20110226

Pessoa was wrong

I've been reading about Fernando Pessoa, who I'd never heard of before. Apparently he wrote these words:
If a man writes well only when he’s drunk, then I’ll tell him: Get drunk. And if he says that it’s bad for his liver, I’ll answer: What’s your liver? A dead thing that lives while you live, whereas the poems you write live forever.
— Fernando Pessoa

Surely it is wiser to say

If a man writes well only when he’s drunk, then I’ll tell him: don't write. And if he says that it’s bad for his creativity, I’ll answer: What’s your creativity? A living thing that lives while you live, whereas the poems you write will perish!