Tag: literature

I reread this formidable The Book of Disquiet and feel compelled to toast it with a few words. Impresses not only its originality, but also the poet’s unique ability to sustain the atmosphere that is characteristic of him. Alternating descriptions and thoughts, revealing an entire inner universe of a very ordinary “bookkeeper’s assistant” from Lisbon, there are three hundred and fifty harmonious, rhythmic pages that express a meditative mental state and a very refined perception. The poet manages to be acute, powerful, and sometimes cruel without seeming so, in a prose so beautiful that it blinds itself against any repulsive sentiment and soothes the reader’s spirit. Great art, great philosophy, immortal pages. Hail, Pessoa!

Thanks to Pessoa, I open a volume on astrology. The author, already in the introduction, warns me: “If you don’t believe in the principles of what will be exposed in this work, then it will be of no use to you.” I gratefully close the volume and move on to the next. There is no doubt that astrology works: one just has to open a dating app. But, in short, a belief? Studying to confirm, to support a belief? Why not the opposite? Despite my efforts, the agreement with the poet does not seem to come. It is in dismay that I notice: the mosquito of belief has not bitten me.

It is with amazement that I read Jung’s conclusions and Pessoa’s lines about astrology. Two modern minds, two minds that I hold in tremendous esteem. Modern, and immediately I see attacked the prejudices of an individual that grew up at the end of the 20th century, trained according to the ideology of his time. The reaction is to excite the newfound curiosity, by the desire not to be like the mediocre and to try to follow the path of the great. Then I come across an area that seems immersed in the most terrible confusions, when not dominated by the cheapest philosophy. Well done! Dozens of centuries give credence to the attention. But what can be gained from all this? Come on… the poet was an astrologer.