Showing posts with label Fernando Pessoa. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Fernando Pessoa. Show all posts

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!