CHALLENGING MODERNISM FERNANDO PESSOA AND THE BOOK OF DISQUIET UTRECHT MMXIII Challenging Modernism Fernando Pessoa and the Book of Disquiet Het Modernisme Uitgedaagd Fernando Pessoa en het Boek der Rusteloosheid (met een samenvatting in het Nederlands) Proefschrift ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor aan de Universiteit Utrecht op gezag van de rector magnificus, prof. dr. G.J. van der Zwaan ingevolge het besluit van het college voor promoties in het openbaar te verdedigen op woensdag 3 juli 2013 des middags te 4.15 uur door Michaël Rinse Gerrit Stoker geboren op 8 augustus 1979 te Kortenhoef Promotoren: prof. dr. P. R. de Medeiros prof. dr. J. W. Bertens Dit proefschrift werd (mede) mogelijk gemaakt met financiële steun van de Fundatie Vrijvrouwe van Renswoude (Utrecht). ISBN: 978-94-6191-790-4 For Gerda Houtsma (1931 - 2013) my grandmother In loving memory Acknowledgements Working so many years on such an inspiring and prolific work as Pessoa’s Book of Disquiet has been a privilege, a pleasure and a challenge. Ever since my first encounter with the book I was enchanted by it and it never stopped appealing to me as a scholar, a reader and a person. It lead me through many areas of knowledge; European literature, Portuguese language and culture, philosophy and genetic criticism. It brought me to Coimbra and Lisbon, cities where I have spent such a wonderful time. It connected me to so many people who inspired and befriended me. The book has accom- panied me to every city I lived in and on every turn my life has taken. I couldn’t have started, elaborated and finished this project without the support of several people. First of all, I would like to thank my supervisors prof. pr. Paulo de Medei- ros and prof. dr. Hans Bertens for their commitment and support. My spe- cial gratitude is for Paulo de Medeiros, who is the reason that I discovered Pessoa and Portuguese literature. I am deeply thankful for his inspiring class at Utrecht University in early 1998 that opened up a whole new world to me. I thank him for giving me the opportunity first to write a doctoral thesis and later a PhD on Pessoa, his critical and stimulating intellectual guidance and for being so patient and tolerant towards my many other ac- tivities that continuously delayed the completion of this PhD. Wherever in the world you’ll be teaching, I am sure that you’ll keep inspiring students to read and study Portuguese literature. My deepest thanks to several people who have been involved in this pro- ject; my first teachers in Portugal, Maria João Simões, Helena Buescu and 5 Manuel Gusmão. It has been a great pleasure to first be a student and later a colleague of Lurdes Meijer, Marian Schoenmakers and Paula Jordão in Utrecht. I also thank Richard Zenith, who over the past ten years has been so generous with his knowledge, time and enthusiasm. Many, many other professors and colleagues have being supportive throughout my academic pursuits: thank you all so much. I would like to thank the directors dr. Frans Ruiter and prof. dr. Maarten Prak and the other staff members of the OGC, especially José van Aelst, who have created such a splendid intellectual climate for PhD students. I thank the Foundation Vrijvrouwe van Renswoude for financing my very first steps for this thesis and the Jurriaanse Stichting for cofinancing the very last steps. I thank the staffmembers of the National Library in Lisbon, especially Helena Arjones and the Casa Fernando Pessoa, Finally, I would like to thank everyone who reminded me continuously of everything that is ‘de hors-texte’: my parents, grandparents, brothers, sister and family who were so supportive, my friends and colleagues at the liter- ary projects I was involved in over the years: thank you all for your patient interest. Most of all I am grateful to Gina, who has taken the entire journey with me and has always been both a passionate source of and a comforting beacon in disquietude. Our journey continues. Michaël Stoker, Utrecht, march 2013. 6 Contents Preliminary remarks 9 Introduction 11 Part I: The Book Chapter 1: Genetic Criticism & Pessoa §1. Introduction: Genetic criticism 39 §2. Creating a genetic edition 49 §3. The Gabler-edition of Ulysses 58 Chapter 2: Editions of the complete works of Fernando Pessoa §1. Edição Crítica da obra completa de Fernando Pessoa 67 §2. The Campos-controversy: two critical editions of the works of Álvaro de Campos 78 §3. Archive-edition of Pessoa’s works 106 Chapter 3: Editions of the Book of Disquiet §1. 1982-2011: Editions of Disquiet 115 §2. The Disquiet-controversy: Zenith vs. Cunha 124 §3. 