Fernando Pessoa, Creator of Indifferences

The Book of Disquiet is what Eeyore would write if you gave him an MFA: a magnificently written defense of being a mope.

The author, Fernando Pessoa, wouldn’t have cared about being likened to the Debbie Downer of kid lit. That’s because he didn’t care about, well, pretty much anything.

“Everything is complex, or I’m the one who’s complex,” he wrote. “But at any rate it doesn’t matter, because at any rate nothing matters,” he wrote.

“It’s Hard to Explain”

I knew nothing about The Book of Disquiet before I bought it.

“What’s the book everyone should read about Portugal?” I asked an employee at Livraria Lello in Porto.

“This one,” he said, as he gave me a paperback. The cover made the book hard to judge. It was a picture of a man in a suit reeling backward—actually launched in the air—from a punch.¹

“What’s it about?” I asked.

“It’s hard to explain, but it’s interesting,” he said.

More than 500 pages later, I agree. It’s beautiful, maddening, and beyond explanation.² The only person might possibly be able to explain it is Pessoa himself, but he can’t as he is now experiencing the most extreme form of existential despair. By which I mean he’s dead.

Since I can’t possibly offer an explanation, I’ll just tell you what I liked, disliked, and took away from The Book of Disquiet.

“To read is to dream, guided by someone else’s hand.” (A selfie at the Livraria Lello in Porto. The Book of Disquiet is one of the books I’m holding. The other is The High Mountains of Portugal by Yann Martel.)

Liked: The Conceit

The Book of Disquiet is a fictional journal written by a fictional nobody. It’s presented as the “factless autobiography” by bookkeeper Bernardo Soares, Pessoa’s alter ego.³ Pessoa, as himself, wrote the introduction.

It’s a clever way to frame a book.⁴

From this point on, I’ll refer to the author as Soares when it comes to the narrator’s perspective, and Pessoa when it comes to actual writing.

Loved: The Writing

The Book of Disquiet is one of the most beautifully written books I’ve ever read. Actually, let’s remove that qualifier. It’s the best. Pessoa disguises poetry as prose. This is most true in the magic he brings to natural phenomena: light, sunrises, sunsets, and the weather.

Falling between the buildings, in alternating patches of light and shadow (or of brighter and less bright light), the morning dawns over the city. It seems to come not from the sun but from the city itself, as if the sunlight emanated from the walls and rooftops—not from them physically, but because they happen to be there.

Also …

The day’s fluid departure ends in exhausted purples.

And …

The sunset spreads through the clouds that are scattered across the sky. Soft hues of every color fill the lofty, spatial diversities, absently floating amid the vast regrets on high. On the crests of the half-colored, half-shaded rooftops, the last soft rays of the departing sun take on colours that are no ttheir own nor of the things they light up. An immense calm hangs over the noisy city, which is also growing calmer. Everything breathes beyond colour and sound, in a deep and hushed sigh.

OK, one more …

A blond tinge streaks the air that’s starting to clear, and through the dissipating fog the blueness lightly blushes.

“This dawn is the first dawn of the world. … High city hills! Great marvels of architecture that the steep slopes secure and make even greater, motley chaos of heaped up buildings that the daylight dappples with bright spots and shadows—you are today, you are me, because I see you, you are what [you won’t be] tomorrow, and I love you from the deck rail as when two ships pass, and there’s a mysterious longing and regret in their passing.” (I’m at the Miradouro de São Pedro in Lisbon.)

Despised: The “Nothing Matters” Manifesto

It’s one thing not to want to get out of bed in the morning. It’s quite another to write 500 pages saying that getting out of bed is a moral failing and intellectually dishonest. But that’s what Soares does. He wants to provide that only dreams have meaning, nothing else matters, and ignorance and inaction are noble values.⁵

The highest honour for a superior man is to not know the name of his country’s head of state, or whether he lives under a monarchy or in a republic.

And …

Nothing irks me more than the vocabulary of social responsibility. The very word ‘duty’ is unpleasant to me, like an unwanted guest. But the terms civic duty, ‘solidarity’, ‘humanitarianism’ and others of the same ilk disgust me like rubbish dumped out of a window right on top of me. I’m offended by the implicit assumption that these expressions pertain to me, that I should find them worthwhile and even meaningful.

And … ugh …

Sympathy leads to paralysis.

“I am tired of the street, but no, I’m not tired of it—life is nothing but streets.” (A photo I took on the Rua Augusta in Lisbon after a heavy rainstorm. I can still feel my cold wet socks squishing in my even wetter shoes.)

Appreciated: The Chatotic Structure

The Book of Disquiet is a hellish disorganized mess that forces you to question the absurdity of existence.

Oh, sorry, I was thinking about immigration at Miami International. I meant to say that it’s a glorious disorganized mess that makes you question the absurdity of existence.

No chapters. No sections. Just 481 numbered fragments, tenuously organized, and wildly inconsistent in style and length. It keeps you on your toes. You never know when you turn the page if you’ll discover a quick non-sequitur, a recount of the day’s events, or a philosophical treatise.

“More than once, while roaming the street in the the late afternoon, I’ve been violently struck by the bizarre presence of the organization of things.” (A walkway in the Lesboa Oriente station at night. The featured photo at the top of this post is from one of the platforms there.)

