epilogue
The Ability to Want Nothing, by Kim So-yeon (poet) 5

Introduction 17

Text
1-481

Note 789

Translator's Note
A name is a sign. Bae Su-ah 793

The saddest and most beautiful book about anxiety

“I created many personalities within myself.
I am constantly creating different personalities.
Every time I dream, each dream takes on a physical form and is born as a different person.
“The dreams born that way continue to dream on my behalf.”

Fernando Pessoa, revered as Portugal's national author, wrote "The Book of Disquiet," which contains approximately 480 essays ranging from two to three pages of manuscript paper to as long as 20 pages.
In the modern age, where fame, success, convenience, noise and bustle are often acknowledged, Pessoa sings of the opposite things - darkness, ambiguity, failure, hardship, silence, etc. - through his heteronym, Bernardo Soares.
Soares focuses on the Portuguese city of Lisbon, and particularly on a place called Doradores, and freely displays the people, the scenery, and the imagination sparked there, without being restricted by anything.


Each of the 480 or so articles contains independent content in principle.
However, they are closely related to each other, dealing with fundamental and diverse topics such as humanity, life and death, inner psychology and the external world.
Through Pessoa's writings, which are calm, delicate, meticulous, and yet intense, we can glimpse the true meaning of life pursued by a writer who, in his alone time, agonizes over the general themes he encounters in life.


This book is a diary of Soares's external and internal aspects, observing and contemplating in detail the world that surrounds him but cannot penetrate his inner self, and his superficial daily life as an assistant accountant.
The language in which he records notes, recollections, impressions, reflections, meditations and fantasies, sometimes long and sometimes very short, is full of poetic metaphors.
The diary sounds like a song of sorrow, asking about the meaning of life, human destiny, and the secrets of the soul.
Places and landscapes of Lisbon are often the objects of his observation and contemplation.
Doradores, the representative street of goldsmiths, is where Soares lives and at the same time symbolizes the world and his entire life.

We can treat this book as a lifelong sketchbook revealing an artist within his various heterim.
Or we can read it as a travelogue, a 'book of random impressions' that faithfully accompanied Pessoa throughout his literary wanderings, even though he never left Lisbon.
Or perhaps we might view this book as a 'false autobiography' of a man who devoted his life to not living, a man who cultivated 'an aversion to greenhouse-like behavior.'
This book is like a treasure chest of cut gems and gemstones that can be arranged and rearranged in infinite combinations precisely because there is no pre-established order.

The word 'anxiety' refers less to the existential problems of human beings than to the instability and uncertainty that exist everywhere and are now distilled into a rhetoric of everyday life.
But other forms of anxiety begin to invade the work, soon causing unexpected changes.


This book is a modern work of open form, consisting of numerous fragmented texts, sketches, and aphorisms, without any plot, but progressing solely by association of consciousness.
Soares-Pessoa's perspective on the world, his meditations, and his reflections reflect both the universality of humanity and the unique characteristics of an individual. The questions of what it means to be human, what is the meaning of life, and the secrets of the self form the main themes that run through the entire book.

Lisbon, the emotional backdrop of this piece, is a city where dreams and desires intersect.
Like Kafka's Prague, James Joyce's Dublin, and Robert Musil's Vienna, Pessoa wanders the alleys of Lisbon, capturing the melancholy and loneliness of the white seaside city with greater sensitivity than anyone else.