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Mark André 's Reviews > The Book of Disquiet: The Complete Edition
The Book of Disquiet: The Complete Edition
by
by
(Almost finished.)
“a factless autobiography�
Vivid. Compelling and Sincere.
A remarkable book. For experienced readers.
“a factless autobiography�
Vivid. Compelling and Sincere.
A remarkable book. For experienced readers.
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The Book of Disquiet.
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Quotes Mark Liked
“Friends: not one. Just a few acquaintances who imagine they feel something for me and who might be sorry if a train ran over me and the funeral was on a rainy day.”
― The Book of Disquiet
― The Book of Disquiet
“I have to choose what I detest � either dreaming, which my intelligence hates, or action, which my sensibility loathes; either action, for which I wasn’t born, or dreaming, for which no one was born.”
― The Book of Disquiet
― The Book of Disquiet
Reading Progress
March 3, 2018
– Shelved
March 3, 2018
– Shelved as:
to-read
April 9, 2019
–
Started Reading
April 9, 2019
–
2.08%
"Do I know what it means to dream in a way that merits calling you my dream? How do I know that you are not a part, possibly a real, essential part, of me? And how do I know that I am not the dream and you the reality, or that I am your dream rather than you being a dream I am dreaming?"
page
9
April 10, 2019
–
3.94%
"... and the buyers take possession of them as gleefully as a child picking up shells from the beach! For a child, no two shells are ever alike. He falls asleep with the two prettiest ones clasped in his hand, and when they are lost or thrown away--a near-crime, as if bits of his soul had been stolen or fragments torn from his dreams!--he weeps like a God who has been robbed of his newly created universe."
page
17
April 10, 2019
–
4.4%
"And I am offering you this book because I know it to be both beautiful and useless. It teaches nothing, preaches nothing, arouses no emotion. It is a stream that runs into an abyss of ashes that the wind scatters and which neither fertilize nor harm--I put my whole soul into its making, but I wasn't thinking of that at the time, only of my own sad self and of you, who are no one."
page
19
April 10, 2019
–
4.86%
"I will make myself a poet out of the act of dreaming you, and my prose, when it describes your Beauty, will contain the rhythms of poetry, the curves of strophes, the sudden splendors to be found in immortal verses."
page
21
April 10, 2019
–
4.86%
"Let us create, O Only-Mine, you because you exist and me because I see that you exist, an art quite different from any other art.
May I find a way of drawing from your futile amphora body the forgotten glow of new verses and in your slow wavelike rhythms--a wave that has no beginning--may my tremulous fingers find a way of seeking out the perfidious lines of a virgin prose never before heard."
page
21
May I find a way of drawing from your futile amphora body the forgotten glow of new verses and in your slow wavelike rhythms--a wave that has no beginning--may my tremulous fingers find a way of seeking out the perfidious lines of a virgin prose never before heard."
April 10, 2019
–
7.18%
"To know, immediately and instinctively, how to abstract from every object and event only what makes for suitable dream material and to leave for dead in the external World any reality it contains, that is what the wise man should aim to achieve in himself."
page
31
April 10, 2019
–
8.1%
"To know, immediately and instinctively, how to abstract from every object and event only what makes for suitable dream material and to leave for dead in the external World any reality it contains, that is what the wise man should aim to achieve in himself."
page
35
April 11, 2019
–
9.49%
"To know, immediately and instinctively, how to abstract from every object and event only what makes for suitable dream material and to leave for dead in the external World any reality it contains, that is what the wise man should aim to achieve in himself."
page
41
April 11, 2019
–
10.42%
"We would sometimes walk together, arm in arm, beneath the cedars and the Judas trees, and neither of us even gave a thought to living. Our flesh was a vague perfume ad our life the echo of a bubbling spring. We would hold hands, and our eyes would wonder what it would be like to be a sensual being and to want to make flesh the illusion of love ..."
page
45
April 11, 2019
–
10.42%
"We would sometimes walk together, arm in arm, beneath the cedars and the Judas trees, and neither of us even gave a thought to living. Our flesh was a vague perfume and our life the echo of a bubbling spring. We would hold hands, and our eyes would wonder what it would be like to be a sensual being and to want to make flesh the illusion of love ..."
page
45
April 11, 2019
–
10.42%
"In our garden there were flowers of every beautiful kind ...
Our all-seeing souls were caressed by the visible coolness of the mosses ... And our eyes then filled with tears because not even here, where we were happy, were we happy ...
Our dream of living flew ahead of us ... our souls in agreement ... aware of each other only as an arm resting on the willing weight of the other person's feeling arm."
page
45
Our all-seeing souls were caressed by the visible coolness of the mosses ... And our eyes then filled with tears because not even here, where we were happy, were we happy ...
Our dream of living flew ahead of us ... our souls in agreement ... aware of each other only as an arm resting on the willing weight of the other person's feeling arm."
April 11, 2019
–
10.42%
"Our life had no inside. We were entirely outside and other. We did not know ourselves, as if we had simply appeared to our souls after a journey through dreams ...
The clepsydra of our imperfection marked the passing of the unreal hours with slow, regular drops of dreaming ... Nothing is worthwhile, my distant love, except knowing how sweet it is to know that nothing is worthwhile ..."
page
45
The clepsydra of our imperfection marked the passing of the unreal hours with slow, regular drops of dreaming ... Nothing is worthwhile, my distant love, except knowing how sweet it is to know that nothing is worthwhile ..."
April 11, 2019
–
10.42%
"Our life had no inside. We were entirely outside and other. We did not know ourselves, as if we had simply appeared to our souls after a journey through dreams ...
The clepsydra of our imperfection marked the passing of the unreal hours with slow, regular drops of dreaming ... Nothing is worthwhile, my distant love, except knowing how sweet it is to know that nothing is worthwhile ..."
page
45
The clepsydra of our imperfection marked the passing of the unreal hours with slow, regular drops of dreaming ... Nothing is worthwhile, my distant love, except knowing how sweet it is to know that nothing is worthwhile ..."
April 12, 2019
–
12.27%
"Our life had no inside. We were entirely outside and other. We did not know ourselves, as if we had simply appeared to our souls after a journey through dreams ...
The clepsydra of our imperfection marked the passing of the unreal hours with slow, regular drops of dreaming ... Nothing is worthwhile, my distant love, except knowing how sweet it is to know that nothing is worthwhile ..."
page
53
The clepsydra of our imperfection marked the passing of the unreal hours with slow, regular drops of dreaming ... Nothing is worthwhile, my distant love, except knowing how sweet it is to know that nothing is worthwhile ..."
April 12, 2019
–
12.27%
"Why remove our conversation from it's constant unreality? If we do that, it becomes almost a real possible conversation over a cup of tea, between a pretty woman and an imaginer of sensations.
The most delicious and the most intimate conversations and, above all, the most morally instructive, are those that novelists write between two characters in a book."
page
53
The most delicious and the most intimate conversations and, above all, the most morally instructive, are those that novelists write between two characters in a book."
April 13, 2019
–
14.58%
"Why remove our conversation from it's constant unreality? If we do that, it becomes almost a real possible conversation over a cup of tea, between a pretty woman and an imaginer of sensations.
The most delicious and the most intimate conversations and, above all, the most morally instructive, are those that novelists write between two characters in a book."
page
63
The most delicious and the most intimate conversations and, above all, the most morally instructive, are those that novelists write between two characters in a book."
April 13, 2019
–
14.58%
"With each drop of rain my failed life weeps with nature. There is something of my own disquiet in the steady drip a patter by which the day vainly empties out its sadness upon the earth.
It rains and rains. My soul grows damp just listening to it. So much rain ... My flesh turns liquid and watery around my consciousness of it.
The hours grey [...], stretch out, flatten out in time, the moments drag. How it rains!"
page
63
It rains and rains. My soul grows damp just listening to it. So much rain ... My flesh turns liquid and watery around my consciousness of it.
The hours grey [...], stretch out, flatten out in time, the moments drag. How it rains!"
April 13, 2019
–
14.58%
"With each drop of rain my failed life weeps with nature. There is something of my own disquiet in the steady drip and patter by which the day vainly empties out its sadness upon the earth.