Hated With a White Hot Rage: The Anthology

Some of Soares’ longer, essay-like fragments were rounded up and herded into a separate section called A Disquiet Anthology. I wish I hadn’t read it.⁶

Not only did this section magnify many of the things I disliked about the rest of the book, but it also coated everything with a thick layer of cringe. Earlier, Soares was the weird but somewhat amusing Uber driver you strike up a conversation with. Here, he’s shouting incel conspiracy theories at you in his Cybertruck. You pretend to look at your phone and pray to God it will be over soon.

The anthology was Soares’ Star Wars Holiday Special: a follow-up so bad it makes you question if the original thing was good in the first place.⁷

“It’s raining on this sad and cold winter afternoon as if it had been raining, just as monotonously, since the first page of the world.” (A streetcar on Rua da Conceição in Lisbon. This is the rainstorm I mentioned in a caption above.)

Been There: The Trap of Perfectionistic Thinking

I’m not the guy who studies hard to get an A on the test. I’m the one who freezes up and can’t study because he doesn’t think he’ll get an A.

Soares, or Pessoa, knows this feeling.

I’m astounded whenever I finish something. Astounded and distressed. My perfectionist instinct should inhibit me from finishing; it should inhibit me from even beginning. But I get distracted and start doing something. What I achieve is not the product of an act of my will but of my will’s surrender. I begin because I don’t have the strength to think; I finish because I don’t have the courage to quit. This book is my cowardice.

I get it, Soares. I totally do.

“Oh Lisbon, my home!” (The Rua Augusta Arch in Lisbon.)

Memorable: Quotable Quips

This is my new motto:

I’m suffering from a headache and the universe.

These are also gems:

Reductio ad absurdum is one of my favourite drinks.

Opportunity is like money, which, come to think of it, is nothing but an opportunity.

Let’s absurdify life, from east to west.

I’m losing taste for everything, including my taste for finding everything tasteless.

I love this line, but it sounds out of character for Soares, no?

But if we can’t expect everything, or almost everything, we can still expect something.

This one seems especially apt in 2025:

Today the world belongs only to the stupid, the insensitive and the agitated. Today the right to live and triumph is awarded on virtually the same basis as admission into an insane asylum: an inability to think, amorality, and nervous excitability.

“I don’t need fast cars or express trains to feel the delight and terror of speed. All I require is a tram and my gift for abstraction, which I’ve developed to an astonishing degree.” (A tram on Rua dos Duques de Bragança in Lisbon.)

I Feel Seen: The Writer’s Inner Saboteur

Anything but to have to struggle with original content!

Soares, like me, knows that the words that end up on a page are crude, artificial representations of what’s in an author’s head. Pessoa wrote the fragments of The Book of Disquiet over several years and then locked them away in a trunk for others to organize and publish decades later. Even knowing that his writing wouldn’t been seen in his lifetime, he was hyperaware of how he’d sound.

Not even I know if this I that I’m disclosing to you, in these meandering pages, actually exists or is but a fictitious, aesthetic concept I’ve made of myself.

I think the same thing. All the time. It manifests as an innate need to preemptively shape other people’s perceptions of me; that is, to project myself as a person they’d like, instead of just being myself. It leaves you wondering how much of you is artifice, and how much is authentic. Both in real life and on the page.

Not knowing thine own self is just part of the issue. Another is knowing that what you write is never as good as what you imagine it could be.

Everything we do, in art or in life, is the imperfect copy of what we thought of doing. It belies the notion of inner as well as of outer perfection; it falls short not only of the standard it should meet but also of the standard we thought it could meet.

The meticulous perfection of my unwritten verses made Virgil’s precision look sloppy and Milton’s power slack.

While out walking I’ve formulated perfect phrases which I can’t remember once I get home. I’m not sure if the ineffable poetry of those phrases belongs only to what they were, or partly to what they after all weren’t.

Soares never overcomes this self-imposed inferiority complex but, then again, would you expect him to considering his worldview?⁸

His solution is to say “fuck it, I’ll write it anyway.” Well, that’s how I’d phrase it. He worded it better, so I’ll let him close out this blog post:

And I who am saying all this—why am I writing this book? Because I realize it’s imperfect. Dreamed, it would be perfection; written, it becomes imperfect; that’s why I’m writing it.

Meaningless Footnotes

Months later, I noticed a ball in the background. He wasn’t punched; it’s a photo of a goalkeeper, mid-air, who has failed to block the ball. ↩︎
If you forced me to write a one-sentence summary, I’d say it’s about deep reflections on life, the darker corners of human nature, and dreams. But that’s also a one-sentence summary of “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)” by the Eurythmics. ↩︎
Pessoa actually used dozens of alter egos in his writing, including fiery Álvaro de Campos, stone-faced Ricardo Reis, and fearless Sasha Fierce. ↩︎
It strikes me that it’s also a great way to deflect criticism. “Oh, I didn’t say and do all those despicable things! A fictional character I created did!” No one accuses Anthony Hopkins of cannibalism, right? ↩︎
I wish I could give this book to my younger self. Mom: “Get out of bed or you’ll be late for school.” Me, pulling out my copy of The Book of Disquiet: “No, and here’s why.” ↩︎
Forget the hellish mess of immigration at Miami International—this was more like the nightmare of actually being in Miami. ↩︎
I’m not linking to the Holiday Special because no one should ever watch it. ↩︎
I’ve been working on it for decades, and have the receipts from my psychologist’s office to prove it. I’ve made progress. ↩︎