From irony to Fernando Pessoa's disquiet

Abstract

Abstract: The present work seeks to understand the relationship between irony and disquiet, a feeling associated with the experience of modernity. Through a critical reading of Fernando Pessoa's Book of Disquiet, by Fernando Pessoa, we sought to identify the ironic literary forms that gave expression to the feeling studied and to determine their specificities. The article explores some of the recurring themes in the representation of disquiet, such as: identity, memory, belonging, conscience, intellectual work and, above all, the crisis situation permeating all these elements. The research supports the notion that language mechanisms directly influence the way a feeling is conveyed. Thus, we identified that irony is defining the modern sensibility. While disquiet appears in under the figures of exile, nostalgia, fragmented consciousness and mutilated identity, always bringing a rupture that destabilizes the nexus of meaning established between experience and expectation.