The Terrible Paradox of Self-Awareness According to Fernando Pessoa
Fernando Pessoa, a 20th-century writer, and his Masterwork, The Book of Disquiet, have a fascinating origin story that sounds like a work of fiction. Pessoa was born in Lisbon, Portugal, in 1888 and was exposed to loss and impermanence at a young age. His father died of tuberculosis when he was just five years old, followed by his younger brother’s death the following year. After his mother remarried, his family moved to South Africa, taking away the landscape of his childhood. While living in South Africa, Pessoa became fluent in English and developed an appreciation for English literature.
At the age of 17, Pessoa returned to Lisbon by himself, where he would spend the rest of his life and dedicate most of his time to writing. However, by the time he died in 1935 at the age of 47, he had only published a few books that went mostly unnoticed. He essentially wrote in complete obscurity, unknown by anyone, yet he seemingly died knowing that he was a great literary figure, or at the very least, he would likely become one. In an almost unsettling prophetic way, he was right.
After his death, Pessoa’s work, The Manuscript of The Book of Disquiet, along with tens of thousands of other manuscript pages, remained tucked away in a wooden trunk, unknown by anyone. It wasn’t until 1982, 47 years after Pessoa died, eerily the exact same age of Pessoa when he died, that The Book of Disquiet was found and published. This book would go on to become what is widely regarded as one of the most unique and important literary works of the 20th century.
Inside the book is a lifetime worth of Pessoa’s reflections and musings about reality and dreaming, about tedium and selfhood, about the absurdity of being and the futility of doing, about the simultaneous complexity and simplicity of life, and about the contradiction and paradox at the core of everything. The book is made up of a collection of fragmented vignettes written in a style somewhere between diary entries and poetry. There is no real linear order to the book, and it can arguably be experienced just as well backward as forwards.
Even more interesting, Pessoa does not claim to be the author of any of it. Rather, it is credited to a man named Bernardo Suarez, an assistant bookkeeper from Lisbon, Portugal, as well as possibly a man named Vicente Gueres. However, Suarez and Gueres aren’t real; they are characters Pessoa created to create the book. Found throughout the massive collection of all of Pessoa’s manuscript pages are various pseudonyms/fictitious authors that he credits different pages and collections to. These authors aren’t just different pen names, though; they are different characters with different writing styles, personalities, views, and backstories. Pessoa referred to these author characters as heteronyms, and there were around 80 that he rode under throughout his lifetime.
Thus, The Book of Disquiet is not exactly a non-fiction book from an anonymous author, nor is it really a novel about a fictional character or story. It is somewhere in between. Because of this, it is often described as the weirdest autobiography ever written. Pessoa himself described it as a “factless autobiography” or an autobiography of someone who never existed. The book’s unique structure and style are in many ways an essential supporting leg of the book’s themes. The use of heteronyms seems to reinforce a key philosophical theme throughout the work — the fragmented and illusory nature of the self — with incredible accuracy and poignancy that feels cathartic to read.
Throughout the book, Pessoa frequently describes the inherent alienation and disorientation writing style of Pessoa, and the use of heteronyms can be seen as a way of exploring and expressing the complex and fragmented nature of the self. He created these different characters to represent different aspects of himself and his experiences, allowing him to explore different perspectives and ideas without being limited to his own individual identity.
The Book of disquiet is a powerful work that explores the human experience in all its complexity, offering insights into the nature of reality, the self, and the world around us. It is a testament to the power of literature to capture and express the complexities of the human experience and to the enduring legacy of Fernando Pessoa as one of the greatest writers of the 20th century.
In conclusion, the Book of disquiet by Fernando Pessoa is a unique and powerful work that defies easy categorization. It is a book that explores the nature of the self and the human experience in all its complexity, using a fragmented and poetic style that reflects the themes it explores. By using heteronyms, Pessoa was able to create a work that is both deeply personal and universal, a book that speaks to the fundamental human experience of trying to understand who we are and our place in the world.
