Книга непокоя

От любви я требовал только одного: навсегда оставаться далекой мечтой.

Какой-то ужас оттого, что я должен жить, поднялся со мной с постели. Я казался себе пустым, и у меня было какое-то отстраненное впечатление, что не существует решения ни одной проблемы.

I've never been more than a bodiless gaze, whose only soul was a slight breeze that passed by and saw.

Art lies because it is social. And there are two great forms of art: one that speaks to our deepest soul, the other to our attentive soul. The first is poetry, the second is the novel. The first begins to lie in its very structure; the second in its very intention. One purports to give us the truth through lines that keep strict metres, thus lying against the nature of speech; the other purports to give us the truth by means of a reality that we all know never existed.

I’d like the reading of this book to leave you with the impression that you’ve traversed a sensual nightmare.

Perhaps the novel is a more perfect life and reality, which God creates through us. Perhaps we live only to create it. It seems that civilizations exist only to produce art and literature; words are what speak for them and remain. How do we know that these extra-human figures aren’t truly real?

To see is to be distant. To see clearly is to halt. To analyse is to be foreign.

If there’s any justice in the Gods’ injustice, then may they let us keep our dreams, even when they’re impossible, and may our dreams be happy, even when they’re trivial. Today, because I’m still young, I can dream of South Sea islands and impossible Indias. Tomorrow perhaps the same Gods will make me dream of owning a small tobacco shop, or of retiring to a house in the suburbs. Every dream is the same dream, for they’re all dreams. Let the Gods change my dreams, but not my gift for dreaming.

Everything comes from outside, and the human soul itself may be no more than the ray of sunlight that shines and isolates from the soil the pile of dung that’s the body.

And if the office on the Rua dos Douradores represents life for me, the fourth-floor room* where I live, on this same Rua dos Douradores, represents Art for me. Yes, Art, residing on the very same street as Life, but in a different place. Art, which gives me relief from life without relieving me of living, being as monotonous as life itself, only in a different place.

Memory is no more than our sensation of the past. And every sensation is an illusion…

I need virtually no stimulants. I have opium enough in my soul.

Everything stated or expressed by man is a note in the margin of a completely erased text. From what’s in the note we can extract the gist of what must have been in the text, but there’s always a doubt, and the possible meanings are many.

...if the freedom isn’t in me, then I won’t have it no matter where I go.

Whether or not they exist, we're slaves to the gods.

Жизнь - это экспериментальное путешествие, совершаемое поневоле. Это путешествие духа сквозь материю, и, поскольку путешествует дух, мы живем именно в нём. Поэтому есть созерцательные души, которые живут более насыщенной, более пространной, более бурной жизнью, чем те, что живут вовне. Результат - это всё. То, что было прочувствовано, было тем, что было прожито. От сна пробуждаешься таким же усталым, как от зримого труда. Никогда не проживаешь столько, как когда много думаешь.

Почему искусство прекрасно? Потому что оно бесполезно. Почему жизнь некрасива? Потому что она вся состоит из целей, намерений и устремлений. Все ее пути предназначены для того, чтобы перейти из одной точки в другую.