Chiaroscuro: Disquiet and the Malconent

Chiaroscuro is a technique for painting and sketches that uses the contrast of light (chiaro) and darkness (oscura), with the falling of light on uneven surfaces or from a particular source. It heightens the drama, signifies depth and dimension, and could denote something sinister. This is my journal on Project Chiaroscuro, a production by Little Red Shop and the Substation, which will culminate in a performance of six original monologues at The Substation on 12-15 July. Each performance will be inspired by one of six selected books.

The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pesoa

First, let me admit that I still haven't finished reading it. Not because it's boring but because it's totally absorbing. I think I need to simply take a day off and finish the damn thing. It's been a while since I've had to read a book line by line, and life is full of distractions.

From what I've read so far, the Book of Disquiet isn't plot or character-driven; yet one can't compare it to stream-of-consciousness type works as Virginia Woolf or getting into the mind of the protagonist like Dostoyevski (I'm referencing Crime and Punishment here, at least). What comes to mind is prose by Albert Camus, who used his fiction to explore his ideas about life and existence.

The book is essentially the journal of a book-keeper/accountant named Bernardo Soares, whose life is largely circumscribed by his neighborhood--even his street--in Lisbon. Overtly, he spends his days without change and without incident: he goes to work, eats at the same restaurant, cuts his hair at the same barber's, and so on. He is a non-descript, quiet man, who doesn't make any ripples around him and walks through life as if he is unmindful of what happens around him.

Overtly.

His inner life is full of tumult, richness and expanse. Although he has never been far from home, Soares cogitates over life and existence from his own love of Portuguese and other literature. He pores over the minutiae of his own life and his impressions of his surroundings and the people around him. The people around him have no clue of how much they affect him. He writes about the meaning of existence and life, religion, even sex and love; but from the vantage of a limited scope of experience. And all this happens behind his eyes, behind the veneer of the constant, consistent and unassuming book-keeper, who somehow has the ability to do two things in parallel: enter the credits and debits of his mundane irreducibly material existence while living, in his mind, within a maelstrom of ideas and ontological questions that do not cease.

Here are some quotes to illustrate:
"One must monotonize existence in order to rid it of monotony. One must make the everyday so anodyne that the slightest incident proves entertaining."

"I'm nobody, nobody. I don't know how to feel or think or love... I'm always thinking, always feeling, but my thoughts lack all reason, my emotions all feeling. I'm falling through a trapdoor, through infinite, infinitous space, in a directionless, empty fall."

"Because I am nothing, I can imagine myself to be anything."

Part of what makes the book remarkable is also its author. Fernando Pessoa is a Portuguese poet and this book is his only major work in prose. Moreover, the book was found (and published) post-humously from papers among his possessions. He started the book in 1912 and wrote, on and off, until his death in 1935.

This presents an occasional idiosycracy in the book, or perhaps it's just that the nature of one's thoughts and attitudes change over time: sometimes he comes across as religious; others, atheist. Sometimes, he is intellectually arrogant; others, he is exceedingly self-deprecating.

As a writer, Pessoa was also noteworthy for the his use of "heteronyms" (as opposed to pseudonyms), where he explored the philosophy and thoughts of other individuals--writing as them--with outlooks and styles different from his. Bernardo Soares in the Book of Disquiet, however, is seen to be a vehicle for Pessoa's own thoughts and life.

In terms of dramatizing the text, I was thinking of developing a character who is translating the text from Portuguese into English, thus grappling with the ideas presented, Pessoa's life himself, and how this relates to the character's life. I'd be interested in reading the translation by Margaret Jull Costa (the one I'm reading is by Maria Jose de Lancastre), who is considered to have written the best translation of the book into English, and fictionalize on her experience. Perhaps the character's life is in disarray, and she takes refuge in Pessoa's world of ideas--by disagreeing with him, but also finding that some of what he writes resonates in her like truth.


thanks go to sunita, for providing perspective.