The Book of Disquiet, written by Fernando Pessoa, a Portuguese poet, is considered an early classic of existential writing. I’ve been drawn to existentialism — which I understand to be the recognition that life lacks meaning, rendering the human condition a function of mere existence — since reading Sartre, Camus and Kierkegaard years ago. There’s a dizzying, and occasionally terrifying and paralyzing kind of freedom that comes with accepting there is no externally imposed or internally accessible grand purpose. And so it falls to each of us stare unflinching into the void, steady our nerves, and then get busy creating and maintaining a consistent sense of meaning to guide and sustain our lives.

Pessoa explores these themes in a unique, memorable and effective way. Apparently, he wrote using a variety of pseudonyms — or semi heteronyms, whatever that means, according to the foreword — both as an artistic statement and, I presume, as a means of putting some space between his writing and his own filters and experiences. The Book of Disquiet is “written” by one of his personas, Bernardo Soares, an assistant bookkeeper in an inconsequential office, as a diary or journal of ruminations on a life that, by his own admission, is truly not worthy of ruminating about. The guiding force is page after page of Soares — uneasy that he is even alive — thinking about what it means to think, to feel, to live, to exist and to work. It is a disquieting exploration of what it means to be human, and what it means to exist, from someone who seems almost disappointed that he is human and does exist.

Soares is content to move through life — his own and the world around him — as a reluctant observer, focused on his own reactions to reacting, and grounded in his experiences of experiencing, his own feelings at feeling, with only his incomplete senses serving as a somewhat reliable source of truth in a world billowing with half truths. And that truth, for him, is that even with only the most fleeting of closer looks, life is absurd and those of who stride boldly through the world with a sense of purpose are mistaken and misguided. In today’s world, Soares would probably be considered a depressive, asexual narcoleptic — and likely be highly medicated — but in this book, he becomes a champion of reacting rationally and effectively to the truth of existential despair — that is, by embracing the notion that nothing matters and living a specific life that mirrors, and celebrates, the meaningless of all life.

It was a grinding slog, reading the musings of a (created) man constantly questioning what it means to be human, and finding the answer in his ability to find no answers. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t find it accurate, and moving. For me, no other author has so successfully captured the disorienting liberty of existentialism. And, because the “real” author was an accomplished poet, the almost monotonous reflections on reflecting, the most minute observations on his sensory observations, glittered with powerful, lyrical lines that literally caused me to put the book down and close my eyes, just so I could think about them longer undisturbed. Lines like these:

“If the heart could think it would stop beating.

In modern life the world belongs to the stupid, the insensitive and the disturbed.

I envy in everyone the fact that they are not me.

What would become of the world if we were human? If man really felt, there would be no civilization.

To know oneself is to err.

The life one lives is one long misunderstanding, a happy medium between a greatness that does not exist and a happiness that cannot exist.

I’m just the bridge between what I do not have and what I do not want.

Leadership requires insensitivity. Only the happy govern because to be sad it is necessary to feel.

What has happened to us has either happened to everyone or to us alone; if the former it has no novelty value and if the latter it will be incomprehensible. I write down what I feel in order to lower the fever of feeling. What I confess is of no importance because nothing is of any importance. I make landscapes out of what I feel. I make a holiday of sensation.

… the insatiable, unquantifiable longing to be both the same and other.

Action is a disease of thought, a cancer of the imagination.”

The Book of Disquiet may not be for everyone, but it’s a tremendous journey into the heart of self-doubt that powers existentialism, the self-doubt that — if we’re as honest as the dishonest (manufactured) Soares — constantly lurks just below the surface of life.

Reader Beware - Amazon has followed its usual procedure of cobbling reviews for three totally different editions of the same book together.
After having read all the reviews of this book, one could get a good idea of what Pessoa is all about (he's not for everybody), but get a distorted idea of this particular edition. But first - there are other issues I’m surprised no one mentioned. The first is the hideously ugly cover. In no way does it have any connection with the contents or induce the reader to buy the book, which, after all, is the purpose of a front panel design.
Next - this new ‘complete edition.’ Can any edition be complete? The text was put together by the editor from papers that were found after Pessoa’s death. I know of three different versions in English, all very different, all put together from papers found after Pessoa’s death. My discovery of the book was the Richard Zenith translation available as a Penquin Classic. I’m not qualified to compare translations from the Portuguese and that’s not really an issue here. The version under revue has different texts than the Zenith version. It starts with a different narrator, who is not in the Zenith edition at all, and radically alters the conception of what readers heretofore thought was the Pessoa they knew. Well about half of the Pizzaro/Costa isn’t the same as the Richard Zenith book. The editor/translator says that Pessoa’s posthumous papers included this second narrator and should be included. Perhaps. But the Zenith edition is cohesive while this edition, presenting two narrators who presumably are the same person (but couldn’t be, having different sensibilities), makes this version confusing and unsatisfying. Part one of that Pizzaro includes is painful to read and had I come across this as my introduction to Pessoa I would have forgotten his name. Have I belabored this point? It needs belaboring.
A third edition from Maria Jose de Lancastre and translated by Costa, published by Serpent’s Tail in 1991, exists. It’s text is similar to Zenith’s but much abbreviated. Zenith’s edition, published in 2001, supersedes it.
Pessoa's poetry is best left un-translated, as is all poetry from other languages. But that's just my opinion! If you loved 'Disquiet' you'll like 'The Education of the Stoic."

Now and then a book of creative genius floats up out of the ocean of literature. This is one of those special books, in this case the Joyce or Kafka of Portugal who never published during his lifetime. Now we have this jewel of reflective thoughts and feelings about the imaginative writer's life, his opinions on world literature, his thoughts on literally everything in his quiet reflective life. It's an inner journey into the mind of a literary genius who shares his thoughts and insights in a journal of meditations. Pessoa was a man of solitude and loneliness but he was not miserable overall. He worked at an office job and wrote many books and stories under various pennames who were different personalities with their own literary styles. Most of what he wrote was not published in his lifetime and this protected him from the distractions of literary fame. Sample the book first and if it doesn't draw you into his reflective literary world on life's ups and downs, move on; but if you are drawn immediately into his thinking and feeling about life and literature and the joys of solitude and anonymity, you will want to read the entire wondrous gift of this complex solitary philosopher of the life of the storytelling artist. It's truly a lifetime gift for those who enjoy the pleasures of being an introvert and student of human experience. Try it. You'll know almost immediately this book will be a friend for life, solace for the quiet meditative times. As a writer I was charmed in an instant. Like dipping into a deep complex beautiful happy sad diary of a human singularity, a literary genius quietly reawakening his life's most poignant thoughts and feelings about a beautiful mind that has come and gone and left this gift of remembrances and reflections.