It rains and rains.
How it rains!"
page
63
It rains and rains.
How it rains!"
April 13, 2019
–
14.58%
"With each drop of rain my failed life weeps with nature. There is something of my own disquiet in the steady drip and patter by which the day vainly empties out its sadness upon the earth.
It rains and rains.
How it rains!
To love is merely to grow tired of being alone: it is therefore both cowardly and a betrayal of ourselves. (It is vitally important that we should not love.)"
page
63
It rains and rains.
How it rains!
To love is merely to grow tired of being alone: it is therefore both cowardly and a betrayal of ourselves. (It is vitally important that we should not love.)"
April 14, 2019
–
15.97%
"With each drop of rain my failed life weeps with nature. There is something of my own disquiet in the steady drip and patter by which the day vainly empties out its sadness upon the earth.
It rains and rains.
How it rains!
To love is merely to grow tired of being alone: it is therefore both cowardly and a betrayal of ourselves. (It is vitally important that we should not love.)"
page
69
It rains and rains.
How it rains!
To love is merely to grow tired of being alone: it is therefore both cowardly and a betrayal of ourselves. (It is vitally important that we should not love.)"
April 14, 2019
–
15.97%
"The mere insignificant existence of a pin stuck in a piece of ribbon provokes in my soul all manner of dreams and wondrous delights.
One of the most complex and widespread of those feelings that hurt one almost to the point of being pleasurable is the disquiet aroused by the mystery of life.
I concern myself only with myself. For me the external world is pure sensation. I never forget that I can feel."
page
69
One of the most complex and widespread of those feelings that hurt one almost to the point of being pleasurable is the disquiet aroused by the mystery of life.
I concern myself only with myself. For me the external world is pure sensation. I never forget that I can feel."
April 14, 2019
–
15.97%
"The mere insignificant existence of a pin stuck in a piece of ribbon provokes in my soul all manner of dreams and wondrous delights.
One of the most complex and widespread of those feelings that hurt one almost to the point of being pleasurable is the disquiet aroused by the mystery of life.
I concern myself only with myself. For me the external world is pure sensation. I never forget that I can feel."
page
69
One of the most complex and widespread of those feelings that hurt one almost to the point of being pleasurable is the disquiet aroused by the mystery of life.
I concern myself only with myself. For me the external world is pure sensation. I never forget that I can feel."
April 14, 2019
–
17.82%
"The mere insignificant existence of a pin stuck in a piece of ribbon provokes in my soul all manner of dreams and wondrous delights.
One of the most complex and widespread of those feelings that hurt one almost to the point of being pleasurable is the disquiet aroused by the mystery of life.
I concern myself only with myself. For me the external world is pure sensation. I never forget that I can feel."
page
77
One of the most complex and widespread of those feelings that hurt one almost to the point of being pleasurable is the disquiet aroused by the mystery of life.
I concern myself only with myself. For me the external world is pure sensation. I never forget that I can feel."
April 16, 2019
–
17.82%
"In dreams one does not rest one's gaze equally on the important and unimportant aspects of a real object. The dreamer sees only the important parts. The true reality of an object lies only in a part of it; the rest is the heavy tribute it pays to the material world in exchange for its existence in space.
Areal sunset is imponderable and transitory. A dream sunset is fixed and eternal."
page
77
Areal sunset is imponderable and transitory. A dream sunset is fixed and eternal."
April 16, 2019
–
17.82%
"In dreams one does not rest one's gaze equally on the important and unimportant aspects of a real object. The dreamer sees only the important parts. The true reality of an object lies only in a part of it; the rest is the heavy tribute it pays to the material world in exchange for its existence in space.
A real sunset is imponderable and transitory. A dream sunset is fixed and eternal."
page
77
A real sunset is imponderable and transitory. A dream sunset is fixed and eternal."
April 17, 2019
–
18.75%
"I did not flee from life exactly, in the sense of seeking a softer bed for my soul, i simply swapped lives and found in my dreams the same objectivity I found in my life. My dreams ... exist independently of my will and often shock and wound me. Often what I find inside myself distresses, shames ... and frightens me."
page
81
April 18, 2019
–
20.14%
"I did not flee from life exactly, in the sense of seeking a softer bed for my soul, i simply swapped lives and found in my dreams the same objectivity I found in my life. My dreams ... exist independently of my will and often shock and wound me. Often what I find inside myself distresses, shames ... and frightens me."
page
87
April 18, 2019
–
20.37%
"Always near, though, was the hesitant noise of distant celebrations, endless processions passing beneath my windows; but no dark goldfish swam in my ponds, no fruit grew among the still greenness of my orchards; not even the smoke from the chimneys of the poor shacks where others live happily could lull to sleep with simple ballads the troubled mystery of my soul."
page
88
April 18, 2019
–
21.06%
"--I feel so small and in offensive, so alone in that huge, sad room, so profoundly sad! ...
... I look up and see the stars in all their meaninglessness ... And all that remains in me, a poor abandoned child, whom no Love wanted as an adopted son, and no Friendship chose a a playmate.
I am so cold. I am so weary of my abandoned state.
... O vast Silence, restore to me nursemaid and cradle and lullaby ..."
page
91
... I look up and see the stars in all their meaninglessness ... And all that remains in me, a poor abandoned child, whom no Love wanted as an adopted son, and no Friendship chose a a playmate.
I am so cold. I am so weary of my abandoned state.
... O vast Silence, restore to me nursemaid and cradle and lullaby ..."
April 18, 2019
–
21.06%
"--I feel so small and inoffensive, so alone in that huge, sad room, so profoundly sad! ...
... I look up and see the stars in all their meaninglessness ... And all that remains in me, a poor abandoned child, whom no Love wanted as an adopted son, and no Friendship chose a a playmate.
I am so cold. I am so weary of my abandoned state.
... O vast Silence, restore to me nursemaid and cradle and lullaby ..."
page
91
... I look up and see the stars in all their meaninglessness ... And all that remains in me, a poor abandoned child, whom no Love wanted as an adopted son, and no Friendship chose a a playmate.
I am so cold. I am so weary of my abandoned state.
... O vast Silence, restore to me nursemaid and cradle and lullaby ..."
April 18, 2019
–
21.06%
"--I feel so small and inoffensive, so alone in that huge, sad room, so profoundly sad! ...
... I look up and see the stars in all their meaninglessness ... And all that remains is me, a poor abandoned child, whom no Love wanted as an adopted son, and no Friendship chose a a playmate.
I am so cold. I am so weary of my abandoned state.
... O vast Silence, restore to me nursemaid and cradle and lullaby ..."
page
91
... I look up and see the stars in all their meaninglessness ... And all that remains is me, a poor abandoned child, whom no Love wanted as an adopted son, and no Friendship chose a a playmate.
I am so cold. I am so weary of my abandoned state.
... O vast Silence, restore to me nursemaid and cradle and lullaby ..."
April 18, 2019
–
21.06%
"--I feel so small and inoffensive, so alone in that huge, sad room, so profoundly sad! ...
... I look up and see the stars in all their meaninglessness ... And all that remains is me, a poor abandoned child, whom no Love wanted as an adopted son, and no Friendship chose a playmate.
I am so cold. I am so weary of my abandoned state.
... O vast Silence, restore to me nursemaid and cradle and lullaby ..."
page
91
... I look up and see the stars in all their meaninglessness ... And all that remains is me, a poor abandoned child, whom no Love wanted as an adopted son, and no Friendship chose a playmate.
I am so cold. I am so weary of my abandoned state.
... O vast Silence, restore to me nursemaid and cradle and lullaby ..."
April 19, 2019
–
22.92%
"--I feel so small and inoffensive, so alone in that huge, sad room, so profoundly sad! ...
... I look up and see the stars in all their meaninglessness ... And all that remains is me, a poor abandoned child, whom no Love wanted as an adopted son, and no Friendship chose a playmate.
I am so cold. I am so weary of my abandoned state.
... O vast Silence, restore to me nursemaid and cradle and lullaby ..."
page
99
... I look up and see the stars in all their meaninglessness ... And all that remains is me, a poor abandoned child, whom no Love wanted as an adopted son, and no Friendship chose a playmate.
