The Best Phrases From The Book Of Restlessness
The phrases of the Book of Restlessness are fragments of a true masterpiece. This wonderful text is considered the best of Fernando Pessoa’s prose books. It was written for 22 years and is actually a compilation of reflections.
In this work there are ramblings about all kinds of everyday topics . Also some excerpts from Pessoa’s diary, as well as aphorisms and short reflections. The phrases of the book of restlessness are, without a doubt, some of the best achieved by the great Portuguese poet.
The edition of this book , which seems definitive, was only made until 2010. Other editions had appeared before, but they included phrases from the Book of Restlessness that were not really by Fernando Pessoa. That is why a debugging was done. Some of the most beautiful statements are as follows.
Search blind …
Many of the phrases in the Book of Restlessness emphasize the nonsense of life and the absurdity of existence. This, for example, reflects that position clearly: “ I am like someone who searches blindly, without knowing where they hid the object that they did not tell him what it is. We play hide and seek with nobody ”.
Pessoa tells us there that human beings live revolving around nothingness. We have no idea what our purpose is, much less how we will achieve it. We avoid others, who in turn are in the same conditions as us. For the poet, this is the game of life.
One of the phrases in the Book of Restlessness about ghosts
This is a deep and beautiful reflection by Fernando Pessoa. He says: ” To pass from the ghosts of faith to the specters of reason is nothing more than being changed cells. ” With this statement, the poet departs from the two great axes of Western thought: faith and reason.
As is known, for centuries, these two areas have disputed the realm of thought. Faith denying reason and reason denying faith. Pessoa defines them both as imaginary, but also as prisons. Both the one and the other limit the perspective and confine the thought to an exclusive plot.
Everything is imperfect
Perfection is one of the most abstract and idealistic concepts out there. A mental fruit, which does not correspond to any reality. To complete it, the human being yearns for it, but at the same time makes it impossible due to the eternal nonconformity that inhabits us.
Due to the above, one of the phrases of the Book of Restlessness says: ” But everything is imperfect and there is no sunset so beautiful that it could not be a little more, nor a soft numbing breeze that could not produce a calmer sleep yet. ” Emphasizes in this assessment that what the human being makes of reality is never enough.
The beauty of the useless
This is a beautiful reflection of Pessoa, who says: “ Why is art so beautiful? Because it is useless. Why is life so ugly? Because in it everything is ends and purposes. All its paths lead from one point to another. I wish there was a path made in a place that no one goes! ”.
Art lacks practicality. It is valuable for what it is, not for the utility it can provide. Nobody needs Las Meninas to live, but they magnify their existence by contemplating the painting. The world continues to rotate whether the Eiffel Tower exists or not, but the planet becomes sublime because it is there.
In ordinary life the opposite is true. Things, and even people, acquire value for the benefit they provide or stop providing. Human beings also go only after what represents some use to us. Under these conditions, in life the great and the sublime are renounced. That is what Pessoa questions in that statement.
The orphan of fortune
A good part of the Book of Restlessness is the autobiography of Fernando Pessoa, despite the fact that he signed it with the pseudonym Bernardo Soares. For this reason, in the text there are moving confessions that speak of loneliness and helplessness.
One of those intimate passages says: “ It was always my desire to be pleasant to others and it hurt me a lot that they were always indifferent to me. Orphan of fortune, I have, like all orphans, need to be the object of affection from someone ”.
Throughout the book, Pessoa defines himself as someone who has failed, who does not find any meaning in his existence. He is an orphan of fortune because he has lost even the desire to be happy. Even so, in the previous statement he declares that love can be that balm that compensates for the absence of achievements and the denial of a happy destiny.
Fernando Pessoa is one of the most important poets of all time. The Book of Restlessness shows us the complexity of his feelings and the sharpness of his reflections. Each phrase in it is a little poem ready to be discovered by the mind of a sensitive reader.
