them from each other.
I will compare some of these characters to show, through example, what these differences involve. The assistant bookkeeper Bernardo Soares and the Baron of Teive both are me-ishly extraneous characters write with the same basic style, the same grammar, and the same careful diction. In other words, they both write with the style that, good or bad, is my own. I compare them because they are two instances of the very same phenomenon an inability to adapt to real life motivated by the very same causes. But although the Portuguese is the same in the Baron of Teive and in Bernardo Soares, their styles differ. That of the aristocrat is intellectual, without images, a bit how shall I put it? stiff and constrained, while that of his middle-class counterpart is fluid, participating in music and painting but not very architectural. The nobleman thinks clearly, writes clearly, and controls his emotions, though not his feelings; the bookkeeper controls neither emotions nor feelings, and what he thinks depends on what he feels.
There are also notable similarities between Bernardo Soares and alvaro de Campos. But in alvaro de Campos we are immediately struck by the carelessness of his Portuguese and by his exaggerated use of images, more instinctive and less purposeful than in Soares.
In my efforts to distinguish one from another, there are lapses that weigh on my sense of psychological discernment. When I try to distinguish, for example, between a musical passage of Bernardo Soares and a similar passage of my own...
Sometimes I can do it automatically, with a perfection that astonishes me; and there's no vanity in my astonishment, since, not believing in even a smidgen of human freedom, I'm no more astonished by what happens in me than I would be by what happens in someone else both are perfect strangers.
Only a formidable intuition can serve as a compass on the vast expanses of the soul. Only with a sensibility that freely uses the intelligence without being contaminated by it, although the two function together as one, is it possible to distinguish the separate realities of these imaginary characters.
These derivative personalities or, rather, these different inventions of personalities, fall into two categories or degrees, which the attentive reader will easily be able to identify by their distinctive characteristics. In the first category, the personality is distinguished by feelings and ideas which I don't share. At the lower level within this category, the personality is distinguished only by ideas, which are placed in rational exposition or argument and are clearly not my own, at least not so far as I know. 'The Anarchist Banker'* is an example of this lower level; The Book of Disquiet The Book of Disquiet, and the character Bernardo Soares, represent the higher level.
The reader will note that, although I'm publishing The Book of Disquiet The Book of Disquiet under the name of a certain Bernardo Soares, assistant bookkeeper in the city of Lisbon, I have not included it in these under the name of a certain Bernardo Soares, assistant bookkeeper in the city of Lisbon, I have not included it in these Fictions of the Interlude Fictions of the Interlude. This is because Bernardo Soares, while differing from me in his ideas, his feelings, and his way of seeing and understanding, expresses himself in the same way I do. His is a different personality, but expressed through my natural style, with the only distinguishing feature being the particular tone that inevitably results from the particularity of his emotions.
In the authors of Fictions of the Interlude Fictions of the Interlude, it's not only their ideas and feelings that differ from mine; their technique of composition, their very style, is also different from mine. Each of these authors is not just conceived differently but created as a wholly different entity. That's why poetry predominates here. In prose it is harder to other oneself.
Notes.
Before his death Pessoa gathered together several hundred texts into a large envelope labelled Livro do Desassossego Livro do Desassossego ( ( Book of Disquiet Book of Disquiet ), and these take up the first five envelopes of the Pessoa Archives, housed at the National Library in Lisbon, but there are several hundred additional texts scattered throughout the rest of the author's papers that are specifically labelled ), and these take up the first five envelopes of the Pessoa Archives, housed at the National Library in Lisbon, but there are several hundred additional texts scattered throughout the rest of the author's papers that are specifically labelled L. do D. L. do D. In the notes that follow, the manuscripts for the Portuguese texts are designated, in square brackets, by their official archival reference numbers (with the envelope number appearing before the slash) and identified as typed, handwritten ('ms.'), or partly typed, partly handwritten ('mixed'). Those texts that were not actually identified by Pessoa as belonging to In the notes that follow, the manuscripts for the Portuguese texts are designated, in square brackets, by their official archival reference numbers (with the envelope number appearing before the slash) and identified as typed, handwritten ('ms.'), or partly typed, partly handwritten ('mixed'). Those texts that were not actually identified by Pessoa as belonging to The Book of Disquiet The Book of Disquiet (and whose inclusion in (and whose inclusion in The Book The Book is therefore conjectural) are marked by a is therefore conjectural) are marked by a . . The manuscripts contain over 600 alternate wordings in the margins and between the lines, but only the most significant ones are cited in these notes, where the main concern has been to elucidate literary, historical and geographical references. The manuscripts contain over 600 alternate wordings in the margins and between the lines, but only the most significant ones are cited in these notes, where the main concern has been to elucidate literary, historical and geographical references.