I am so cold. I am so weary of my abandoned state.
... O vast Silence, restore to me nursemaid and cradle and lullaby ..."
April 19, 2019
–
22.92%
"... one day, I got my hands on the remnants on a chess set! I immediately gave each piece a name and they became part of my dream world.
To some I attributed certain vices--smoking or thieving--but since I am not myself a sexual being, I did not attribute any actions to them, apart perhaps from a predilection, which I though merely playful, for kissing girls and trying to catch a glimpse of their legs."
page
99
To some I attributed certain vices--smoking or thieving--but since I am not myself a sexual being, I did not attribute any actions to them, apart perhaps from a predilection, which I though merely playful, for kissing girls and trying to catch a glimpse of their legs."
April 19, 2019
–
22.92%
"... one day, I got my hands on the remnants of a chess set! I immediately gave each piece a name and they became part of my dream world.
To some I attributed certain vices--smoking or thieving--but since I am not myself a sexual being, I did not attribute any actions to them, apart perhaps from a predilection, which I though merely playful, for kissing girls and trying to catch a glimpse of their legs."
page
99
To some I attributed certain vices--smoking or thieving--but since I am not myself a sexual being, I did not attribute any actions to them, apart perhaps from a predilection, which I though merely playful, for kissing girls and trying to catch a glimpse of their legs."
April 19, 2019
–
22.92%
"... one day, I got my hands on the remnants of a chess set! I immediately gave each piece a name and they became part of my dream world.
To some I attributed certain vices--smoking or thieving--but since I am not myself a sexual being, I did not attribute any actions to them, apart perhaps from a predilection, which I thought merely playful, for kissing girls and trying to catch a glimpse of their legs."
page
99
To some I attributed certain vices--smoking or thieving--but since I am not myself a sexual being, I did not attribute any actions to them, apart perhaps from a predilection, which I thought merely playful, for kissing girls and trying to catch a glimpse of their legs."
April 20, 2019
–
24.07%
"... one day, I got my hands on the remnants of a chess set! I immediately gave each piece a name and they became part of my dream world.
To some I attributed certain vices--smoking or thieving--but since I am not myself a sexual being, I did not attribute any actions to them, apart perhaps from a predilection, which I thought merely playful, for kissing girls and trying to catch a glimpse of their legs."
page
104
To some I attributed certain vices--smoking or thieving--but since I am not myself a sexual being, I did not attribute any actions to them, apart perhaps from a predilection, which I thought merely playful, for kissing girls and trying to catch a glimpse of their legs."
April 20, 2019
–
24.07%
"The strategy with which one battles with the notion of social proprieties, with the impulses of the instincts, with the demands of sentiment, calls for a study ...
We would need to cultivate a certain nimbleness in the face of life's intrusions, a degree of caution should armor us against other people's opinions, a mild indifference should protect our souls from the ... unavoidable coexistence with other people."
page
104
We would need to cultivate a certain nimbleness in the face of life's intrusions, a degree of caution should armor us against other people's opinions, a mild indifference should protect our souls from the ... unavoidable coexistence with other people."
April 20, 2019
–
24.07%
"In this twilight age of all the disciplines, in which beliefs are dying and religions are gradually gathering dust, our sensations are the only reality left to us.
I belong to a generation ... that has lost all respect for the past and all belief or hope in the future.
We are not so very different perhaps from those who ... think only of having fun. However, the sun of our self-serving egotism is about to set ..."
page
104
I belong to a generation ... that has lost all respect for the past and all belief or hope in the future.
We are not so very different perhaps from those who ... think only of having fun. However, the sun of our self-serving egotism is about to set ..."
April 20, 2019
–
24.54%
"It will seem to many people that this diary of mine, written solely for myself, is too artificial. But it is in my nature to be artificial. How else should I amuse myself if not by carefully writing down these spiritual notes? Not that I do take much care over them. Indeed, I put them together with a polished lack of care. This refined language is the natural way in which I think."
page
106
April 20, 2019
–
24.77%
"Time! The past! There, something, a voice, a song, a sudden scent on the air, lifts the veil from my memories ... What I was and will never be again! What I had and will never have again!
When I remember them, my whole souls grows cold and I feel myself to be an exile from every heart, alone in the night of my own self, crying like a beggar at the closed silence of every door."
page
107
When I remember them, my whole souls grows cold and I feel myself to be an exile from every heart, alone in the night of my own self, crying like a beggar at the closed silence of every door."
April 21, 2019
–
25.69%
"Time! The past! There, something, a voice, a song, a sudden scent on the air, lifts the veil from my memories ... What I was and will never be again! What I had and will never have again!"
page
111
April 21, 2019
–
25.69%
"Time! The past! There, something, a voice, a song, a sudden scent on the air, lifts the veil from my memories ... What I was and will never be again! What I had and will never have again!
[So if and when I finish this book where will I shelve it: fiction or non-fiction? Is it a novel or is it a confession?]"
page
111
[So if and when I finish this book where will I shelve it: fiction or non-fiction? Is it a novel or is it a confession?]"
April 21, 2019
–
25.69%
"Time! The past! There, something, a voice, a song, a sudden scent on the air, lifts the veil from my memories ... What I was and will never be again! What I had and will never have again!"
page
111
April 21, 2019
–
25.69%
"Imagine how much less fun our I lives would be without the bright blue sky and peaceful white clouds we all can see."
page
111
April 21, 2019
–
25.93%
"The rustic peace known only in dreams! My futile life like that of a peasant who does not work but sleeps by the roadside with the smell of the fields seeping like mist into his soul, in a cool, translucent sleep, as deep and full of eternity as is everything that connects nothing with nothing, nocturnal, unknown, weary and nomadic beneath the cold compassion of the stars."
page
112
April 21, 2019
–
27.08%
"Anyone who has to live among men, actively meeting them every day--and it really is possible to reduce to a minimum one's intimacy with them (for it is intimacy and not merely contact with people that is so prejudicial)--must turn to ice his social facade so that any fraternal or friendly gesture slides off him and does not penetrate or imprint itself on him."
page
117
April 22, 2019
–
27.08%
"I hate reading. I feel a kind of anticipatory tedium at the prospect of all those unread pages. I can only read books I already know. My bedside reading is Father Figueiredo's book on rhetoric, in which, each night, I read for the thousandth time the descriptions in clear, monastic Portuguese of the various rhetorical figures, whose names, read a thousand times before, I have still not memorized. (222)"
page
117
April 24, 2019
–
28.47%
"When one of the cups in my Japanese collection gets broken, I dream that this was due not to the clumsy hands of a maid, but to the wishes of the figures who inhabit the curved flank of the cup; the grim, suicidal resolve that gripped them does not alarm me in the least. They used the maid, where we might use a revolver."
page
123
April 25, 2019
–
30.32%
"The longing to understand, which, in so many noble souls, takes the place of action, belongs to the sphere of sensibility.
The argonauts said it was the journey that mattered, not life. We, the argonauts of an ailing sensibility, say it is not living that matters, but feeling."
page
131
The argonauts said it was the journey that mattered, not life. We, the argonauts of an ailing sensibility, say it is not living that matters, but feeling."
April 25, 2019
–
30.79%
"So soft and airy was the hour, it was like an altar at which to pray. The horoscope for our meeting was clearly ruled by beneficent conjunctions, so silken and subtle was the uncertain matter of the dream ...
There's no point in thinking you know or that you even actually do know what will happen. The future is a mist that surrounds us, and when you catch a glimpse of tomorrow, it seems very like today."
page
133
There's no point in thinking you know or that you even actually do know what will happen. The future is a mist that surrounds us, and when you catch a glimpse of tomorrow, it seems very like today."
April 26, 2019
–
33.8%
"The more I contemplate the spectacle of the world and the ebb and flow of change in things, the more deeply am I convinced of the innately fictitious nature of it all ...
