Fernando Pessoa’s Disappearing Act

I’m oppressed by the very self that encases me,

Todo se me evapora. Mi vida entera, mis recuerdos, mi imaginación y lo que contiene, mi personalidad, todo se me evapora. Continuamente siento que he sido otro, que he sentido otro, que he pensado otro. Aquello a lo que asisto es un espectáculo con otro escenario. Y aquello a lo que asisto soy yo.

I am, in large measure, the selfsame prose I write… I’ve made myself into the character of a book, a life one reads. Whatever I feel is felt (against my will) so that I can write that I felt it. Whatever I think is promptly put into words, mixed with images that undo it, cast into rhythms that are something else altogether. From so much self-revisi

Having employed my self-awareness in such a purely artistic way, and having become so completely external to myself, I sometimes no longer recognize myself. Who am I behind this unreality? I don’t know. I must be someone. And if I avoid living, acting and feeling, then believe me, it’s so as not to tamper with the contours of my invented personalit