"I created myself, echo and abyss, by thinking. I multiplied myself by going deeply into myself...""Limpid, aphoristic, gorgeous, sometimes maddening and utterly original. This compendium of dull days and transfiguring epiphanies is so distilled it should be dipped into in small doses over a lifetime"
"A fractured assemblage of quasi-symbolist reveries, cynical epigrams, musings on quotidian torpor, and gorgeously wrought depressive fits, the book is probably as close as Pessoa could ever come to writing an autobiography."
Short, aphoristic paragraphs, ranging in size from a few sentences to a few pages, comprise the "autobiography" of Bernardo Soares, one of Fernando Pessoa's many devastatingly captivating literary alter egos. THE BOOK OF DISQUIET was found after Pessoa's death, on disordered scraps of paper in a trunk, and was finally published nearly 50 years later. If genius consists of complicated and heartfelt musings, delightful and incisive use of language (not to mention magnificent translation), and brilliance of mind and expression, then certainly this book is an act (or perpetration?) of genius.
