Fernando Pessoa

There’s no regret more painful than the regret of things that never were.
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I always live in the present. I don’t know the future and no longer have the past. The former oppresses me as the possibility of everything, the latter as the reality of nothing. I have no hopes and no nostalgia. Knowing what my life has been up till now – so often and so completely the opposite of what I wanted –, what can I assume about my life tomorrow, except that it will be what I don’t assume, what I don’t want, what happens to me from the outside, reaching me even via my will? There’s nothing from my past that I recall with the futile wish to repeat it. I was never more than my own vestige or simulacrum. My past is everything I failed to be. I don’t even miss the feelings I had back then, because what is felt requires the present moment – once this has passed, there’s a turning of the page and the story continues, but with a different text.

2 thoughts on “Fernando Pessoa

  1. shinichi Post author

    The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa

    (O Livro do Desassossego de Fernando Pessoa)

    Le livre de l’intranquillité de Fernando Pessoa

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    A Factless Autobiography, Richard Zenith Edition

    **

    p. 111

    There’s no regret more painful than the regret of things that never were.

    (Ah, não há saudades mais dolorosas do que as das coisas que nunca foram!)

    **

    p. 118

    I always live in the present. I don’t know the future and no longer have the past. The former oppresses me as the possibility of everything, the latter as the reality of nothing.

    (Vivo sempre no presente. O futuro, não o conheço. O passado, já o não tenho. Pesa-me um como a possibilidade de tudo, o outro como a realidade de nada.)

    Je vis toujours au présent. L’avenir, je ne le connais pas. Le passé, je ne l’ai plus. L’un me pèse comme la possibilité de tout, l’autre comme la réalité de rien.

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  2. shinichi Post author

    J’ai une morale très simple : ne faire à personne ni bien ni mal.

    Rien ne me dit rien. Rien ne m’est connu, non que je le trouve bizarre, mais parce que je ne sais ce que c’est. J’ai perdu le monde. Et tout au fond de mon âme — seule réalité de cet instant — il y a une douleur intense et invisible, une tristesse semblable au bruit d’un homme pleurant dans une pièce obscure.

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