The Book of Disquiet

Soares meditates on love. He examines the various relationships he’s had and how they’ve made him feel. Soares believes that love is exhausting because it requires too much sacrifice and attention.

Soares muses on morality and sin. He chooses several rules for life, although he believes it’s human to feel perpetually exhausted and lazy.

It rains all night. Soares lies in bed listening to the rain on the glass. He dreams of different colors and souls. He wishes he could fall fully asleep, but he remains conscious of the sounds in the street below. His soul is tired and heavy. He thinks about suicide again, still convinced it’s the wrong way to take action.

Soares feels unable to reconcile his internal and external worlds. He muses on history and various authors and thinkers. He feels frustrated with his art and reality. Even his memories can’t make him happy. At times, studying metaphysics and the sciences has occupied him, but it has brought him no true peace. All of his “theories about life” (218) are insufficient. He muses on the existence of God, deciding that God is in everything—particularly art. Life perhaps can’t offer happiness or peace of mind because the soul is always restless. He wonders at the illusions humans have created to keep misery at bay. He is often disgusted by religious and political systems and their attempts to spread alleged truths—none of which he trusts. The only way to God is through art.

Soares again declares that the best way to live is to create art. Through art, artists can communicate their feelings to others and make the abstract real: Art is inherently social, despite the isolation in which it is often produced.

Soares muses again on the existence and meaning of love, and how it relates to who he is. He references his mother’s death when he was an infant, wondering if this relates to his skepticism of love.

One day, Soares is overcome by isolation and boredom. Although he works, writes, dreams, desires, and suffers, he remains restless. He sometimes wonders if travel would change these sentiments, but he doubts it. The best ways to travel are by reading and dreaming. He sits in his apartment listening to someone play the piano in another unit. He’s overwhelmed by irritation and can’t stop thinking about his lost childhood.

Soares takes a walk. The city smells pleasing to him. His mind drifts back to thoughts of art, love, sleep, and dreaming. He can’t reconcile with the illusion of love, which is just a form of greed. No one can possess another person. People insist love is real, but the whole world is governed by insincerity. Everyone is in pursuit of happiness, but most people are lonely frauds and dreamers like himself.

Soares notices when a boy at the office returns to his hometown. He considers what such a journey would be like, reflecting on God and Fate.

Soares lies in bed, listening to the sound of the wind in the street. He can’t sleep. In the morning, he studies the sky, the light, and the clouds. He expects the day to be oppressive. He wonders at his own freedom. He believes freedom relates to the potential for solitude. People aren’t free if they can’t be alone. He muses on love as a form of enslavement.

Soares feels restless and tired for several days. Constantly dreaming, he wonders if he’s ever really awake. He feels confused by life when he must extricate himself from his dreams. He tries to write, but his work remains insufficient. He considers what it would be like to write a masterpiece. On another day, he feels more attached to his writing, delighted by his sentences. He feels jealous of people who can finish and publish their books but tries to make peace with how he commits his dreams to the page.

Soares muses on action, logic, and suffering. Suddenly he feels as if money is the only answer to his entrapment. He would be freer if he were more financially stable.

Soares is overcome by the absurdity of life. He takes a train and studies his surroundings and fellow passengers. He feels dazed and disillusioned. Traveling can be good, but he prefers traveling in his mind. Opening himself to new sensations is the best way to gain experience.

Back at the office, Soares devotes himself to his work. He encounters an unfamiliar man in the smoking room and tries imagining the man’s life. His daydreaming is a form of sympathy, but it can be immobilizing. He considers men of action versus those of inaction. More accomplished people are less sympathetic. Soares prefers to be an inactive dreamer. He can experience so many lives this way.

Soares muses on notions of faith, death, and beauty. He prides himself on dreaming. Then again, the banality of life often overcomes him. He takes walks, reports to the office, and overhears various conversations. He detests other people’s happiness and wishes modern society weren’t so obsessed with action. Activity seems to preclude happiness. He prefers wasting time, imagining other people’s lives, and making characters of them.

Soares wakes up one cold day and decides he is a failure. He reflects on his “bohemian” life, his solitude, and his dreams, unable to quell his despair. The weather grows progressively colder. Soares studies the signs of autumn throughout the city. He writes about the leaves, clouds, birds, and river. These musings deliver him from his stasis. He remembers again the importance of dreaming. If he didn’t dream, he wouldn’t survive. Although art is useless, it is beautiful.

Soares’s positive feelings shift once more. He is again overcome by anxiety. He feels unable to settle on any one truth.

Months pass, and Soares doesn’t write a word. Life feels empty and useless. Soares’s body pains him. His days are boring and tedious. He feels plagued by others’ perceptions of him. One day, he walks to the river and studies the water and sky. He feels connected to the landscape. Then he decides the landscape doesn’t exist.

Days pass, and Soares struggles to return to his writing. He can’t sleep but continues to dream. In one dream, he muses on the possibility of loving a woman and writes an ode to her. Then he remembers how oppressive love and relationships are. Hours pass, and he loses track of time. Months go by. Finally it’s spring. Soares walks through the city, studying the lonely streets as the weather changes. He notices the trees, trains, people, and sky.