The Book of Disquiet (77 page)

ubiquitize
: After a similar neologism in the original.

306
[6/13, typed] The translation reflects, as far as possible, the peculiar shifts from third-person plural to first that occur in the last four paragraphs.
argonauts’ adventurous precept
: See note for Text
124
.

307
[5/80 ms.]

308
†[9/33a, ms.]

309
[9/51, ms.]

310
[4/68, ms.]

311
[3/9, typed]

312
[1/36, typed]

313
[1/25, mixed]

314
[144D
²
/43–4, ms.]

Island of the superiors
: ‘City of the superiors’ (alternate version)

315
[5/39, ms.]

316
[144G/38, ms.]

317
[3/81, mixed] Dated 26 January 1932.

318
[3/83, ms.]

319
[5/45, 45a, ms.]

320
[3/69, mixed] Dated 29 January 1932.

321
[4/36, ms.]

322
[5/63–4, ms.]

Waters
: ‘Metals’/‘Seaweed’ (alternate versions)

323
[1/52, typed]

324
†[144D
²
/19, ms.]

325
[4/54, typed]

Fictions of the interlude
: This phrase was supposed to serve as the general title for Pessoa’s heteronymic work, which he planned to bring out in various volumes (see the excerpted Preface to
Fictions of the Interlude
in Appendix III), and actually did serve as a title for a group of five poems signed by his own name and published in 1917. The last two paragraphs of Text 348 elucidate its meaning.

326
†[9/46, ms.]

327
[2/57, typed]

328
[4/86, ms.] At the bottom of the manuscript sheet, written upside-down:
Nobody achieves anything… Nothing’s worth doing
.

329
[4/87, ms.]

330
[5/25–6, ms.]

331
[3/71, typed] Dated 5 February 1932.

332
[5/73, ms.]

333
[144D
²
/135, ms.] Dated 18 July 1916.

334
[3/68, typed] Dated 16 March 1932.

335
[144X/36, ms.]

336
[3/80, typed]

337
[3/70, typed]

338
[1/31, typed]

Pays du Tendre
: An allegorical
Carte du Tendre
, or map of the country called ‘Tender’, was published in the first volume (1654) of
Clélie
, a novel of love and courtship written by Madeleine de Scudéry (1607–1701). ‘Tender’, the country of love, is traversed by the River of Affections, includes a Lake of Indifference towards the east, and has numerous towns with such names as Sincerity, Tenderness, Thoughtlessness and Spite. Many other examples of ‘amorous geography’ circulated in France during the second half of the seventeenth century.

339
[3/75, typed] Dated 28 March 1932.

340
[2/61, ms.]

Amiel’s
: See note for Text
72
.

341
[2/72–3, typed]

342
[3/72, typed] Dated 2 May 1932.

343
[7/43, ms.]

344
[4/70, ms.]

perverse
: ‘sublime’ (alternate version)

345
[4/69, ms.]

chaste like dead lips
: ‘chaste like hermits’ (alternate version)

346
†[94/93, ms.]

like our souls
: ‘like our idea of them’/‘like our seeing’ (alternate versions)

347
[9/14, ms.]

348
[3/74, typed] Dated 15 May 1932.

349
[7/19, ms.]

350
[3/73, typed] Dated 23 May 1932.

351
[7/17, ms.]

352
[3/78, typed] Dated 31 May 1932.

353
†[94/4, typed]

354
[4/43, typed]

355
[3/63, typed]

the light of all hells
: ‘an infinite day’/‘a mighty day’ (alternate versions)
the hard veil of the abyss
: ‘silks/fabrics from the abyss’ (alternate versions)

356
[4/45, typed] Dated 11 June 1932.

357
[3/79, typed]

358
[2/77, typed]

359
[3/77, ms.] Dated 14 June 1932.

the poet
: Matthew Arnold, in his poem ‘To Marguerite – Continued’.

master of St Martha
: Pessoa might be referring to the scene, recorded in the Gospel of Luke, where Jesus chides Martha for worrying too much about serving the meal instead of enjoying his company, like her sister Mary, and/or he might have in mind the Gospel of John, where Jesus is reported to have defended Mary’s ‘wasteful’ gesture of anointing his feet with costly spikenard.

360
[1/23, typed]

361
[3/10, typed]

362
[5/37, ms.]

363
[9/37–8, ms.] Marked
B. of D. or Stamp Collector
. ‘The Stamp Collector’ was one of many short stories that Pessoa never finished.

364
†[9/29, 94/76, ms.] Alternate version of first paragraph: ‘Our sensations pass, so how can we possess them, let alone what they make known to us? Can anyone possess a river that flows? Does the wind that blows past us belong to anyone?’

365
†[94/89, ms.]

366
[9/50, ms.]

367
[7/41, ms.]

368
†[15B
¹
/58, ms.]

never lingers at the windows of an attitude
: ‘never assumes a definite stance’ (alternate version)

369
[7/1, ms.] The manuscript also contains the title of a projected passage,
‘Love with a Chinese Woman on a Porcelain Teacup’, for which just one sentence was written: ‘Our love took place peacefully, the way she wanted it, in just two dimensions.’

370
[7/5–10, ms.]

wouldn’t have wanted to say
: ‘couldn’t have helped having finally said’ (alternate version)

371
[28/98, ms.]

