Pessoa in an International Web: Influence and Innovation by David G. Frier

Author:David G. Frier [Frier, David G.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography, Literary Studies, Non-Fiction, Poems, Poets
ISBN: 9781907747939
Amazon: 1907747931
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2012-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

In de Maistre’s pre-Freudian system of l’âme et la bête, there is always, at some level, a certain cohesion of the two components to create a subjective unity. In Soares’s system of Arte e Vida, the two are constantly separate: he cannot escape the sense of fragmentation in his subjectivity and is thus forced to continue searching for some material to fill in the cracks. He continually turns back to Vida for this stimulation, and so he becomes trapped in a perpetually revolving cycle of desassossego, unable or unwilling to realize that the only way out of it would be to act.

Activity, of course, goes completely against Soares’s principles, and remaining passive is an attempt to justify the lack and the sense of fragmented subjectivity. As Pedro Eiras puts it, ‘O desejo de não-agir, recorrente no Livro, é também programa e remédio contra o spleen’ [the desire for not acting, recurrent in the Book, is also a programme and a remedy for the spleen].29 Whether we view Soares’s world view as a flash of genius that pre-figures Lacan and demonstrates unusual insight, or as sheer self-indulgent wallowing in his desassossego, the assistant bookkeeper does at least recognize the inherent inability of all of us to satisfy, once and for all, the lack in our subjectivity that Lacan would later theorize. Soares declares: ‘A inacção consola de tudo. Não agir dá-nos tudo. Imaginar é tudo [...]’ (Livro, p. 163) [Inaction makes up for everything. Not acting gives us everything. To imagine is everything [...] (Disquiet, p. 145)]. The ‘viagens nunca feitas’ are thus emblematic of Soares’s outlook, and of the tone of Livro as a whole. It is not worth making the effort to travel — by vehicle or on foot — because ‘para viajar basta existir’ (Livro, p. 360) [One only needs to exist to travel (Disquiet, p. 371)]. It is precisely by means of his passivity and reluctance — or rather, refusal (Livro, p. 220; Disquiet, p. 212) — to participate in the world that Soares is able to justify and live an idealogy that situates him within the imaginary world and therefore prevents him from reaching his full potential in ‘real’ life. Elsewhere, I have referred to Soares’s way of being in the world as his ‘philosophy of inaction’. This is a concept that he repeats in various ways in the different fragments, and which is, in short, that the superior man chooses not to act and refuses to entertain illusions about himself or the world; this permits him the opportunity to dream, and by dreaming he may be anything (and everything) he chooses and reach a heightened understanding of himself and of the world in relation to him.30

This last observation leads us to a key point of contrast between Soares’s and de Maistre’s ‘systems’. De Maistre suggests that he is discovering and theorizing indisputable grand truths about humankind, applicable even to the lowliest of characters. He is only able to do so because of the limitations on his physical movement and the freedom that this offers to his mind.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.