... the world belongs to the stupid, the insensitive and the disturbed. The right to live and triumph is today earned with the same qualifications one requires to be interned in a madhouse: amorality, hypomania, and an incapacity for thought."
page
146
... the world belongs to the stupid, the insensitive and the disturbed. The right to live and triumph is today earned with the same qualifications one requires to be interned in a madhouse: amorality, hypomania, and an incapacity for thought."
May 2, 2019
–
34.49%
"Each one of us is a speck of dust that the wind of life lifts up, then lets fall. We need to find a support, to place our small hand in another larger hand, because the hour is always uncertain, the heavens are always far away, and life always an alien thing."
page
149
May 2, 2019
–
34.72%
"The pagan idea of the perfect man was the perfection of the man who exists; the Christian idea of the perfect man is the perfection of the man who does not exist; the Buddhist idea of the perfect man is the perfection of no man at all.
Nature is the difference between the soul and God."
page
150
Nature is the difference between the soul and God."
May 3, 2019
–
36.34%
"On the terrace of the old palace, high above the sea, we were pondering in silence the differences between us. On that terrace by the sea. I was a prince and you a princess. Our love was born at our first meeting, just as beauty sprang from the encounter between moon and water."
page
157
May 4, 2019
–
40.97%
"Whatever you left behind for posterity is either so imbued with your own ideas that no one will understand it or else it is so typical of the age you are living in that other ages will not understand it, or else it will appeal to all ages, but will not be understood by the final abyss, into which all ages finally plunge."
page
177
May 5, 2019
–
41.2%
"Ignorant of the meaning of a religious life and unable to discover it through reason, (and) unable to have faith in the abstract concept of man ... all that remains for us as a justification for having a soul is the aesthetic contemplation of life. And so, insensitive to the solemnity of the world, indifferent to the divine and despising humankind, we give ourselves vainly over to a purposeless sensationism ..."
page
178
May 5, 2019
–
41.44%
"For me life is an inn where I must stay until the carriage from the abyss calls to collect me. I don't know where the carriage will take me because i know nothing.
... unlike others, I am neither impatient nor sociable.
I sit at the door and fill my eyes and ears with the colors and sounds of the landscape and slowly, just for myself, sing vague songs that I compose while I wait."
page
179
... unlike others, I am neither impatient nor sociable.
I sit at the door and fill my eyes and ears with the colors and sounds of the landscape and slowly, just for myself, sing vague songs that I compose while I wait."
May 5, 2019
–
41.44%
"Night will fall on all of us and the carriage will arrive. I enjoy the breeze given to me and the soul given to me to enjoy it and I ask no more questions, look no further. If what I leave written in the visitors' book is one day read by others and entertains them on their journey, that's fine. If no one reads it or is entertained by it, that's fine too."
page
179
May 6, 2019
–
42.59%
"When one reads of wars and revolutions--there's always one or the other going on--one feels not horror but boredom. It isn't the cruel fate of all those dead and wounded ... that weighs so heavy on the heart; it's the stupidity that sacrifices lives and possessions to anything so utterly vain. All ideals and ambitions are just the ravings of gossiping men. No empire merits even the smashing of a child's doll."
page
184
May 6, 2019
–
42.59%
"When one reads of wars and revolutions--there's always one or the other going on--one feels not horror but boredom. It isn't the cruel fate of all those dead and wounded ... that weighs so heavy on the heart; it's the stupidity that sacrifices lives and possessions to anything so utterly vain. All ideals and ambitions are just the ravings of gossiping men. ... No ideal merits even the sacrifice of one toy train."
page
184
May 7, 2019
–
44.91%
"Whenever, under the influence of my dreams, my ambitions reared up above the daily level of my life and I felt myself riding high for a moment, like a child on a swing, just like that child, I always had to swing back down to the municipal gardens and recognize my defeat with no fluttering of banners to carry into battle and no sword I would have the strength to unsheath."
page
194
May 8, 2019
–
46.06%
"My pride stoned by blind men and my disillusion trampled on by beggars.
'I want you only so that I can dream you,' they say to their beloved in poems they never send, those who dare not say anything to her. The line 'I want you only so that I can dream you' is from an old poem of mine. I register this memory with a smile, and do not even comment on the smile."
page
199
'I want you only so that I can dream you,' they say to their beloved in poems they never send, those who dare not say anything to her. The line 'I want you only so that I can dream you' is from an old poem of mine. I register this memory with a smile, and do not even comment on the smile."
May 8, 2019
–
46.3%
"I approach my desk as if it were a bulwark against life.
I feel such an overwhelming sense of tenderness ...
I feel love for all this, perhaps because I have nothing else to love or perhaps too, because even though nothing truly merits the love of any soul, if, out of sentiment, we must give it, I might just as well lavish it on the smallness of my inkwell as on the grand indifference of the stars."
page
200
I feel such an overwhelming sense of tenderness ...
I feel love for all this, perhaps because I have nothing else to love or perhaps too, because even though nothing truly merits the love of any soul, if, out of sentiment, we must give it, I might just as well lavish it on the smallness of my inkwell as on the grand indifference of the stars."
May 8, 2019
–
46.3%
"I asked for so little from life and life denied me even that. Part of a ray of sunlight, a nearby field, some peace and quiet and a mouthful of bread, not to feel the knowledge of my existence weigh too heavily on me, to demand nothing of others and have them demand nothing of me. That was denied me, like someone denying the beggar not out of malice, but merely so as not to have to unbutton his jacket."
page
200
May 9, 2019
–
47.22%
"I have often tried in dreams to be the kind of imposing individual the Romantics imagined themselves to be ...
... all men dream of ruling over a great empire, with all men their subjects, all women theirs for the asking ...
Few are as accustomed to dreaming as I am and so are not lucid enough to laugh at the aesthetic possibility of nurturing such dreams."
page
204
... all men dream of ruling over a great empire, with all men their subjects, all women theirs for the asking ...
Few are as accustomed to dreaming as I am and so are not lucid enough to laugh at the aesthetic possibility of nurturing such dreams."
May 9, 2019
–
48.84%
"I find it irritating, the happiness of all those men unawares of their unhappiness. ... any pain they feel passes by without even touching their souls ... the genuine good fortune of being alive without realizing it ... the greatest gift the gods can give ... of being similar to them ... superior (albeit in a different way) to those incidents called joy and pain."
page
211
May 9, 2019
–
48.84%
"The whole idea of ... contact with someone oppresses me.
The idea of any social obligation--going to a funeral, discussing something with someone at the office, going to meet someone ... at the station--the mere idea blocks that whole day's thoughts ... I even worry about it the night before .... Yet the reality, when it comes, is utterly insignificant, and ... doesn't justify so much fuss, yet ... I never learn."
page
211
The idea of any social obligation--going to a funeral, discussing something with someone at the office, going to meet someone ... at the station--the mere idea blocks that whole day's thoughts ... I even worry about it the night before .... Yet the reality, when it comes, is utterly insignificant, and ... doesn't justify so much fuss, yet ... I never learn."
May 10, 2019
–
49.54%
"Once more the same horror--another day, life and its fictitious usefulness and vain activity; my physical personality, visible, social, communicable through words that mean nothing, usable by other people's thoughts and gestures. I am me again, exactly as I am not."
page
214
May 10, 2019
–
50.69%
"And so I drag myself along, doing things I don't want to do and dreaming of what I cannot have [...], as pointless as a public clock that's stopped ..."
page
219
May 10, 2019
–
51.62%
"We are all accustomed to think of ourselves as essentially mental realities and of others as merely physical realities; because of the way others respond to us, we do vaguely think of ourselves as physical beings; we vaguely think of other people as mental beings, but only when we find ourselves in love or conflict with another do we really take in the fact that others have a soul just as we do."
page
223
May 11, 2019
–
53.47%
"To cease, to end once and for all, but yet to survive in another form, as the page of a book, a loose lock of hair, a swaying creeper outside a half-open window, insignificant footsteps on the fine gravel on the curve of a path, the last twist of smoke high above a village as it falls asleep, the idle whip of he waggoner stopped by the road in the morning ... Absurdity, confusion, extinction--anything but life ..."
page
231
May 12, 2019
–
54.17%
"To know nothing about oneself is to live. To know a little about oneself is to think. To know oneself precipitately, as I did in that moment of pure enlightenment, is suddenly to grasp Leibniz's notion of the dominant monad, the magic password to the soul."
page
234
May 13, 2019
–
58.1%
"Often, captivated by the bewitching surface of things, I feel like a man. Then I live joyfully with other people and there's a clarity about my existence. I float on the surface of things. And it's a pleasure to me to receive my wages and go home. I feel the weather without seeing it, and I'm pleased by anything organic. If I meditate, I don't think. On such days I really enjoy gardens and parks."
page
251
May 16, 2019
–
58.56%
"I think what creates in me the deep sense I have of living out of step with others is the fact that most people think with their feelings whereas I feel with my thoughts.
