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of the Portuguese edition I produced in 1998 and of this revised, reorganized and expanded English edition. Some of the discrepancies between this and other English translations (including my first effort) are due to the rather different source text that has emerged as I and other researchers have re-examined the original manuscripts.
    SYMBOLS USED IN THE TEXT
    – blank space left by the author for one or more words within a sentence
    .…. – place where a sentence breaks off, space left for an unwritten sentence or paragraph, or blank space inside a sentence where the hiatus does not interrupt a phrasal unit
    [?] – translation based on a conjectural reading of the author’s handwriting
    […] – illegible word or phrase
    [ ] – word(s) added by translator
    * – find note at the back of the volume, under the appropriate Text number or title.

Acknowledgements
    I’m grateful to Maria Aliete Galhoz for having broken the ground, with her patient work in the Pessoa archives; to José Blanco for his enthusiasm, support and friendship; to Michael Schmidt for believing in Pessoa when few had heard of him; to Hermínio Monteiro and Lú cia Pinho e Melo for their good work and encouragement; to Jennifer Hengen and Simon Winder for having, in a certain way, gone out on a limb; to Ellah Allfrey and Sarah Coward for their inspired suggestions; and to the staff workers at the National Library of Lisbon and the Casa Fernando Pessoa for their gracious assistance.
    I especially thank Teresa Rita Lopes and Manuela Parreira da Silva for their generous help in deciphering the original manuscripts; Manuela Neves and Manuela Rocha for their similar generosity in helping me interpret difficult passages; and Martin Earl for his insightful critique of my Introduction.

The Book of Disquiet
by Bernardo Soares,
assistant bookkeeper in the city of Lisbon

Preface
FERNANDO PESSOA
    Lisbon has a certain number of eating establishments in which, on top of a respectable-looking tavern, there’s a regular dining room with the solid and homey air of a restaurant in a small trainless town. In these first-floor dining rooms, fairly empty except on Sundays, one often comes across odd sorts, unremarkable faces, a series of asides in life .
    There was a time in my life when a limited budget and the desire for quiet made me a regular patron of one of these first-floor restaurants. And it happened that whenever I ate dinner there around seven o’clock, I nearly always saw a certain man who didn’t interest me at first, but then began to .
    Fairly tall and thin, he must have been about thirty years old. He hunched over terribly when sitting down but less so standing up, and he dressed with a carelessness that wasn’t entirely careless. In his pale, uninteresting face there was a look of suffering that didn’t add any interest, and it was difficult to say just what kind of suffering this look suggested. It seemed to suggest various kinds: hardships, anxieties, and the suffering born of the indifference that comes from having already suffered a lot .
    He always ate a small dinner, followed by cigarettes that he rolled himself. He conspicuously observed the other patrons, not suspiciously but with more than ordinary interest. He didn’t observe them with a spirit of scrutiny but seemed interested in them without caring to analyse their outward behaviour or to register their physical appearance. It was this peculiar trait that first got me interested in him .
    I began to look at him more closely. I noticed that a certain air of intelligence animated his features in a certain uncertain way. But dejection – the stagnation of cold anguish – so consistently covered his face that it was hard to discern any of his other traits .
    I happened to learn from a waiter in the restaurant that the man worked in an office near by .
    One day there was an incident in the street down below – a fist fight between two men. Everyone in the first-floor restaurant ran to