372
[133/10, ms.]

373
[3/76, typed] Dated 23 June 1932.

English poet
: Edmund Gosse (1849–1928), in a poem titled ‘Lying in the Grass’.

374
[4/46, typed] Dated 2 July 1932. Published in
A Revista
, no. 1, 1932.

Benfica
: See note for Text
138
.

375
[7/38, ms.]

376
[5/61, ms.]

377
[3/65, typed] Dated 16 July 1932.

the nerves
: ‘the mind’ (alternate version)

378
[2/15, typed] Dated 25 July 1932.

379
[138/21, ms.]

380
[4/49, typed] Dated 28 September 1932.

381
[4/50–51, typed] Dated 28 September 1932.

382
[2/26, ms.]

383
[9/48, ms.]

384
[5/38, ms.]

385
[4/48, ms.] Dated 2 November 1932.

386
[2/22, typed] Dated 28 November 1932.

387
[3/25, typed]

388
[9/13, ms.]

389
[5/40, ms.]

390
†[8/2, ms.]

391
[2/23, typed] Dated 13 December 1932.

392
†[138 A/10, typed]

393
[1/68, mixed]

since Mystery plays a part in these
: ‘and our very life denies itself’ (alternate version)

fado
: Portugal’s plaintive national folksong, whose name also means ‘fate’.
the same watered-down life
: ‘the same sensation/consciousness of life’ (alternate versions)

394
[144D
²
/37, ms.]

395
†[8/13, typed]

396
[2/27, typed] Dated 30 December 1932.

397
[2/14, ms.]

398
[5/48, ms.]

399
[2/32, ms.]

Diogenes
: Plutarch reports that when Alexander the Great was declared general of the Greeks, everyone came to congratulate him except Diogenes the Cynic. Alexander went with his entourage to Diogenes, whom he found lying in the sun. Distracted by the bustle of people, Diogenes looked up at Alexander, who asked him if he wanted anything. ‘Yes,’ answered the philosopher, ‘I would like you to stand a little out of my sun.’ Alexander, impressed with this answer, went away saying that, if he weren’t Alexander, he would choose to be Diogenes.

400
[9/6, ms.]

401
†[138A/41, ms.]

402
†[133C/59, ms.]

403
†[94/2, typed]

404
[144D
²
/43, ms.]

405
[1/13, typed] Dated 23 March 1933.

406
[2/85, typed] The following, isolated phrase appears between the last two paragraphs:
the bright maternal smile of the brimming earth, the hermetic splendour of the darkness on high.....

407
[1/37, typed]

sensitive fabric
: ‘wrinkled/rough/outer fabric’ (alternate versions)

408
[1/61, typed]
fado
: See note for Text
393
.

409
[2/30, typed] Dated 29 March 1933.

410
[1/20, typed]

Fialho’s
: See note for Text
259
.

411
[1/6, typed]

412
[9/43–6, ms.]

Alone
: A much-admired book of rueful poems (titled
Só
in the original) by António Nobre (1867–1900).

413
[9/26, ms.]

hear God
: ‘hear the hours’ (alternate version)

And over all of this the horror of living will hover remotely
: ‘And may the horror of living hover remotely over all of this’ (alternate version)

414
[9/26, ms.]

415
[7/11, ms.]

416
[5/55, mixed]

417
[1/46, typed]

Father Figueiredo
: António Cardoso Borges de Figueiredo (1792–1878), a priest who wrote a number of instructional books for use in schools. Pessoa’s surviving personal library contains a well-worn copy of Figueiredo’s
Rhetoric
, with notes on the flyleaves and even several poems.

Father Freire
: Francisco José Freire (1719–73), better known by his pen-name, Cândido Lusitano, was a founding member of Arcadia, an influential Portuguese literary academy.

418
[1/16, ms.]

written with c
: Father Figueiredo’s
Rhetoric
contains no specific lists of ‘words written with
c
’. Pessoa is no doubt referring to the fact that the Jesuit’s orthography, reflecting the conventions of the eighteenth century, employed
c
in various words from which it later dropped out (because it was silent) or in which it was replaced by
s
or
ss
.

419
[1/71, 71a, mixed]

420
[114
¹
/18, ms.]

the unknown god of the religion of my Gods
: ‘the unknown god whom perhaps the Gods remember’ (alternate version)

421
[1/71, ms.]

422
[1/80, typed]

423
†[94/13, 13a, ms.]

424
[5/23, ms.]

425
[144X/99, ms.]

426
[2/17, typed] Dated 5 April 1933.

427
[9/4, ms.] The passage is followed by two proverbs (incorporated into a group of 300 Portuguese proverbs that Pessoa collected and translated in the 1910s for an English publisher, who did not finally publish the projected volume, due to economic difficulties):

The sun rises for everyone.
God is good, but the devil isn’t bad.

The proverbs are followed by this random note:
Its faults notwithstanding, the Romantic equilibrium is better than that of the 17th century in France
.

428
[4/82–3, ms.]

neighbourhood of the great Mystery
: ‘neighbourhood of God’ (alternate version)

429
[5/31–2, ms.] Dated 18 September 1917.

430
[5/27, ms.]