Portuguese writer Fernando Pessoa's book, whose original name is "Livro Do Desassossego" , "The Book of Disquiet", is one of the important masterpiece in the history of literature.
Fernando Pessoa wrote many articles under different names than his own. This book contains essays he wrote under the name Bernardo Soares. The articles, some of theme were published in various magazines, consisted of a compilation of twenty-seven thousand pages from the ballot box opened after his death. The work, which is one of the milestones of Portuguese literature, is the diary of a person's rejection of reality and imprisoning himself in dreams.
Bernardo Soares is an accountant living in Lisbon, avoiding contact with people, shutting himself out outside of the work, living with books and his own inner world. This book can be considered a kind of diary that he wrote between 1931 and 1934. In fact, it is not quite right to call it a diary, but rather it consists of his ideas and aphorisms that he questions about life and writes what comes to mind on almost every subject. A character Soares, who is extremely depressed, introverted, suicidal, doesn't have even a day when he is happy, in fact, he doesn't really want it too. His melancholic and depressive state has become his refuge, his world where he finds peace, and he has no intention of taking anyone there. Books and dreams almost all of his life; The inconsistency between the world of his dreams and the real world is making him more and more isolated from reality every day. It's like Soares is someone who jumped off a cliff into the void and continued to fall in that void for years.
The Book of Disquiet is definitely not a book to be read in a short time. I don't think it should be read without swallowing a few hundred books; otherwise it may seem boring due to its language and slow pace. (Reading Rousseau, Montaigne beforehand can be helpful for preparation.) A masterpiece that needs to be read slowly, assimilated, pondered over, and then come back over and over again. It fascinates people with its incredible imagination, terrific descriptions and descriptions.
"All we have to do is keep ourselves busy, but we are not like prisoners who are busy in vain to forget their fate, we are like young girls who work on pillows to pass the time, that's all."
"I've had great passions, unlimited dreams, but there are also apprentices and tailor girls, because the whole world dreams. What separates us is whether we have the strength to make those dreams come true or the luck to see them come true."
"The young girl has the spring pressed on her chest, she looks into my eyes with her sad eyes. All the brightness of the paper is reflected in her smile, and her cheeks are painted the most beautiful red. The sky behind her is cotton blue. This girl came with the spring. She has big, sad eyes. Bahar is still in her arms and in her eyes. , the sadness of everything that I can't have in life is read"
“I barely awaken from my sweat-drenched sleep, and I shake off the wet remnants of misty darkness like a dog.”
"Even though the dead tears hurt my eyes, I'm actually crying in the deepest part of my heart."
"There comes a day when everyone imagines himself as a general, even though he is a deserter. That day, we all celebrate a victory that no one can win by fighting in the mud of the streams. like breadcrumbs."
"I am usually the well of actions that were not yet conceived even in my own depths, of words that I did not even think of while stretching my lips, of dreams that I did not care to complete. I am the ruin of a building that was never but its own ruin, which the builder got tired of thinking while it was being built."
"And we live like poor children playing the happiness game, calling the breadcrumbs cake."
"There is a thin glass between me and life. Although I see and understand clearly, I cannot touch life"