Fernando Pessoa (post 2): The Editor and Author are Discouraging, and Pessoa's multiple personality is questionable

As indicated in post 1, Pessoa would seem to be the epitome of what interests me. And I recall looking into Pessoa years ago, but being discouraged; possibly, I thought, because of the translation. So I decided to take a fresh look with The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa (1) and The Book of Disquiet (2) in editions that received rave reviews.

Since nothing in my glance through Selected Prose seemed immediately promising, I turned to The Book of Disquiet, Pessoa’s major prose work. The editor’s Introduction includes the following:

“The Book of Disquiet…isn’t a book but its subversion and negation…a compendium of many potential books and many others already in ruins…If Pessoa split himself into dozens of literary characters who contradicted each other and even themselves, The Book of Disquiet likewise multiplied without ceasing, being first one book and then another, told by this voice then that voice…all swirling and uncertain…Pessoa worked on this book for the rest of his life, but the more he ‘prepared’ it, the more unfinished it became…ever more indefinite and its existence as a book ever less viable…But that consummate disorder is what gives The Book its peculiar greatness. It is like a treasure chest of both polished and uncut gems, which can be arranged and rearranged in infinite combinations, thanks precisely to the lack of a pre-established order…Or we may see it as the ‘factless autobiography’ of a man who dedicated his life to not living…(2, pp. ix-xvi).

Indeed, the book refers to itself as “A Factless Autobiography,” explaining that, “In these random impressions, and with no desire to be other than random, I indifferently narrate my factless autobiography, my lifeless history. These are my Confessions, and if in them I say nothing, it’s because I have nothing to say” (2, p. 9).

If he says so.

1. Richard Zenith (Ed. and Trans.). The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa. New York, Grove Press, 2001.

2. Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935). The Book of Disquiet [Posthumous]. Edited and Translated by Richard Zenith. New York, Penguin Books, 2003.

Added later same day: The editor says that the various personalities sometimes "contradicted...even themselves." If that were true, it would bring Pessoa's multiple personality, per se, into question, because each alternate personality is typically quite consistent with itself, which is one reason why, if there are a large number of them, it is, ultimately, hard to fake.