For the average man, to feel is to live, and to think is to know that one lives. For me, to think is to live, and to feel just provides food for thought."
page
253
For the average man, to feel is to live, and to think is to know that one lives. For me, to think is to live, and to feel just provides food for thought."
May 17, 2019
–
59.03%
"What a lot of nonsense just to satisfy myself. What cynical insights into purely hypothetical emotions! All this mixing up of soul and feelings, of my thoughts with the air and the river, just to say that life wounds my sense of smell and my consciousness, just because I do not have the wit to use the simple, all-embracing words of the Book of Job: 'My soul is weary of my life!'"
page
255
May 17, 2019
–
59.03%
"... a slight shift in the air made my skin shiver with joy.
Everything we love or lose--things, people, meanings--brushes our skin and thus reaches our soul, and in God's eyes, that is no more or less than the breeze that brought me nothing except the imagined relief, the propitious moment, and the ability to loose everything splendidly."
page
255
Everything we love or lose--things, people, meanings--brushes our skin and thus reaches our soul, and in God's eyes, that is no more or less than the breeze that brought me nothing except the imagined relief, the propitious moment, and the ability to loose everything splendidly."
May 19, 2019
–
60.19%
"When ... I consider what my life has apparently been, I imagine it as some brightly colored scrap of litter--a chocolate wrapper or a cigar ring--that the eavesdropping waitress brushes lightly from the soiled tablecloth into the dustpan, among the the crumbs and crusts of reality itself. It stands out from those things whose fate it shares by virtue of a privilege that is also destined for the dustpan."
page
260
May 19, 2019
–
60.65%
"I write because I lack knowledge, and, depending on the demands of a particular emotion .... If it is a clear, irrevocable emotion, I speak of the Gods, and thus frame it in a consciousness of the multiple world. If it is a deep emotion, I speak, naturally, of God and thus fix it in a consciousness of the singleness of the world. If the emotion is a thought, I speak ... of Fate and thus let it flow by like a river .."
page
262
May 19, 2019
–
61.34%
"To live is to be other. Even feeling is impossible if one feels today what one felt yesterday, for that is not to feel, it is only to remember ... yesterday's lost life.
To wipe everything off the slate from one day to the next, to be new with each new dawn, in a state of perpetually restored virginity of emotion--that and only that is worth being or having, if we are to be or to have what we imperfectly are."
page
265
To wipe everything off the slate from one day to the next, to be new with each new dawn, in a state of perpetually restored virginity of emotion--that and only that is worth being or having, if we are to be or to have what we imperfectly are."
May 21, 2019
–
61.57%
"Living seems to me a metaphysical mistake on the part of matter, an oversight on the part of inaction."
page
266
May 21, 2019
–
61.57%
"I live always in the present. I know nothing of the future and no longer have a past. The former weighs me down with a thousand possibilities, the latter with the reality of nothingness.
Knowing what my life has been up until now--So often contrary to the way I wished it to be--what assumptions can I make about my life except that it will be neither what I presume nor what I want it to be ..."
page
266
Knowing what my life has been up until now--So often contrary to the way I wished it to be--what assumptions can I make about my life except that it will be neither what I presume nor what I want it to be ..."
May 21, 2019
–
62.04%
"Life for us is whatever we imagine it to be. To the peasant with his one field, that field is everything, it is an empire. To Caesar with his vast empire which still feels cramped, that empire is a field. The poor man has an empire; the great man only a field. The truth is that we possess nothing but our own sensations; it is on them, then, and not on what they perceive, that we must base the reality of our life."
page
268
May 25, 2019
–
62.5%
"What we lost, what we should have loved, what we got and were, by mistake, contented with, what we loved and lost and, once lost, saw that we had not loved but loved it still just because we had lost it; what we believed we thought when we felt something; what we believed to be an emotion and was in fact only a memory; and, as I walked, the ...sea came rolling in ... to etch itself delicately along the sands ..."
page
270
May 25, 2019
–
62.5%
"What we lost, what we should have loved, what we got and were, by mistake, contented with, what we loved and lost and, once lost, saw that we had not loved but loved it still just because we had lost it; what we believed we thought when we felt something; what we believed to be an emotion and was in fact only a memory; and, as I walked, the whole sea came rolling in ... to etch itself delicately along the sands ..."
page
270
May 31, 2019
–
62.5%
"Who knows what he thinks or what he desires? Who knows what meaning he really has for himself?
How many things the night recalls and how we weep for them though they never were! Like a voice unleashed from the long peaceful line of sea, the wave arches, crashes and dies, leaving behind the sound if it’s waters licking the invisible shore.
How I die if I allow myself to feel for all things!"
page
270
How many things the night recalls and how we weep for them though they never were! Like a voice unleashed from the long peaceful line of sea, the wave arches, crashes and dies, leaving behind the sound if it’s waters licking the invisible shore.
How I die if I allow myself to feel for all things!"
June 1, 2019
–
62.73%
"Each of us is intoxicated by different things. There’s intoxication enough for me in just existing. Drunk on feeling, I drift but never stray. If it’s time to go back to work, I go..just like everyone else. If not, I go down to the river to stare at the waters..just like everyone else. I’m just the same. But behind this sameness, I secretly scatter my personal firmament with stars and therein create my own infinity."
page
271
June 2, 2019
–
62.96%
"Relations between one soul and another, expressed through such uncertain, divergent things as words exchanged and gestures made, are of a strange complexity. The very way in which we come to know each other is a form of unknowing. When two people say “I love you� (or perhaps think or reciprocate the feeling), each one means by that something different, a different life ..."
page
272
June 2, 2019
–
63.43%
"To say things! To know how to say things! To know how to exist through the written voice and the intellectual image! That’s what life is about: the rest is just men and women, imagined loves and fictitious vanities, excuses born of poor digestion and forgetting, people squirming beneath the great abstract boulder of a meaningless blue sky, the way insects do when you lift a stone."
page
274
June 3, 2019
–
64.12%
"... I can’t stop writing. Writing is like a drug I detest but keep taking, a vice I despise and for which I live. There are necessary poisons and there are very subtle ones made up of ingredients of the soul, herbs gathered in the corners of ruin d dreams, black poppies found near the graves of intentions, the long leaves of obscene trees that wave their branches on the noisy banks of the infernal rivers of the soul."
page
277
June 3, 2019
–
64.12%
"Whatever the truth, I let it be. And to whatever gods or goddesses may exist, I hand over what I am, resigned to whatever fate may send and whatever chance may offer, faithful to some forgotten promise."
page
277
June 6, 2019
–
66.9%
"If some day ...
I will feel nostalgic not only because this ordinary life is over and I will never have it again, but because there is in every kind of life a particular quality and a peculiar pleasure, and when we move on to another life, even if it is a better one, that peculiar pleasure is dimmed, that particular quality impoverished, they cease to exist and one feels their loss."
page
289
I will feel nostalgic not only because this ordinary life is over and I will never have it again, but because there is in every kind of life a particular quality and a peculiar pleasure, and when we move on to another life, even if it is a better one, that peculiar pleasure is dimmed, that particular quality impoverished, they cease to exist and one feels their loss."
June 8, 2019
–
67.82%
"... the painful acuity of my sensations, even those that bring me joy; the joyful acuity of my sensations, even those that are sad.
... on a day full of soft light, on which above the rooftops of the interrupted city, the always astonishing blue of the sky clothes in oblivion the mysterious existence of the stars ..."
page
293
... on a day full of soft light, on which above the rooftops of the interrupted city, the always astonishing blue of the sky clothes in oblivion the mysterious existence of the stars ..."
