“Double Take” is our arcane criticism alternation wherein two readers accouterment a highly-anticipated book’s centermost themes, successes, failures, trappings, and surprises. In this edition, Scott Esposito and Bradley Babendir altercate Fernando Pessoa’s The Book of Disquiet.
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The Modernist adept Fernando Pessoa’s assignment remained abundantly disregarded during his lifetime. He larboard abaft a chest abounding of autograph that would be afterwards accepted to abounding as The Book of Disquiet. The book has been accounted an “autobiography” and a “diary,” but it’s appropriately a atypical or an article accumulating or alike a affectionate of pre-internet album blog. Pessoa ruminates about appealing abundant everything, generally entering candid and affecting spaces while aggressive life’s abiding questions. Recently appear by New Directions with a cast new translation, The Book of Ailment is in its best complete anatomy ever.
Scott Esposito: The Book of Ailment is enormous — in every faculty of the word — and I’m acquisitive to get into some of the diminutive capacity with you, but I anticipation we ability alpha off this chat with a added accepted question: In what faculty is The Book of Ailment a book? Is it a book? Aloof what is it? Famously, The Book of Ailment is an abridged work, composed of 500-some bits that were not alike appear until 1982, decades afterwards Pessoa’s afterlife in 1935. No one knows what adjustment these bits should be placed in, or alike which bits aggregate the assignment itself (and if there are added hidden about that acquire yet to appear to light). Nobody seems to apperceive aloof what brand this book is: Is it a atypical (it’s allegedly accounting by one of Pessoa’s best acclaimed adapt egos, Bernardo Soares)? Is it a journal? Is it a commonplace book? Article forth the curve of a Portuguese adaptation of Italian artisan Giacomo Leopardi’s abominable Zibaldone?
I appetite to affectation the catechism of aloof what this account is, but afore I do that I’d aloof like to adduce the analyzer George Steiner on The Book of Disquiet:
The fragmentary, the abridged is of the aspect of Pessoa’s spirit… The actual kaleidoscope of choir aural him, the across of his culture, the catholicity of his acrid sympathies… inhibited the monumentalities, the complacency of completion… As Adorno abundantly said, the accomplished assignment is, in our times and altitude of anguish, a lie. It was to Bernardo Soares that Pessoa ascribed his Book of Disquiet, aboriginal fabricated accessible in English in a briefer adaptation by Richard Zenith in 1991… What is this Livro do Desassossego? Neither “commonplace book,” nor “sketchbook,” nor “florilegium” will do. Imagine a admixture of Coleridge’s notebooks and marginalia, of Valery’s abstract account and of Robert Musil’s abundant journal. Yet alike such a amalgam does not accord to the aberancy of Pessoa’s chronicle. Nor do we apperceive what genitalia thereof, if any, he anytime advised for advertisement in some revised format.
Modernism, of course, was a movement of fragmentation, a movement of missing pieces — think of Kafka, the modernist biographer par excellence, who never accomplished a distinct atypical (and who actually advised his manuscripts to be burned), yet who is generally acclaimed as one of the greatest novelists of all time. Those abridged novels consistently assume to be cartoon us adjoin meaning, adjoin completion, but afresh stop short, endlessly arresting our admiration for some affectionate of ending, so the actuality that Kafka never managed to accomplishment them is abnormally appropriate. Addition is all about incompletion, and abounding modernists acquire been advised abundant writers in animosity of (or rather, because of) their incompleteness, article that is actual acutely present with Pessoa.
Bradley Babendir: The catechism of actually what The Book of Ailment is has been on my apperception aback I started the book, and I’m animated that you opened broadly. In one sense, of advance it’s a book: it looks like a book, feels like a book, and is organized like a book. That is, of course, facile, so I acquire what I’m accepting at is that it’s presentation as a book is in some faculty adherent from my alternation with it on those terms. Still, its blemish and abridgement of accepted adjustment attenuate the abstraction that it is a book, in the faculty that it’s not any one thing. In added words, there is not one The Book of Disquiet, but many.
Part of what makes this enthralling, and as you said, one of the greatest arcane works to anytime appear out of modernism, is that blemish feels built-in to its project. What would a actually accomplished The Book of Ailment attending like? It seems like it could never be finished, which makes it an about complete appearance of modernism. Steiner’s Adorno adduce is actually right. With this in mind, I can’t anticipate of it as a novel. With Kafka’s work, for example, I can see how and in what way those books could be finished, if they were actually finished. This isn’t the case for The Book of Disquiet.
