Being in the World... language

 

Contextualizing life with Fernando Pessoa,

 

1  He was a man in his thirties, slim, more tall than short, stooped to an exaggerated degree when sitting but less so when standing, dressed with a certain sloppiness not entirely slovenly. On the pale face with no interest in features, an air of suffering did not add interest, and it was difficult to define what kind of suffering this air indicated  - seemed to indicate various, trials, anguish, and that suffering that is born the indifference that comes from having suffered a lot.

 

twoI started to see it better. I noticed that a certain air of intelligence animated his features in an uncertain way. But despondency, the stagnation of cold anguish, so regularly covered his appearance that it was difficult to discern any other trait than that.

 

3 ...His voice was dull and tremulous, like those of creatures who do not expect anything, because it is perfectly useless to wait...

 

4Vicente Guedes endured that nulla life with the indifference of a master. A weakling's Stoicism underpinned his entire mental attitude.

The constitution of his spirit condemned him to all anxieties; that of their destiny to abandon them all. I have never met the soul of someone who was so amazed. Without any asceticism whatsoever, this man had abdicated all the ends to which his nature had destined him. Naturally built for ambition, he slowly enjoyed having no ambitions at all.

 

5...He will take special care of the chairs - with armrests, slings, soft chairs -, the curtains and the rugs. He said that in this way an interior was created "to maintain the dignity of boredom"...

 

6That's all that remains and will remain of one of the most subtle souls in inertia, the most mocking in the pure dream that this world has seen. Never - I believe - has there been a creature outside of human beings who lived their self-awareness more complexly. Dandy in spirit, walked the art of dreaming through the chance of existing.

 

7For Vicente Guedes, being aware of oneself was both an art and a morality; dreaming was a religion.

He definitely created the inner aristocracy, that attitude of soul that most resembles the attitude of the body of a complete aristocrat.

 

-Book of Disquiet, Fernando Pessoa