The Many Tales of One City

 “A arte consiste em fazer os outro sentir que nós sentimos.” --Fernando Pessoa

One of the best known inhabitants of Lisboa during the twentieth century was writer Fernando Pessoa. Much has been written about his different heteronyms or how he may or may not typify a flaneur-type. But how might his writings grapple with the sense of disquiet or restlessness and how might this be influenced by the city he lived in? And what does Pessoa teach us about our own relationship with a city such as Lisboa?

Vitoriano Braga, Fernando Pessoa, 1914
Pilfered from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fernando_Pessoa

The other day I entered the word disquiet into a search engine and the results totalled more than 2 million and among the many results was a question of how that word could be used in a sentence. I couldn’t help but think of how difficult a question that really is (beyond the basic grammatical usage). 

I also wondered how a writer like Fernando Pessoa would have dealt with this if he were alive today. Would he have written about it on a blog (or in multiple blogs for each heteronym) or would he discuss it as a serial commenter on other writers’ blogs?  And how would he have felt about social media?

Somehow I'd like to think that he would prefer the face to face time at a café. Who could blame him really?

This past summer I spent a couple of weeks at a writer’s workshop in Lisboa. There was an ongoing theme throughout the workshop that was tied to life/lives of Pessoa.  We walked his streets, visited his cafes and read his writings.  We also sat in readings by contemporary authors and toured contemporary art galleries. We sat amongst other writers eating, drinking and chatting.  It was a Lisboa that I knew about but never actually experienced until this past summer.

How different this is from the city that I am familiar with. My Lisboa is the one with the flea market finds; the trips to buy loose tea and biscuits (linguas do gato!) with my Grandma and the teasing of cats that lived in the treseiras. It’s the Lisboa with Gulbenkian tapestries, gilded carriages and Janelas Verdes. It’s the one with the broken cobblestones and abandoned buildings; the haggling with shopkeepers and long queues at governmental buildings; the aromas of grilled sardines and brewing coffee.

Ver Pessoa em Lisboa  or Ver Lisboa em pessoa? I recommend both.

If you are a writer with a genealogical tie to a Portuguese-speaking country and/or you're a writer who wants to spend a bit of time among other writers/editors/translators/artists, DISQUIET may be the way to refresh and recharge. If you are of Portuguese descent and are based in North America, check out the scholarship opportunities.