A passage from A COLD IN THE SOUL: READING THE BOOK OF DISQUIET IN APARTMENT 62

The Book of Disquiet most often seduced me as a perversely cheerful apologia for withdrawal from everything, for “the sweetness of having neither family nor companions, the gentle pleasure akin to that of exile, in which we feel the pride of distance shade into a hesitant voluptuousness.” Behold the paradise of Bernardo Soares: “A cup of coffee, a cigarette, the penetrating aroma of its smoke, myself sitting in a shadowy room with my eyes half-closed.” Elsewhere he is more elaborate: “To live a dispassionate, cultured life beneath the dewfall of ideas, reading, dreaming and thinking about writing, a life slow enough to be always on the edge of tedium, but considered enough not to slip into it. To live a life removed from emotions and thoughts, enjoying only the thought of emotions and the emotion of thoughts. To stagnate, golden, in the sun like a dark lake surrounded by flowers.” The best guess is that the bending flowers themselves are narcissi.

read the entire text here.