A review by metamorphosishorror
The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa

challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

     Going into this book, I had high hopes for it. I thought to myself, this book will crush me as I finished it. I had such high hopes for it as I saw several of reviews, the magnificent cover of the edition I had (which I interpreted as someone who is “no longer human” due to the image of the person is headless and another figure completely shocked and baffled by it. People sung of its praise.

     I love reading books that have a dark, sad, lonely, miserable, brooding, and “lost” protagonist. Perhaps, in some way, trying to relate myself to them and lessen the emotion of loneliness I had in me. I love and adore reading upon their bleak views of the world. The beautiful, captivating choices of words describing the world which they didn’t belong to, feel nothing towards, and to some extent, even despised it. 

     But reading this book, the adoration I previously stated, weren’t there. My assumption would be the narcissistic tendencies that were in a few of the entries. 

     On some points, the writer would put himself above others, making himself “superior” whilst others were, inferior compared to him. At times, in order to convey his tortured souls, he would say he is a superior man for he suffers, he thinks, he felt not belonging to this earth while others were inferior because they don’t think, they weren’t tortured, they felt belonging. The question came to me on, why does he think he was the only one that was suffering? It was unbearable to read, to be empathetic since I can’t be towards a narcissist. To me, it completely goes against the principle of “empathy”. 

“I think they will recognise what they never said and will be grateful to me for so accurately interpreting not only what they really are, but also what they never wished to be nor ever knew they were…"

     This sentence made him absolutely obnoxious to me. He sounded like a creep, a loser, and everyone should try their hardest to avoid him because what the fuck was that? He wrote a fan fiction of two strangers and as if it wasn’t weird enough, he felt proud of it to the point of thinking if the strangers stumbled upon the fanfic, they would thank him. 

Another dumb entry would be; 

“Dreamers of millenniums- socialists, anarchists, and humanitarians of whatever ilk- make me physically sick to my stomach. They’re idealists with no ideal, thinkers with no thought”

     In this instance, the writer was the one with no ideal, thinker with no thought. All he did was doing jackshit, and complained how he doesn’t feel a sense of belonging on this planet, whining and shitting on people who are brave enough to try and change the world (perhaps for the better). What a fucking loser. 

"Because I am the size of what I see, and not the size of my own stature." 

     This line in the book stuck with me for several of days. Life is vast, filled with things and creatures coexist with each other. Each person went through life different ways as life is almost limitless. It tells how expansive human imaginations are, how we can see things further than the actual item, and give it meaning. Reading this line gave me some sort of happiness given how human have this imagination that makes life more pleasurable. A connotation that we, kind of limitless. 

      In the book, there was perhaps (in my perspective) a positive outlook towards life that the writer despised so much. With the possibility of him being content with the mundane, monotonous life, thus created a contradiction, which quite prevalent in the book. 

“Often enough the surface and illusion catch me, their prey, and I feel like a man. Then I’m happy to be in the world and my life is transparent. I float. And it gives me pleasure ti get my pay-cheque and go home. I feel the weather without seeing it, and organic things please me. If I contemplate, I don’t think. On these days, I’m particularly fond of gardens.” 

"Often illusion catch me, and I’m happy to be in the world."
    Even though the writer said illusion made him happy to be in the world, I think deep down it was actually him. He made himself to be happy to be in this world and deluded himself into thinking it was the illusion. It’s possible because some part of him despised the world to the point of him enjoying the world would be a false sentiment. Could be that deep down, some part of him do enjoy living. 

“I’m the ruin of buildings that were no more than ruins, whose builder, halfway through got tired of thinking about what he was building…” 

     The writer describes himself as such and prior yo who I am today, J could somehow relate to this. A ruin no more than ruins, builder who’s tired. Perhaps it’s the way how we went through life on autopilot for quite some time, and as one gained consciousness, it all went downhill from there and became pretty much lost in life. At least that is my view on it, and how I felt back then. It all came crashing down.

“But our superiority is not the kind that many dreamers here imagined we have. The dreamer isn’t superior to the active man because dreaming is superior to reality. The dreamer is superior because dreaming gets far greater and more varied pleasure out of life than the man of action.” 

     A man who’s tired of living will traverse the land of dreams for that is the only place they can find everything that aren’t on this earth. I often dream as I have free time due to how much joy it gives me, dreaming of things and if it’s gotten too out of place, I would stop and chuckle towards myself for dreaming of ridiculous things yet finding it ridiculous. What a contradiction. The dreaming is a wonderful place to visit, but a human shouldn’t take reside in it.

(I'll continue reviewing this book later, for now, that's all I have to say)