Thursday, April 25, 2019

«The Book of Disquiet» 131 ~ Pessoa

131

Since I have nothing to do and nothing to think about doing, I'm going to describe my ideal on this sheet of paper -

Note

The sensibility of Mallarmé in the style of Vieira; to dream like Verlaine in the body of Horace; to be Homer in the moonlight. 

To feel everything in every way; to be able to think with the emotions and feel with the mind; not to desire much except with the imagination; to suffer with haughtiness; to see clearly so as to write accurately; to know oneself through diplomacy and dissimulation; to become naturalized as a different person, with all the necessary documents; in short, to use all sensations but only on the inside, peeling them all down to God and then wrapping everything up again and putting it back in the shop window like the sales assistant I can see from here with the small tins of a new brand of shoe polish. 

All these ideals, possible or impossible, now end. Now I face reality, which isn't even the sales assistant (whom I don't see), only his hand, the absurd tentacle of a soul with a family and a fate, and it twists like a spider without a web while putting back tins of polish in the window. 

And one of the tins fell, like the Fate of us all.