13 - Bernardo Soares, Pig of Destiny!

Summary

‘O único homem feliz é o que nada toma a sério’

[The only happy man is he who takes nothing seriously]

The title of this essay is a liberal translation of a phrase found in fragment 1/81-2 of Livro do Desassossego [Book of Disquiet]: ‘Há porcos de destino, como eu, que se não afastam da banalidade quotidiana por essa mesma atracção da própria impotência’ [there are pigs of destiny, like me, who do not retreat from the banality of the quotidian because of the very attraction of their own impotence]. At a certain level, ‘pig of destiny’ is a description well suited to Bernardo Soares, who wallows triumphantly in the resentment of his life, employing a self-deprecating humour and some striking imagery (that is often comparable to that used by Álvaro de Campos) in order to express what he sees as the banality of his being and of the world around him. José Martins Garcia also notes the humour in Livro do Desassossego, although this aspect of the work has been overlooked by many critics. Eduardo Lourenço even describes Soares's writings as the most suicidal piece of prose in Portuguese litera¬ture. Soares's sense of non-self and apparently incessant pessimism is one of the key factors leading critics such as Lourenço to interpret Livro do Desassossego in this way. In this essay, however, I intend to explore and question in more detail how far we should take Soares at his word, and how far he can really be considered the pig that he claims he is fated to be. In particular, I will explore the relationship between modernity and Soares's construction of a self, employing some of the sociologist Georg Simmel's observations on the sociological effects of urban modernisation to inform my reading of Livro do Desassossego.