This Is the Kind of Attitude!

I have recorded, in these Notes, how amazed I was to go through the three-month diary kept by Pessoa at the age of twenty-four. I remember comparing him to myself at that age, and saying that his routine, to an animal of my species, seemed like literature. What to say, now, when reading the same phase described by Richard Zenith? Fernando Pessoa, no doubt, was much more concerned than I am with posterity. Burning in months an inheritance that could afford him, according to his biographer, a modest life for several years; immersed in debt, rejecting outright the idea of having a “normal” job and instead writing a letter asking a multimillionaire philanthropist for money… This is the kind of attitude that makes a biography worthwhile! And to think that I never thought of such an idea! Instead of sending CVs, send letters asking for money! There is no arguing about how much more fun a biography like this is: how can it be compared to another one of someone who chooses to clock in from Monday to Friday, in an evident lack of creativity? Not to mention the inheritance, which stupidly incinerated makes the biography much more interesting to us…