How is it I’ve never gotten around to reading Pessoa until now? I had a book of his poems in new translation (British publisher) ten years ago while we were in Barcelona. I remember trying to read them when I was in that park around the big terra cotta arc of triumph there. But I just didn’t get into the poems then.
I started looking at the Book of Disquiet earlier this week because it gets mentioned so notably in the German novel I’m reading now, Pascal Mercier’s Night Train to Lisbon.
Pessoa: ”I read am am liberated. I acquire objectivity. I stop being myself and disperse.” And in the next passage, ” I detest reading. I have an anticipatory tedium about unknown pages.”
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