1935-1982: Discovering Disquiet 133 Chapter 4: Prologomena for an archive edition of Disquiet §1. Introduction: Materials and sequence, transcription, his- torical collation 141 §2. The writing: textual development 146 §3. The autograph 165 §4. Dates 173 §5. Variants: alternative words and phrases 175 §6. Transcriptions 179 §7. Conclusion 187 7 Part II: Disquiet Chapter 1: Work, Text, Fragment? The crisis of the book. §1. Livro: fragment and codex 193 §2. Desassossego: complete work and complete silence 207 §3. The virtual library 220 §4. The crisis of the book 226 Chapter 2: Disquiet: the ‘drama sem gente’ §1. Suicidal texts and half-fictions 233 §2. The twelve published texts: literary background 238 §3. Monadology of the self 248 §4. Rereading and rewriting 264 §5. Hidden literality and continuous movement 279 Chapter 3: Disquieted consciousness §1. Consciousness in Modernism 293 §2. Consciousness in Disquiet 298 §3. Disquieted and heteronymic consciousness 304 §4. Language 319 §5. The City 324 §6. Time 332 §7. Childhood memories as a literary device: Pessoa and Du Perron 338 Chapter 4: Involuntary imagination and the empty self 347 §1. Voluntary and involuntary memory in Proust and Pessoa 348 §2. Involuntary imagination 363 §3. Showman Pessoa: The Mariner & Disquiet 369 §4. Las Meninas and Disquiet: doubleness of the subject 374 §5. Postponing the end: speaking, singing, writing 379 §6. Quid instead of quod: ‘the now’ 386 §7. Narrating the negative self: the tragedy of Bernardo Soares396 Conclusion: Challenging modernism? 406 Samenvatting 433 Bibliography 441 Index 473 8 Preliminary remarks First I compiled an archive edition of the Book of Disquiet on basis of Pes- soa’s own manuscripts, mainly because at the time three quite different ‘reading editions’ of the book existed an no critical edition had been made yet. In my archive edition I established the ‘canon’ of texts that I would use in the hermeneutical part of the thesis. Although I never intended to establish a critical edition of the book, in the end I have spent the first years of my appointment almost exclusively working on the archive edi- tion. When in 2010 a critical edition of the Book of Disquiet was published in Portugal by Imprensa Nacional - Casa Moeda, I included that edition in my own analyses of the manuscripts. For my interpretations of the book I only used the fragments that I myself included in the ‘canon’, which can be found in the archive edition. When I quote from these fragments in the thesis, however, I decided to quote from the Assírio & Alvim edition (9th edition, 2011). I decided to do so, not because I adopted that spe- cific edition as ‘the real’ edition, but simply for practical reasons: this was the most recent and repeatedly revised edition of the book and this is the edition that most readers of this thesis will have at hand. The reader can check other readings of the manuscripts of quoted passages fairly easily in the archive edition. In footnotes I give the fragmentnumber and the page- number of the text concerned in the edition of Assírio & Alvim like this: (138, 160), meaning: fragment 138, page 160. The fragment numbers of this Portuguese edition correspond to the fragment numbers of the English Penguin edition (with only a few exceptions, indicated in the footnotes). I abbreviated the Book of Disquiet simply as Disquiet. I quote all texts in the original language and give in the footnotes a trans- lation in English. If available I used official translations, if not available I included my own improvised translations. I use various abbreviations for primary texts by Pessoa, which I listed in the bibliographical section. 9 1. Introduction When opening the Penguin-edition of the Book of Disquiet the unpre- pared reader will immediately be struck by confusion. Next to an intro- duction, notes and acknowledgements, the table of contents mentions a Preface by Fernando Pessoa, A factless Autobiography and A disquiet An- thology, followed by three appendices. These titles and sections immedi- ately raise several questions: whose autobiography is this? Pessoa’s auto- biography, or, since it is paradoxically called ‘factless’, the autobiography of an invented person? And about that anthology: an anthology of what? Autobiographical texts, notes, poems, stories? Browsing through the an- thology, the reader finds a collection of short prose texts with titles like Ad- vise to unhappily married women, Imperial legend, A letter, Lucid Diary and Maxims, thus adding even more literary genres to the book. Flip through the autobio-graphy and you will find no chapters, as usual, but numbers; numbered fragments. Some count a few lines, others a few pages. Read an extract of a random text and you’ll see that it, like all other texts, has been written from a first person point of view. Who is this I? Pessoa? No. Go back to the title page of the section The Book of Disquiet where is stated: by Bernardo Soares, assistant bookkeeper in the city of Lisbon.