Pessoa’s Dream

Pessoa’s Dream” is a stream-of-consciousness poem that begins and ends as a reflection on Fernando Pessoa’s The Book of Disquiet, and which, in between those reflections, emerges as a whistle-stop tour of literary and philosophical associations — James Joyce, Henry David Thoreau, Slavoj Zizek and Stefan Zweig all get a mention whilst René Guenon, although not mentioned by name, lingers in the periphery.

Pessoa’s Dream

I find it difficult to tell up from down, these days…

I’m reading Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet,

and there’s a passage in which he says

that “the superior man”,

or “persons of superior intellect”,

or some such thing,

will all arrive

at the conclusion

that they know nothing.

And a few select among those,

namely the most able or superior

or whatever,

will arrive at a point where they meaningfully doubt

that they know that they know nothing.

Now, Pessoa is a pretty odd type

who seems to have spent most of his time

alone and inward-looking/navel-gazing,

and I find most of what I’ve read so far

(200 pages or thereabouts) deplorable and

a little pathetic,

but there are bits and pieces that stand out

as wise or

deeply insightful.

I guess the two sides often go

hand in hand —

on the one hand

he’s cynical and prone to nihilism,

resentful of life and people in general,

but on the other hand

he’s instructive

when he relativises external meaning,

or any meaning beyond

what we can dream and imagine.

In this regard he reminds me of Joyce

and Thoreau—

Joyce who showsthat life in Dublin

is the same as life anywhere at any time,

whose ambition with Finnegans Wake

was to contain the whole world

and all of time

in one novel,

& Thoreau who went into the forest

to build his cabin

and saw no point in counting the cats

in Zanzibar.

Pessoa requires no life

other than a few streets in Lisbon,

demonstrates how,

for him,

taking the tram to Benfica

is qualitatively the same

as the explorer’s journey

to the other side of the world,

& how a poor man who owns a field

is richer and more powerful

than a Roman emperor who loses

some far away conquest.

To Pessoa it’s more real to dream

than to live—

life is just a dream, anyway,

but worse

than the one you author yourself.

So what of it?

I guess there was something in the water, back then,

as there always seems to be—what’s in ours?

Perhaps something far more pernicious…

Pessoa says that he finds even good

deeds annoying, as he considers them impositions.

I think maybe that’s it—

today, everyone seeks to impose their good deed,

thought, opinion, upon everything and everyone—

their dream upon the world,

which dreams nothing on its own,

which only is.

Have we lost our Dublins and Lisbons

while we gained the whole world?

Zizek likes to recall that old credo,

‘we need to stop interpreting the world and instead act’,

and reverse it—

‘we need to stop acting and start thinking.’

Personally, I think I have forgotten

how to…

The more we spread

the less we ascend,

that’s a good way to put it.

It seems to me to come down

to finding a balance

between detachment

and action.

In this regard, Pessoa again

talks about individuals

of superior ability or intellect

or morality or whatever,

and concludes that they have to remove

themselves from action, that,

for them,

attempting to act

in a world of stupidity

is futile—

he seems to reduce them to guardians

of the least stupid way.

And here, too, the question of balance

is relevant—

Pessoa always seems to assume

the worst,

that it’s only our dreamed realities

that matter.

I wonder if life is always going to be

a case of Stefan Zweig’s

The World of Yesterday.

The world we learn to know changes,

leaves our child-selves behind

as we cling on to a past

that will never return.

Our young selves of ideals and action

fade away and we begin

to detach,

persevere instead of act—

we slow down and grieve,

assume new roles as spectators

of the same old

recurring events,

recurring lives—

ensconced in our dream

of a world which doesn’t

and never

dreamed—again,

only is.

I suppose Faith is key—

holding on to the heavenly Jerusalem.

Without it you won’t begin to approach

Charity and Hope,

and then you’re left only with the dream—

perhaps not the best thing.

Zweig killed himself,

Pessoa drank himself to death.