The Book of Disquietude: By Bernardo Soares, Assistant Bookkeeper in the City of Lisbon (Aspects of Portugal)

Rating:
Summary: Dark Clouds On My Horizon
Review: Pessoa calls Prose "The Dark Clouds of My Horizon" and how aptly too. Nobody writes about the human condition, the bleak, despairing but ever beauteous state of our mysterious lives quite the same way as Pessoa. This is existentialism without the bitterness, the anger and ultimately the denial. This is the documentation of a man who pours out his soul to the world without resorting to pathetic calls for sympathy. The usual blend of inane and manufactured pathos that seem to plague everybody else. This is a man, a man of incredible moral courage and spiritual strength, reporting from the depths of his reflections with no pretensions of offering hope or heartwarming, feelgood sentiments. This is, in short, prose (or poetry) of the highest order. This book is not recommended for everybody, only for people who dare to face their lives and live to their fullest potential.

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful and Amazing...should be required Modernist reading
Review: This is a beautiful, amorphous book which is different everytime one reads it--regardless of the translation. What I mean is...where one stops while reading changes the book...it is 'literally' a different book everytime one reads. This translation is the best by far of those available, I also believe it to be the most scholarly. I have only one proviso: Please, if you can manage it, find a copy of the original printing of this translation, in reprinting they've reduced the scale of the book without resetting so the print is smaller and the bind is not quite as good (if you're like me, you'll likely wear this book out reading it no matter what edition you have). If you can't, by all means buy the reprint, it's not that bad...just regrettable that they had to reduce to save money. THIS IS A LANDMARK OF MODERNISM AND OF POSTMODERNISM...I WOULD EVEN GO AS FAR AS TO SAY THAT IT IS A LANDMARK OF THE UNIVERSAL HUMAN SPIRIT. =)