The Book of Disquiet: A Review
I keep a fleet of index cards in which I carefully write out, in bold red ink, my so-called bucket list. It includes visiting Iceland, writing a really good poem, and excelling at linear algebra. Now there is a new flotilla in this harbor of dreams: Learn Portuguese so that I might read Fernando Pessoa’s The Book of Disquiet in its untamed, unrestrained native language, in its moonstricken glory with the sultry tones of bossa nova dripping from my tongue.
A prairie of reveries, The Book of Disquiet is neither novel nor diary. Early on, Pessoa describes it as “the autobiography of someone who never existed.” There are four hundred thirty-eight of these reveries stretching across the length of the book, submerging the reader in tsunamis of thought that race toward the shore of consciousness with both ferocity and gentleness. Almost like a pillow book, Pessoa writes of tedium, dreams, illusions, the void, death, life, and the meaning of that tricky, wry, hyperactive consciousness itself.
Color Games
I annotated this book with a yellow pen. My favorite pack of sticky tabs come in four colors – orange, pink, green, and purple. In this case, orange was dedicated to beautiful language, theme, and discussion; pink to character and setting; green to anything that I could relate to on a personal level; and purple to profound ideas. I burned through an entire army of sticky tabs, such that the side of the book is rainbowed with these giddy colors like my own little cognitive footprints on the page.
“It weighs on me, this sudden notion of the true nature of my individual being that did nothing but make somnolent journeys between what was felt and what was seen, it weighs on me as if it were a sentence not to death but to knowledge.”
Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet, page 236
Do the colors orange, pink, green, and purple make us human? Can they saddle these tremendous thoughts like wild stallions and cleave to them as they bolt off into the night? One orange tab was tasked with guarding the following sentence: “Because men only learn in order to teach their great-grandfathers who died long ago.” Yellow squiggles underline this and line after line in this book, collections of sumptuous beauty signifying lightning and thunder.
I found more use for the pink tabs than I had anticipated. Pessoa nurtured over seventy heteronyms, some of whom authored this book. Having not known this fact going into this, it created an echo chamber of sorts while I was reading, almost like when two mirrors are placed opposite of each other and reflect one another for eternity.
I actually chose this book for my Christmas wish list months ago because of its cover. A bespectacled man in oranges and yellows looks out at the reader on a field of purple. I did not know anything about Pessoa or his alters, had never even heard of him, and yet, because I like beauty, I selected it. I knew within the first twenty or so pages that it would become one of my favorite books of all time, this menagerie of graceful language cloaked in fine, alliterative furs.
The Portuguese Plans
One of my favorite language learning series is the Practice Makes Perfect collection. As I have written before, I collect foreign language textbooks, and I always check a few of the familiar favorite publications first before buying. The Practice Makes Perfect collection included an introduction to the Portuguese, I had an empty green journal to jot it all down, and that was all I needed to curl up in a ball and roll downhill with this new language by my side gripping my sweaty palms to keep me moving.
I am starting with basic family vocabulary. I have tried to orient myself in this language using the more familiar Spanish, which helps with the grammar but not the pronunciation. It is a journey, the best of which is still yet to come.
