This is a unique and spell-binding collection of random meditations on the dreaminess of life; the impossibilities and possibilities of relating, communicating or understanding; the illusions and sensations of ordinary or extraordinary awareness; journeys of the imagination; and so on and so on. It could have gone on forever, and I'm glad it didn't - while I found it relaxing and intriguing and thought-provoking, I could only read it in small dollops, like tasting again and again a favourite ice-cream, both satisfying and too rich to consume in quantity. Despite the fig-leaf of an authorial character, there is no plot, no narrative as such. It's fiction, but not quite as we know it. A fiction of a wandering mind, as it alights on an evanescent series of forms of attention, fantasy and opaque reminiscence without landing on many of the concrete practical details of everyday conscious living. Yes there are glimpses of other people and an office and some urban environment with which this mind is loosely wreathed, but they are ghosts in a spiritual, philosophical and psychological fog through which Pessoa's writing twists and bounces in a kind of Brownian motion of the soul. ( )

One of those enjoyable, despite (or being more frank, because of) the often melancholic tone of the content, books. Also compulsive, despite the almost complete absence of anything like a plot. I suppose it isn’t for everyone, but those who like Cioran, Leopardi, Ligotti, Eugene Thacker, Osamu Dazai etc will likely enjoy this too. The internal focus and broken stream-of-consciousness seems modernist, although I’m not well read enough in that area to make a good comparison there.

The writing is so good (for which some credit must go to the translation) that it's tempting to continually jump to the next entry/fragment, but I made a conscious effort to slow down as so many entries contain so much in so few words that mulling them over is equally rewarding. Almost every one contains the sort of deep insight into this character's internality that would typically be scattered throughout other novels. The kind of thing that is built up to as some great revelation of character or profundity in other works is the basic stuff of the Book of Disquiet. It is fantastically dense with feeling. Spreading out the reading allows a revisiting of Soares over a lengthier period of time, which feels more aligned with the way Pessoa presents him - there are several entries that commence with a lamentation of having been unable to write for weeks or months. There is also much to come back to, one could open the book at a random location and find an interesting passage that stands on its own.

Imagery laden entries are mixed with entries entirely concerned with Soares' internal or dream life. Much of the imagery is seasonal in parts, but it’s debatable whether the book could be seen to track follow the course of a year, given its fragmentary nature.

For me, fragments concerning the perils of overthinking felt particularly relatable. These are juxtaposed with many passages on the futility and imperfection of any action (there’s that Cioran comparison again). A slightly contradictory positive view of procrastination is offered. This kind of occasional use of juxtaposition and oxymoron is achieved well throughout.

I did find that Soares the theistic apologist is far less interesting than Soares the dreamer, or bookkeeper. Another area of weakness for him is love. That said, in all of these areas, I think Pessoa is inviting a deeper reading than simply what Soares writes. ( )

DNF @ 29%. Started off interesting enough, but eventually felt like a chore to read. ( )

"Wanting to go and die in Peking (and not being able to)"

We are reminded of those lines of Alice Goodman from Nixon in China,

Nixon: The Chairman’s book enthralled / a nation, and have changed the world.
Mao: I could not change it. / I’d be glad to think that in the neighborhood of Peking / something will remain.

Goodman's Nixon, intending praise, recalls the original sense of 'enthrall' (see John Donne: "Take me to you, imprison me, for I, / Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,"). Mao responds with facetious modesty that is also a ridiculous hope. The second cultural revolution is already underway (passage of time, the other theme of the opera), and it will erase all traces. From this we can produce the perhaps-amusing epitaph of someone who has never been to Peking "I'd be glad to think that in the neighborhood of Peking something will remain," At a gravesite in Lisbon it would not be any more ludicrous than were it inscribed on Mao's tomb. By comparison, Pessoa's melancholy meandering is not felt very deep.

It's a kind of homosexual misogyny which interprets the lack of desire for the Object as a kind of distant respect, and therefore permits itself excesses of vitriol/paternalism perceived by the author as a kind of objective/instructive comment. The sensibility of the text is hysterical existentialism, with all the gendered baggage that attends the term.

It has been remarked that Osamu Dazai's No Longer Human, is already the not-entirely-Human-therefore-all-too-human text, such that it is regularly taught in the gradeschool curriculum. Pessoa's Disquiet is, in view of this interpretation, the conciliatory movement of the antisocial impulse which is already turning to speak to another. Not disquiet-ing, but the mood of oneone who was disquiet-ed, but perhaps no longer:

"My only desire is to die, at least temporarily, but this, as I said, is only because I have a headache"

73. retreat to dreams. imperfect mental object as the all-too-real. reflections of Murnane.
77.fear of love. why regret life / which is so much like a dream ( )

have to tap out of this one, feeling bad enough & after finishing "prisoner of infinity", a book on child abuse / narrative development with a preoccupation on 'false' enlightenment leading to total inaction, actually grabbed this to try to chill out. pessoa & co's poetry is serene (or otherwise cathartic) but so far this is meditations on locating the maximal point of self-obliteration, then staring at it. permanent orbit around the void, culture of the void, but never the release of actually falling into the void

remarkable and fascinating, honestly, just the exact wrong thing to read rn if my goal is to stay sane/alive. cannot imagine the degree of pain involved in dedicating yourself to a project like this, for this long. the pain of not being able to be alberto caiero, of caiero dying in 1915 as the book of disquiet starts slowly seeping into reality like tar. pessoa's soul would set off all the alarms at airport security.