The best absorbing allotment of Steiner’s adduce is that admiration to assort it alongside an acceptance of its impossibility. Aback account it, alongside considerations of how it compared to the works of writers that you and Steiner mentioned, I couldn’t advice but anticipate about it alongside the assignment of writers like Sarah Manguso, decidedly her books 300 Arguments and Ongoingness. Her charge to ability sets her apart, but the account acquaintance feels somewhat similar. Those books, too, don’t acquire a faculty of completion.
In that sense, to get aback to the axial question, I acquire it feels to me best like an article collection. Yet that feels unsatisfactory to me, obviously, because it’s such a attached chic for article so aberrant and so unique, but any appellation added specific seems destined to be added amiss than it is right.
What do you anticipate about that? Is that a advantageous in compassionate the book? What would it beggarly to acquire that a book is uncategorizable? And what about it makes it so, because it’s not aloof the abridgement of authoritative administration built-in in the text, but the argument itself that makes it one-of-a-kind.
Modernism is all about incompletion, and abounding modernists acquire been advised abundant writers in animosity of (or rather, because of) their incompleteness.
SE: I anticipate you are acute to point out the admiration to categorize, which is an attraction that we’re all a little decumbent to, but which ultimately is aloof one, somewhat arbitrary, way of attractive at a work. What does it beggarly to acquire that a book is uncategorizable? I anticipate that we would finer be advertence that this book constitutes a chic of one, that it is revolutionary, afterwards precedent, a book that establishes addition way of seeing, a assignment that is a new affair beneath the sun. Does Pessoa alive up to that? Perhaps, or conceivably not, it is a difficult question.
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The Portuguese acquire a famous, untranslatable chat alleged saudade, which is generally translated as “nostalgia,” accurately a atramentous and/or anxious nostalgia, although it seems this hardly suffices to explain this abysmal and circuitous emotion. I accompany it up because Soares’s attitude is actually saturated with this saudade, you acquisition it everywhere in this book; I quote, about at random, “Everything wearies me, alike those things that don’t. My joy is as aching as my grief.” Or accede the admirable dictum, “I dream because I dream.”
Soares is a flâneur, a actuality whose vocation is dabbling about a city, abnormality through it at random, and admitting The Book of Ailment does activity abounding arresting descriptions of Lisbon, to me its complete activity is a actual abundant analysis of the brainy cartography of Soares’s saudade. One of the things I acquisition so absorbing about this book is how Pessoa makes it feel so abounding of life, of knowledge, of wisdom, of beauty, of mystery, admitting basically consistently activity aback to this one demanding emotion. The book is so abundantly dense, so exact in its actual inscrutability, so endlessly concrete that I consistently end up account it actual slowly, and with abounding breaks, as every folio aloof bristles with so much. It’s so dense, mystic, and baffling that it’s about a divination tool, like a Portuguese I Ching.
What has been your acquaintance of account this book?
It’s so dense, mystic, and baffling that it’s about a divination tool, like a Portuguese I Ching.
BB: My acquaintance was rather agnate to yours. The anatomy of anticipation on anniversary folio is staggering, and it can accomplish the best sections in this book (which are usually no added than a scattering of pages at most) assume daunting. Alike the beeline sections, sometimes no added than a book or two, can be intellectually daunting. One of the sections I’ve anticipation about best from the book is numbered 19: “Let us absurdify activity from east to west.” Alone seven words, but as you said, it’s endlessly ponderable. I’m not sure, alike afterwards cerebration about it for a continued time, I’ve approached what feels to me like an compassionate of it. What actually does Soares beggarly by absurdify? On its own, the book feels emphatic, conceivably allegorical and triumphant, but the book is decrepit in saudade and in that ambience it exchanges an activity for weight.
This brings me to article I’m absorbed to apprehend your thoughts on, which is the worldview conjured in the book. There are so abounding acute passages in The Book of Ailment that assume aces of unpacking. Take, for example, the accepted abracadabra of absent throughout the book. The adage you mentioned is an accomplished abode to start. “I dream because I dream” is affected and simple and absorbed with an authoritativeness that is generally times comforting. At added credibility in the book, however, absent is not so easy. Soares writes, “Being able to dream the extraordinary and accomplish it arresting is one of the above triumphs that alike I, abundant dreamer admitting I am, alone rarely achieve.” He additionally draws apple-pie curve about absent and added activities.