June 8, 2019
–
67.82%
"To subordinate oneself to nothing—be it another human being, some one we love, or an idea—to maintain that aloof indendence that consists in not believing in the truth nor, were such a thing to exist, in the usefulness of knowing it: that, it seems to me, is the proper condition of the intellectual life of thinkers."
page
293
June 9, 2019
–
69.68%
"It gave me neither pleasure that I could later remember with sadness, nor grief to be recalled with equal sadness. It feels like something I read somewhere, something that happened to someone else, in a novel of which I read only half, the other half being missing, not that I cared that it was missing, because what I had read up till then was enough ... it made no sense ... the missing part would clarify nothing."
page
301
June 10, 2019
–
70.83%
"At this moment, I have so many fundamental thoughts, so many truly metaphysical things to say, that I suddenly tired and decide not to write anymore, not to think anymore, but to let the fever of saying lull me to sleep whilst, with closed eyes, I gently stroke, as I would a cat, all the things I might have said."
page
306
June 11, 2019
–
72.22%
"To describe the universal ... what is common to every human soul ... the vast sky and the days and nights that emerge from it ... the flowing rivers ... the seas and the great undulating mountains ... the fields, the seasons, houses, faces, gestures; clothes and smiles; love and war; gods, finite and infinite; the formless Night, mother of the origin of the world; Fate, the intellectual monster that is everything ..."
page
312
June 11, 2019
–
73.84%
"...as if before the hearth I did not have, I sat down on the milestone at the crossroads and...began to make paper boats out of the lie they had given me. No one took me seriously, not even as a liar, and I had no lake on which to test my truth.
Lost, lazy words, random metaphors..Traces of happier times..A nostalgic longing for the fountains that play in..gardens..A feeling of tenderness for what never happened.."
page
319
Lost, lazy words, random metaphors..Traces of happier times..A nostalgic longing for the fountains that play in..gardens..A feeling of tenderness for what never happened.."
June 12, 2019
–
75.0%
"I could easily consecrate this moment by buying some bananas... But I feel ashamed of rituals and symbols, of buying things in the street. They might not wrap the bananas properly, they might not sell them to me as they should be sold because I don’t know how to buy them...Far better to write than dare to live, even if living means no more than buying bananas...as long as the sun lasts and there are bananas to sell."
page
324
June 13, 2019
–
75.46%
"Everything that surrounds us becomes part of us...like the web of the great Spider...ensnares us in a fragile cradle...where we lie rocking in the wind. (...) A ray of sun, a cloud whose own sudden shadow warns of its coming, a breeze getting up, the silence that follows...certain faces, some voices, the easy smiles as they talk, and then the night into which emerge, meaningless, the broken hieroglyphs of the stars."
page
326
June 13, 2019
–
76.16%
"Hoping and doubting are equally cold and grey. I am a shelf full of empty bottles.
And yet, if I allow my vulgar eyes to receive the dying greeting of the bright day’s end, what a longing I feel to be no one else but me!
I don’t know what I want or don’t want.
And thus I continue, in my own wake, until night falls and the slight soothing caress of being different wafts, like a breeze, through...my...unconsciousnes"
page
329
And yet, if I allow my vulgar eyes to receive the dying greeting of the bright day’s end, what a longing I feel to be no one else but me!
I don’t know what I want or don’t want.
And thus I continue, in my own wake, until night falls and the slight soothing caress of being different wafts, like a breeze, through...my...unconsciousnes"
June 13, 2019
–
78.01%
"Some say there’s no life without hope, others that hope makes life meaningless. For me, bereft of both hope and despair, life is just a picture in which I am included but that I watch as if it were a play with no plot, performed merely to please the eye—an incoherent ballet, the stirring of leaves on a tree, clouds that change color with the changing light, random networks of ancient streets in odd parts of the city."
page
337
June 13, 2019
–
78.01%
"That fate of being unable to desire without knowing beforehand that I will no be granted my desire has pursued me like some malign creature. Whenever I see the figure of a young girl in the street and just for a moment wonder, however idly, how it would be if she were mine, every time, just ten paces on from my daydream, that girl meets a man who is obviously her husband or her lover."
page
337
June 13, 2019
–
78.01%
"That fate of being unable to desire without knowing beforehand that I will not be granted my desire has pursued me like some malign creature. Whenever I see the figure of a young girl in the street and just for a moment wonder, however idly, how it would be if she were mine, every time, just ten paces on from my daydream, that girl meets a man who is obviously her husband or her lover."
page
337
June 14, 2019
–
78.01%
"Whenever I see the figure of a young girl in the street and just for a moment wonder, however idly, how it would be if she were mine, every time, just ten paces on from my daydream, that girl meets a man who is obviously her husband or her lover. A romantic would make a tragedy of this, a stranger a comedy; I, however, mix the two things, for I am both a romantic and va stranger to myself ..."
page
337
June 14, 2019
–
78.01%
"Whenever I see the figure of a young girl in the street and just for a moment wonder, however idly, how it would be if she were mine, every time, just ten paces on from my daydream, that girl meets a man who is obviously her husband or her lover. A romantic would make a tragedy of this, a stranger a comedy; I, however, mix the two things, for I am both a romantic and a stranger to myself ..."
page
337
June 17, 2019
–
79.86%
"The sunset is scattered with stray clouds that fill the whole sky. Soft reflected lights of every color fill the multifarious upper air ...
... the last rays of the setting sun take on shades of colors that belong neither to them nor to the things on which they alight. A vast peace hovers above the noisy surface of the city that is itself slowly settling into quietness."
page
345
... the last rays of the setting sun take on shades of colors that belong neither to them nor to the things on which they alight. A vast peace hovers above the noisy surface of the city that is itself slowly settling into quietness."
June 19, 2019
–
82.18%
"Having touched the feet of Christ is no excuse for faulty punctuation.
If a man writes well only when he is drunk, I would tell him: Drink. And if he were to tell me that his liver suffers as a consequence, I would say: And what is your liver? It is a dead thing that lives only while you live, whereas there is no “while� about the poems that you write."
page
355
If a man writes well only when he is drunk, I would tell him: Drink. And if he were to tell me that his liver suffers as a consequence, I would say: And what is your liver? It is a dead thing that lives only while you live, whereas there is no “while� about the poems that you write."
June 19, 2019
–
82.18%
"Anyone wanting to make a catalogue of monsters would need only to photograph in words the things that night brings to somnolent souls who cannot sleep. These things have all the incoherence of dreams without the unacknowledged excuse of sleep. They hover like bats over the passivity of the soul, or like vampires that suck the blood of our submissiveness."
page
355
June 20, 2019
–
83.1%
"Everything we do or say, everything we think or feel, wears the same mask and the same fancy dress. However many layers of clothing we take off, we are never left naked, for nakedness is a phenomenon of the soul ...
... we live out the brief time the gods give us to enjoy ourselves happily or unhappily (or ignorant of quite what our feelings are), like children playing earnest games."
page
359
... we live out the brief time the gods give us to enjoy ourselves happily or unhappily (or ignorant of quite what our feelings are), like children playing earnest games."
June 29, 2019
–
84.03%
"I write and weep over my lost childhood; I linger touchingly over details of the people and furniture that inhabited that old house in the provinces; I evoke the joy of having no rights and no duties, of being free because I did not know how to think or feel—and that evocation, if successfully and vividly transposed into prose, will awaken in my reader precisely the emotion I was feeling ..."
page
363
July 3, 2019
–
84.26%
"A lie is simply the ideal language of the soul, for just as we use words ... to translate into real language the most intimate and subtle movements of emotion and thought, which words alone could never translate, so we make use of lies and fictions in order to understand and get along with other people, which we would never be able to do with our own very personal and untransmittable truth."
page
364
July 4, 2019
–
84.26%
"Art lies because it is a social thing. And there are only two great forms of art—one is addressed to our deep soul, the other to our attentive soul. The first is poetry, the second the novel.
