“…since in life we all have to be exploited, I wonder if it would be less worthwhile to be exploited by vanity, glory, spite, envy, or by impossibilities. These are those that God himself exploits, the prophets and saints in the emptiness of the world…”
-Passage 58
Pessoa has been a source of intrigue since my visit to Lisboa in the Spring. I keep bringing up this trip as it was genuinely my truest escape from reality that I have fresh in memory, Slovakia being a near rival. Lisboa has an essence, one that Pessoa captures in the essence of his temporal misgivings, that I loved and is a location that I would ultimately hope to reside after "settling down" someday. The cobblestone streets and little shops capture the antiquated stains of a still impoverished European city, one that you still feel safe in, as if you were always meant to stay. It smells of the ocean; and the people gleam with joy. However, it is Pessoa's words that circle in shouts of banality, emptiness, and, ultimately, despair. All of this knowing he was still rather happy passing down the Rua dos Douradores. It runs off the page, I find myself beaming with the heartfelt empathy that I knew he saw in others and his quotidian notions of coffee shop visiting and subtle wine indlugence. What is it that God exploits? A good question, dear sir. One that must be fulfilled through our dreams, the purest of curses and the most fragile of impossibilities.
“Even in the poorest of eras…There are few like me, addicted to dreaming, who are also lucid enough to laugh at the aesthetic possibility of dreaming about themselves that way”
-Passage 30
Both quotes taken from The Book of Disquiet, an unedited journal written under his various heteronyms from 1888-1935.
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