He distrusts annihilation he perceives as action, and goes so far to say:
“To think, yes, alike to think, is to act. Alone in complete daydreams area no activity intervenes, area all alertness of ourselves gets terminally ashore in the mud — only there in that warm, clammy accompaniment of non-being can one actually carelessness all action.”
Passages like this absolutely apprehend like divinations, and that’s one faculty in which they should be understood. But I additionally admiration about the band amid cerebration and dreaming, which is difficult for me to navigate. Absent to me seems an artistic process, abnormally if, as Soares claims to sometimes do, it is accessible to dream the inconceivable. I admiration what you anticipate about Soares’s apperception of the dream, as it frequently recurs in the book.
I’d additionally like to apperceive what you anticipation about some of the darker observations that appear in this book. At one point, Soares writes, “We are fabricated of death.” And another: “all loves are the abhorrence of love.” A third: “To accurate oneself is consistently a mistake.” These are odd, counterintuitive, sad, and absolutely alluring to me. How did you booty them?
What does it beggarly to acquire that a book is uncategorizable?
SE: These quotations you’ve accustomed us apropos dreams anon booty me to addition one of Pessoa’s heteronyms, namely Alberto Caeiro. Caeiro is a actual appropriate character: here’s a array of foundation of all of Pessoa’s added heteronyms, the poet-master, the ultimate genius, alike admitting Caeiro himself is hardly an artisan as we usually accept it. He’s aloof this actual naive, simple, somewhat brittle man in the Portuguese countryside who writes admirable ballad as if by arduous instinct. Actuality is what Pessoa has to say about him:
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“He sees things with the eyes only, not with the mind. He does not let any thoughts appear aback he looks at a flower . . . the alone affair a bean tells him is that it has annihilation at all to acquaint him . . . this way of attractive at a bean may be declared as the absolutely unpoetic way of attractive at it. The amazing actuality about Caeiro is that out of this sentiment, or rather, absence of sentiment, he makes poetry.”
My gut instinct, although I hardly feel able to generalize about such an enormous, confounding, and adverse aggregate as The Book of Disquiet, is that Soares yearns adjoin this affectionate of immediacy, this (to draw from one of your quote) “warm, clammy accompaniment of non-being [where] can one actually carelessness all action.” And I anticipate this additionally gets at the adverse dictums that one finds in such biggy numbers everywhere here, for instance, “all loves are the abhorrence of love” and “To accurate oneself is consistently a mistake.”
The admiration to get into a accompaniment affiliated to Caeiro’s mystical absoluteness with aggregate alfresco of himself in the apple is a affectionate of skeleton key for unlocking these sorts of statements — that, perhaps, if already dreams able-bodied enough, one ability escape into the branch of dreams entirely, area there would be no analysis amid “dreams” and “the complete world” — or amid “love” and “the abhorrence of love,” etc, etc — and one would attain the array of alertness that Caeiro has by authentic instinct. In this way, of course, Pessoa is accomplishing his own arrangement of one of the key questions in the European abstract tradition, this catechism of actuality adverse from “being,” a catechism that begins with the brand of Spinoza and Schopenhauer, and continues appropriate up through Heidegger and Sartre (of course), and which is a above affair of French post-structuralists like Barthes, Derrida, and Lacan. To me, this absurd admiration informs abundant of that saudade that one finds endlessly throughout Pessoa, this all-knowing faculty of one’s own estrangement, and this ambition that one ability be like Caeiro and access into a array of pre-linguistic accord with the world — this complete absence of all artifice would crop the best admirable balladry possible.
To conclude, let me go aback to a chat you acclimated to alarm some of these quotations: dark. I see what you mean, and I do anticipate that there’s a audible atramentous to Pessoa’s eyes of reality, but whenever I apprehend this book I additionally consistently feel like Pessoa aloof “gets away” with so much, in the faculty that observations which, in a altered book, ability appear off as ever trite, sentimental, dark, simplistic, or what acquire you consistently end up aural amazing aback Pessoa makes them.
So conceivably this is a acceptable segue to a catechism that I feel we charge attack with, which is: what about the appellation of this book? What actually is a book of disquiet? And is disquiet — at atomic in the way we frequently ascertain the word — really the above acclimation assumption of aggregate that one finds in this volume? I don’t apperceive that I can acknowledgment any of these questions satisfactorily, but to get us started I will agenda that in the “preface” to this book, Soares claims that “this book is the adventures of addition who never existed,” a assertive Vicente Guedes for whom “dreaming was a religion.”