One sets out to give us the truth by means of metered lines, which goes against the inherent nature of speech, the other sets out to give us the truth through a reality that we know very well never existed."
page
364
One sets out to give us the truth by means of metered lines, which goes against the inherent nature of speech, the other sets out to give us the truth through a reality that we know very well never existed."
July 4, 2019
–
84.26%
"To pretend is to love. I never see a sweet smile or a meaningful look ... without probing deep into the soul of the person smiling or looking in search of the politician hoping to buy us or the prostitute hoping that we will buy her. And yet the politician ... at least loved the act of buying us; and the prostitute at least loved the act of being bought...
We all love each other, and the lie is the kiss we exchange."
page
364
We all love each other, and the lie is the kiss we exchange."
July 5, 2019
–
84.72%
"Tedium ... It is suffering without suffering, wanting without will, thinking without reason ... It’s like being possessed by a negative demon, bewitched by nothing at all. They say that witches and some minor wizards, by making images of us which they then torment, can reproduce those same torments in us by means of some sort of astral transference. Tedium arises in me, in the transposed feeling of such an image ..."
page
366
July 6, 2019
–
84.72%
"Tedium ... Perhaps it’s basically an expression of a dissatisfaction in our innermost soul not to have been given something to believe in, the desolation of the child all of us are deep down not to have been bought the divine toy. It is perhaps the insecurity of someone in need of a guiding hand, conscious of nothing on the black road ... but ... one’s inability to think ... one’s inability to feel ..."
page
366
July 6, 2019
–
84.72%
"Tedium ... No one with a god to believe in will ever suffer from tedium. Tedium is the lack of a mythology. To the unbeliever, even doubt is denied, even scepticism does not give the strength to despair. Yes, that’s what tedium is: the loss by the soul of its capacity to delude itself, the absence in thought of the nonexistent stairway up which the soul steadfastly ascends towards the truth."
page
366
July 6, 2019
–
84.95%
"I’m falling through a trapdoor, through...infinitous space, in a directionless, empty fall. My soul is a black maelstrom, a great madness spinning around a vacuum, the swirling of a vast ocean around a hole in the void, and in the waters, more like whirlwinds...float images of all I ever saw or heard...houses, faces, books...snatches of music and fragments of voices, all caught up in a sinister, bottomless whirlpool."
page
367
July 7, 2019
–
86.11%
"I’ll be living quietly ... enjoying a peaceful existence not writing the book I’m not writing now and, so as to continue not doing so, I will come up with different excuses from the ones I use now to avoid actually confronting myself. Or else I’ll be interned in a poorhouse, content with my utter failure, mingling with riff-raff who believe they were geniuses when in fact they were just beggars with dreams ..."
page
372
July 8, 2019
–
87.27%
"Unfortunately, the suffering of the intellect is less painful than that of the emotions, and that of the emotions...less than that of the body.
No anguished sense of the mystery of life hurts like love or jealousy or longing, chokes you the way intense physical fear can or transforms you like anger or ambition. But neither can any of the pains that lacerate the soul ever be as real a pain as that of a toothache ..."
page
377
No anguished sense of the mystery of life hurts like love or jealousy or longing, chokes you the way intense physical fear can or transforms you like anger or ambition. But neither can any of the pains that lacerate the soul ever be as real a pain as that of a toothache ..."
July 8, 2019
–
89.12%
"Suddenly the ray of sun entered into me, by which I mean that I suddenly saw it...It was a bright stripe of almost colorless light cutting like a naked blade across the dark, wooden floor...
For minutes on end I observed the imperceptible effect of the sun penetrating into the still office... Only the imprisoned, with the fascination of someone watching ants, would pay such attention to one shifting ray of sunlight."
page
385
For minutes on end I observed the imperceptible effect of the sun penetrating into the still office... Only the imprisoned, with the fascination of someone watching ants, would pay such attention to one shifting ray of sunlight."
July 9, 2019
–
89.12%
"With the soul’s equivalent of a wry smile, I calmly confront the prospect that my life will consist of nothing more than being shut up for ever in Rua dos Douradores, in this office, surrounded by these people. I have enough money to buy food and drink, I have somewhere to live and enough free time in which to dream, write—and sleep—what more can I ask of the gods or hope for from Fate?
I had great ambitions ..."
page
385
I had great ambitions ..."
July 9, 2019
–
91.2%
"Where did I find the strength in my solitary soul to write page after lonely page, to live out syllable by syllable the false magic not of what I was writing but of what I imagined I was writing? What spell of ironic witchery led me to believe myself the poet of my own prose, in the winged moment in which it was born in me, faster than my pen could write, like a sly revenge on life’s insults!
(continued)"
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394
(continued)"
July 9, 2019
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91.2%
"What spell of ironic witchery led me to believe myself the poet of my own prose, in the winged moment in which it was born in me, faster than my pen could write, like a sly revenge on life’s insults! And rereading it today I watch my precious dolls ripped apart, see the straw burst out of them and see them scattered without ever having been ..."
page
394
July 9, 2019
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92.13%
"Happy the man who demands no more from life than what life spontaneously gives him and who guides himself with the instinct of cats who seek the sun when there is sun and, when there is no sun, find what warmth they can. Happy is the man who renounces his life in favor of the imagination and finds pleasure in the contemplation of other people’s lives, experiencing not the impressions themselves (continued)"
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398
July 9, 2019
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92.13%
"Happy is the man who renounces his life in favor of the imagination and finds pleasure in the contemplation of other people’s lives, experiencing not the impressions themselves but the external spectacle of those impressions. Happy the man, who renounces everything and from whom, therefore, nothing can be taken or subtracted."
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398
July 9, 2019
–
92.36%
"The rustic, the reader of novels, the pure ascetic: these three are truly happy men, because they have all renounced their personality—the first because he lives by instinct, which is impersonal, the second because he lives through his imagination, which is oblivion, and the third because he does not live and, not yet having died, sleeps."
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399
July 9, 2019
–
92.36%
"Nothing satisfies me, nothing consoles me, everything—whether or not it has ever existed—satiates me. I neither want my soul nor wish to renounce it. I desire what I do not desire and renounce what I do not have. I can be neither nothing nor everything: I’m just the bridge between what I do not have and what I do not want."
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399
July 11, 2019
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92.36%
"The farther we advance in life, the more we become convinced of two contradictory truths. The first is that, confronted by the reality of life, all the fictions of literature and art pale into insignificance. Though it is true that the latter afford us a nobler pleasure than life...they are just dreams from which one awakens, not memories or nostalgic longings with which we might later live a second life."
page
399
July 12, 2019
– Shelved as:
biography
July 12, 2019
–
92.59%
"The wretchedness of my condition is in no way affected by the words I am writing, and out of which I am shaping..this random book of thoughts.
Faced by the vast, starry sky and the enigma of so many souls, faced by the night of the unknown abyss and the chaos of utter ignorance—faced by all this...what I write on this paper soul of mine remains fast here..and has little to do with the great expanses of the universe"
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400
Faced by the vast, starry sky and the enigma of so many souls, faced by the night of the unknown abyss and the chaos of utter ignorance—faced by all this...what I write on this paper soul of mine remains fast here..and has little to do with the great expanses of the universe"
July 13, 2019
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92.82%
"The alcohol of grand words and long sentences, which, like waves, rise with their rhythmic breathing and fall again smiling, ironic snakes of foam in the sad magnificence of the dark night."
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401
July 13, 2019
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93.29%
"Vasquez is the same as all men of action: captains of industry and commerce, politicians, men of war, religious and social idealists, great poets and artists, beautiful women, spoilt children.
The winner is the one who thinks only those thought that will bring him victory. The rest, the vague world of humanity in general, amorphous, sensitive, imaginative, and fragile, are nothing but the backdrop ..."
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The winner is the one who thinks only those thought that will bring him victory. The rest, the vague world of humanity in general, amorphous, sensitive, imaginative, and fragile, are nothing but the backdrop ..."
July 15, 2019
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93.29%
"Speaking and writing make no difference to our basic instinct to survive, which is quite unconscious. All our abstract intelligence is good for is constructing systems, or semi-systematic ideas, which for animals is a simple matter of lying in the sun. Even our ability to imagine the impossible may not be a unique talent, for I’ve seen cats staring at the moon and for all I know they may be wishing for it."
