In this episode I re-interrogate my reasons for creating a Book of Disquet cover-version by exploring some of the nuances between the word "desassossego" (restlessness, uneasiness, anxiety) in Portuguese and the English translation which usually renders the word as "disquiet."

I also reflect a bit more, with the help of Richard Zenith's recent biography of Pessoa, on Pessoa's melancholy brand of existential unrest which acts in so many ways as a stand-in for the absurdity and tedium of modern life, making The Book of Disquiet the modernist masterpiece that it is.

Pessoa self-medicated his deep-seated disquiet through writing, smoking, alcohol and coffee. Alcohol, we might say, acts as a kind of liquid heteronym in this book, medicating away the pain of "tedio" (tedium, boredom, monotony), another crucial word in the Pessoan lexicon (he uses it 131 times in his Livro do Desassossego).

References:

-"Chega de Saudade" (Jobim/Moraes) sung by João Gilberto in 1959

-Pessoa: An Experimental Life (2021) by Richard Zenith

-Cyril Connolly's The Unquiet Grave

-Article about The Real with regard to our daily routines

-"People would rather be electrically shocked than left alone with their thoughts" (article)

-Andrew Bird's "Sisyphus"