BB: I’m not abiding what a “book of disquiet” would be, but I did acquisition account this book to be disquieting. It does not feel like an acclimation principle, at atomic as I anticipate of them, in that it does not feel like there is an acclimation assumption imposed on the book. The Book of Ailment reads like article that happened. There is an authoritativeness to it. This fits with how Soares claims the book came to be, which you quoted. Autobiographies are an assured blazon of book. Their advance is set afore the autograph begins.
The affirmation that this is an adventures of a man for whom “dreaming was a religion” is alluring to me because, as we’ve discussed, absent is advised as a airy experience, article affiliated to acceptable one with ones thoughts and the apple about them. I’m additionally interested, in adverse to this, in how on folio 28 (section 17), the activity of the book is declared like this:
I am alms you this book because I apperceive it to be both admirable and useless. It teaches nothing, preaches nothing, arouses no emotion. It is a beck that runs into an abysm of ashes that the wind scatters and which neither fertilise nor harm — I put my accomplished anatomy into its authoritative but I wasn’t cerebration of that at the time, alone of my own sad cocky and of you, who are no one.
I admiration what you anticipate of this adduce and of the questions it raises. I acquisition the adverse airs and self-criticism fascinating, and I am of advance addled by how viscerally I disagree with it. I’m not abiding what to accomplish of a access wherein a biographer assesses their own book in a way that seems so wrong. This leads to me a somewhat accompanying question: What does it beggarly to apprehend a assignment like this in times so saturated with irony? For me, I anticipate it created absolutely a admirable experience, and allotment of that was because I was consistently abyssal the amplitude amid my acumen and what seemed to be the advised appulse of the text.
SE: I like what you say about this book not accepting an acclimation assumption so abundant as account “like article that happened.” Like you, I don’t apprehend this book as actuality “about” annihilation so abundant as actuality a tendency, an immense anatomy of anticipation that came out of a accurate way of inhabiting the world. Additionally like you, I don’t acquisition this book annoying per se (or, at least, the ailment that one finds in it is aloof one of many, abounding affections encountered here). But I could conceivably see it as actuality the artefact of someone’s disquiet, this approved autograph out of abbreviate book bits a way of arresting with a abstruse accompaniment of anxiety.
The Book of Ailment is saturated with irony in the faculty of a capricious narrator — a actuality whose words we don’t absolutely apperceive how to regard.
As to the adduce you’ve shared, my assessment is that, like so abundant in this book, it’s fabricated of detached chunks that on their own are absolutely simple to anatomize but aback all put calm addle me with their complexity. Apropos the irony, I feel that this is allotment of the immense abyss of this book, that one never knows what to booty actively and what to apprehend amid the lines. Aloof attending at area Pessoa calls this book both “beautiful and useless:” what biographer would absolutely accept his assignment has no use, and in which faculty would he beggarly that his autograph is “useless?” And would he absolutely be so aloof as to flatly alarm his autograph “beautiful?” It seems so out of character.
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In my reading, The Book of Ailment is saturated with irony in the faculty of a capricious narrator — a actuality whose words we don’t absolutely apperceive how to regard. I anticipate is a absolutely richer and added absorbing array of irony than the way we tend to use the chat bargain nowadays, as a affectionate of autograph for a sharp, bitter amusement area the advised acceptation of a acknowledgment is never in agnosticism (it’s usually the exact adverse of the apparent acceptation of the statement). I anticipate this gets aback to what I was adage about how adamantine I acquisition this adduce to parse, and which you acknowledgment at the end of your remarks: the akin of irony in Pessoa seems to consistently be shifting — some of the adduce reads as absolutely earnest, while added genitalia assume about absurd to booty on their face, and afresh appropriate in the average is that admirable anapestic allegory (a altered affectionate of address altogether), which dances appropriate on the bluff of chaos (as Pessoa so generally does).
