from the book of disquiet
163
Direct experience is an evasion, or hiding place, for those without any imagination. Reading about the risks incurred by a man who hunts tigers, I feel all the risks worth feeling, save the actual physical risk, which wasn’t really worth feeling, for it vanished without a trace.
Men of action are the involuntary slaves of the men of reason. The worth of things depends on their interpretation. Certain men make things which other men invest with meaning, bringing them to life. To narrate is to create, while to live is merely to be lived.
April 3rd, 2009 at 8:07 pm
Thank you for posting Pessoa’s work in this way. With a kind of quiet but persistent devotion. After all these years, he is still little known, just like the country of his birth…and death. The ancient land of Lusitania, now Portugal. A land that stands as the outpost of the European continent, a lonely sentinal, yet to be fully discovered, as it so fully discovered much of the entire globe before its discoveries were forgotten by the rest of the world, only to be credited another sovereign flag.
Thank you for honoring Pessoa. Thank you for honoring Portugal.