The Book of Disquiet (Fernando Pessoa, 1982)
"Seeing myself from the outside (as I almost always do), I’m unfit for action, flustered when I have to take a step or make a move, tongue-tied when I have to talk to someone, lacking the inner lucidity needed to enjoy things that require mental effort, and without the physical stamina to entertain myself through some merely mechanical labour.
It’s only natural that I’m this way. A dreamer is expected to be this way.
All reality disconcerts me. Other people’s speech throws me into a state of great anguish. The reality of other souls always astounds me.
The vast network of unconscious behaviours responsible for all the action I see strikes me as an absurd illusion, without any plausible coherence, nothing.
But should someone imagine that I’m ignorant of the workings of other people’s psychology, that I’m not clearly aware of their motives and private thoughts, then he’ll be quite mistaken about what I am.
For I’m not just a dreamer, I’m exclusively a dreamer.
My sole habit – to dream – has endowed me with an extraordinarily keen inner eyesight.
I not only see the figures and stage sets of my dreams with astounding and startling clarity, I see just as clearly my abstract ideas, my human feelings (what’s left of them), my secret urges and my psychological attitudes towards myself.
I even see, inside myself, my own abstract ideas; I see them in an internal space, with my veritable inner eyesight.
And thus their meanders are visible to me in every detail.
I therefore know myself completely and, knowing myself completely, I know all of humanity completely."