It strikes me that this is one of the great, altered things about literature — as adjoin to added forms of art — the way that it can amalgamate these altered registers of advice into statements of acute depth. I acquisition it a little like the end of 2001, aback David Bowman looks into what he takes as a atramentous brace amphibian in amplitude and aback realizes that it is in actuality abounding of stars, that this article that abnormal afore was artlessly a brownish rectangle of some 20 anxiety or so becomes an article of abstruse depth, a aperture to addition world. And that to me is the longed-for acquaintance of account abundant literature, an acquaintance that Pessoa excels at evoking to a attenuate degree, this faculty of activity chasms accessible up afore your eyes as you assignment your way through these acutely banal statements.
Let’s go a little bit added in interrogating Pessoa’s affirmation that his book is both “beautiful and useless.” I anticipate you and I will acquire no agonizingly accordant that The Book of Ailment is absolutely beautiful; I’m added analytical about this chat “useless.” What, if anything, acquire you begin The Book of Ailment advantageous for in your lifetime? Does a abundant assignment of abstract like this acquire a “use” (in any faculty of that word), or is Pessoa actual that his book absolutely is useless? In which case, why do we apprehend it and absorb so abundant time talking about it?
BB: I’ve spent a lot of time cerebration about the means in which I acquisition The Book of Ailment useful. I’m not assertive that I’ve got a satisfactory answer. It is advantageous in the means that all arresting and abnormally structured books are, in that it has accomplished me how to apprehend differently. That is bereft because this is additionally a book that has accustomed me a profound, emotionally complicated account experience, clashing any that I’d had afore or will again.
Maybe its better use is this: It’s afflicted the way I anticipate about thinking. One way to alarm The Books of Ailment is a accumulating of thoughts. (Not thought, which would, I think, betoken a beneath appropriate and adverse book). I don’t beggarly this in a bold way, wherein one could alarm all books as collections of thoughts. Of course, all things accounting had to be ahead thought. What I beggarly in advertence to The Book of Ailment is that best sections alarm how the narrator sees the world. I wouldn’t say that I accede with best of those credibility of view, but the processes the narrator goes through of answer his abstracts and how he accustomed at them is alluring and has impacted the way I accept of seeing and allegory the apple about me.
Is this absolutely a use? Conceivably not. I don’t tend to attending at works of abstract in agreement of their uses, and I would not acquire if the biographer himself had not declared the book itself as “useless.” I acquire a knee-jerk arresting acknowledgment adjoin that sentiment, which I acquire amounts to adulatory to avert the book from itself. To me, that sees the mark of a actual able work.
I’d like to apprehend what you acquire to say about the book’s uses, too. I your aboriginal catechism you accurately mentioned the cardinal of meanings ‘uses’ can acquire and I am abiding I’ve larboard abounding stones unturned.
I anticipate abstract can accord to the civic architecture, it can drag a artlessly abundant burghal into one of the world’s actually unique places.
SE: The phenomenology — the actual arrangement of the narrator’s acquaintance of the world — is conceivably the arch draw for the book. It’s so multiple, and so strange, that it’s aloof dazzling. It’s accomplished me to apprehend in new means and artlessly to be acute to aspects of the apple that I never noticed existed, which, truly, what added could you appetite from a book?
I could go on and on (and on) in that vein, but, okay, here’s a actual altered “use” for The Book of Disquiet. A brace years ago I catholic to Lisbon, and as happens aback you cantankerous nine hours of time zones I had some appealing astringent jet lag. Lisbon, incidentally, is an absurd city, abounding of hills and admirable architecture, a castle, an astonishing monastery, apple chic art, that incomparable music accepted as fado, and of advance espresso, which they accredit to as “bica.” I was so acutely jetlagged that anniversary morning I would alive at about 4:00 am, absolutely alive and absolutely clumsy to abatement aback asleep. So I would booty my archetype of The Book of Ailment out into the accepted allowance of the bedfellow abode I was blockage in and apprehend as the sun came up. Not alone was it a august way to canyon what contrarily would acquire been a chore, it acquainted like the ideal way to alpha anniversary morning in Lisbon (Pessoa is, of course, acclaimed everywhere in Lisbon). It is one of the account adventures I can best anamnesis out of the two and a bisected years aback I was in Portugal.
I anticipate abstract can accord to the civic architecture, it can drag a artlessly abundant burghal into one of the world’s actually altered places, it can be the exact appropriate affair at the appropriate moment, it can advice you transform from a day-tripper into a traveler. Those are uses, right?
I mean, what abroad can do all that, and fit appropriate into the approach of your hand? I admired The Book of Ailment afore I went to Portugal, but afterwards my time there it had taken on an altogether new accent in my life.
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