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403
July 16, 2019
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94.68%
"Perhaps there are supreme forces, the god or devils of the Truth in whose shadow we wander, for whom I am just a lustrous fly resting for a moment before their gaze.
I felt myself to be a fly when I imagined I felt it.
..I looked up at the ceiling to check there was no supreme being wielding a ruler to squash me..
..when I looked again, the fly..had disappeared.
..the office was once more bereft of all philosophy"
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409
I felt myself to be a fly when I imagined I felt it.
..I looked up at the ceiling to check there was no supreme being wielding a ruler to squash me..
..when I looked again, the fly..had disappeared.
..the office was once more bereft of all philosophy"
September 9, 2019
–
Finished Reading
Comments Showing 1-50 of 193 (193 new)
message 1:
by
Mark
(new)
-
rated it 5 stars
Apr 09, 2019 09:54AM
I just started this morning. I read Saramago's Seeing last month and was enthralled. It was my first Portuguese novel, and also my first 21st century novel. I realize the Pessoa will be different. I like the excitement of a new and strange book. It came, the Pessoa, highly recommended, and with warnings too.
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Thank you, Danielle!Very nice to meet you.
Manuel wrote: "Mark wrote: "I just started this morning. I read Saramago's Seeing last month and was enthralled. It was my first Portuguese novel, and also my first 21st century novel. I realize the Pessoa will b..."I enjoyed Saramago's idiosyncratic presentation, which seemed perfected suited to the flow of his narrative. I like the Portuguese title better too. And I appreciate your curiosity. We'll see.
Thank you, Teodora!I feel like I'm in for a big adventure.
Thank you, Belinda!Not sure what I'm in for yet.
Thank you, etherealfire!A bit out of the common groove.
Thank you, Gee!Very nice to met you. I just started. There is a certain amount of expectation with this book.
Thank you, Charlotte May! :~)Nice to hear from you. A very curious book so far.
Great book! I love Pessoa. I never read Saramago, I guess I should get into it.
Thank you, Maggie! :~)Yes! to Pessoa! A most remarkable book. Not like anything I have ever read before. Yes! to Saramago. I have only read his Seeing. It was outstanding.
Thank you, Fernando!It is a fascinating book. The writing is so personal and expressive, The ideas so unique and sincere.
Thank you, Ana! :~)Very nice to meet you.
Thank you, Guille!Nice to hear from you.
Thank you, Manuel!Nice to hear from you. It is a wonderful book. Very enjoyable reading.
Thank you, Luís!Agreed.
I bought this book around two years ago don't remember why. Still haven't read it though. After reading your periodic excerpts from the book I think its time to give it a try
Thank you, Celeste! :~)Very nice to meet you.
Thank you, Asma! :~)I just couldn't wait. Such a cool book.
Thank you, Matt!It is a unique book.
Thank you, Alan!Nice to hear from you. Though it came highly recommended I had no idea what I was getting into. It's hard to describe even half way done. The insights of a solitary monad, without a god, but with a soul, trying to cope in a human way with a mad and indifferent world.
Thank you, Caternia! :~)It has been a very entertaining read so far. Quite different.
Thank you, Shyam!It's not like I've discovered something, I'm just confirming what many others before me have already known. It's a very cool book. :~)
Thank you, Ilse! :~)It is a very special book. Lovely writing and intriguing thoughts.
Thank you, Dream.m! :~)It is a fascinating book. Not quite like anything I have ever read before.
Thank you, Anderson!Welcome aboard. It is a unique book. Everyone should try it.
Thank you, BELIVESINMIRACLES!Nice to hear from you.
Thank you, ~Poppy~! :~)Nice to hear from you.It is such an interesting book, I decided on an interim review.
Thank you, Belinda! :~)It is an interim opinion.
Thank you, Sofia! :~)Nice to hear from you. It is a very cool book.
Thank you, Jennifer! :~)One of the oddest books I've ever read. Such a quiet and unassuming voice, yet so lyrical and insightful in what it says.
I'm glad you enjoyed this one.I don't get why the translation includes 'the' in the title. The original has none and that is probably deliberate, there is a difference between 'the book' and 'book'; it may seem minor but given the way in this one was cobbled together, it's relevant.
Thank you, Nocturnalux! :~)Nice to hear from you.
I think it is a wonderful book. Not like anything I have ever read before. I understand and respect the limitations of reading a translated work. I picked this edition because I saw it on other people's shelves. My interest, my fascination, and my love of Pessoa is with the way he writes: the words he chooses and the images and ideas reading him evoke in my mind. I find his prose simple, sincere and penetrating. I'm not sure I could even say what the book is about. Maybe it could be labelled negative and despairing, or poignant and lonely, but for me it is the brilliance of the writing, the lyricism and the desire to tell the truth that overrides all other considerations. Everyone should try and read this book, not necessarily to understand everything he say, as much as feel and enjoying the beautiful way he say it.
Thanks, M!I was fiddling around yesterday. This is just a slightly briefer version of my already brief halfway point remark.
Thank you, Lee!It is just a redaction of what I wrote earlier. Sometimes I try too hard for succinctness.
Thank you, Mimi! :~)Just trying to be a little more exact. A remarkable book.
Mimi wrote: "I've enjoyed reading the extracts you've been posting. Which translation did you read? I keep reading conflicting reviews of the ones available and vacillating over which is preferable."Thank you, Mimi! :~)
I'm reading the 2017, New Directions, Margaret Jull Costa version.
Thank you, Jina! :~)It is a most wonderful book.
Thank you,✨Paula6070�! :~)It gets better with each page.
I've checked other translations and they all opted to tag the article. This edition claims to be 'the Complete Edition', I am curious as to why. My edition explains which texts were included and how it differs from other versions that still exist. Are textual variants included?
I suppose it could mean that Disquiet has appeared in very fragmentary state in English before.
Mark, I don't know if you're aware but Pessoa's work is still being sorted out. There is a massive ark that only a few scholars have access to and for decades on end they've been going through a massive amount of text.
Every now and then an unknown text will be published. It's something of a cottage industry around here.
Nocturnalux wrote: "I've checked other translations and they all opted to tag the article. This edition claims to be 'the Complete Edition', I am curious as to why. My edition explains which texts were included and ..."
I appreciate your concern and your erudition, you are much closer to the subject than I. I feel the same way about James Joyce's Ulysses and all the scholastic/critical fiddling with the text that goes on. (I prefer the original '22 Shakespeare & Co. edition, proofed by the author, and the lovely '61 RandomHouse reset, based substantially on, I think, a 1960 Bodley Head reset.) But getting back to our original discussion of fiction or non-fiction. I considered what you said and I've decided I was, to be idiomatic, barking up the wrong tree. I do not think the identity of the author, or authors and their relationship to the guy that actual held the pen matters. I do perceive a modest difference in style between the writings dated early and those dated later on. But overall I find the narrative voice very consistent. I think the writing is beautiful, and I find the personal, introspective, existential attitude of the writers most agreeable to my own state of mind.
Thank you, Belinda! :~)The review, all eleven words, is a redaction of an earlier seventeen word remark. Sometimes I try to hard.
Thank you, Luffy!Good to hear from you. It is a really cool book.
Delighted to see those five stars, Mark! This is one of my favorite books so I'm glad you also enjoyed it. Pessoa's poetic prose is truly captivating.
Thank you, Florencia! :~)It is an interim review. One of the most fascinating books I’ve ever read.
Florencia wrote: "Delighted to see those five stars, Mark! This is one of my favorite books so I'm glad you also enjoyed it. Pessoa's poetic prose is truly captivating."I love the way he writes! :~)
Thank you, Lee Bay! - )Very nice to meet you.
Thank you, Gabrielle! - )I’ve been at this exactly three months today. I think everyone in the world should read this book. Not that they would learn anything or become better people, but simply to listen to someone else’s story: what it means to be human.
It's in my "short-term" pile, and I must say the quotes you shared make me feel like bumping it closer to the top!
That was our aim: bump! bump! bump!
