THE TOBACCO SHOP
Fernando Pessoa
I'm
nothing.
I'll always be nothing.
I can't want to be something.
But I have in me all the
dreams of the world.
Windows
of my room,
The room of one of the
world's millions nobody knows
(And if they knew me, what
would they know?),
You open onto the mystery of
a street continually crossed by people,
A street inaccessible to any
and every thought,
Real, impossibly real,
certain, unknowingly certain,
With the mystery of things
beneath the stones and beings,
With death making the walls
damp and the hair of men white,
With Destiny driving the
wagon of everything down the road of
nothing.
Today
I'm defeated, as if I'd
learned the truth.
Today I'm lucid, as if I were
about to die
And had no greater kinship
with things
Than to say farewell, this
building and this side of the street
becoming
A row of train cars, with the
whistle for departure
Blowing in my head
And my nerves jolting and
bones creaking as we pull out.
Today
I'm bewildered, like a
man who wondered and discovered
and forgot.
Today I'm torn between the
loyalty I owe
To the outward reality of the
Tobacco Shop across the street
And to the inward reality of
my feeling that everything's a dream.
I
failed in everything.
Since I had no ambition,
perhaps I failed in nothing.
I left the education I was
given,
Climbing down from the window
at the back of the house.
I went to the country with big
plans.
But all I found was grass and
trees,
And when there were people
they were just like others.
I step back from the window
and sit in a chair.
What should I think
about?
How
should I know what I'll
be, I who don't know what I am?
Be what I think? But I think
of being so many things!
And there are so many who
think of being the same thing that we
can't all be it!
Genius? At this moment
A hundred thousand brains are
dreaming they're geniuses like me,
And it may be that history
won't remember even one,
All of their imagined
conquests amounting to so much dung.
No, I don't believe in me.
Insane asylums are full of lunatics
with certainties!
Am I, who have no
certainties, more right or less right?
No, not even in me ...
In how many garrets and
non-garrets of the world
Are self-convinced geniuses
at this moment dreaming?
How many lofty and noble and
lucid aspirations
- Yes, truly lofty and noble
and lucid
And perhaps even attainable-
Will never see the true light
of day or find a sympathetic ear?
The world is for those born to conquer it,
Not for those who dream they
can conquer it, even if they're right.
I’ve done more in dreams than
Napoleon.
I've held more humanities
against my hypothetical breast than
Christ.
I've secretly invented
philosophies such as Kant never wrote.
But I am, and perhaps will
always be, the man in the garret,
Even though I don't live in
one.
I'll always be the one who wasn't born for that;
I'll always be merely the one who had qualities;
I'll always be the one who
waited for a door to open in a wall
without doors
And sang the song of the
Infinite in a chicken coop And heard the voice of God in a covered
well.
Believe in me? No, not in anything.
Let Nature pour over my seething
head
Its sun, its rain, and the
wind that finds my hair,
And let the rest come if it
will or must, or let it not come.
Cardiac slaves of the stars,
We conquered the whole world
before getting out of bed,
But we woke up and it's hazy,
We got up and it's alien,
We went outside and it's the
entire earth
Plus the solar system and the
Milky Way and the Indefinite.
(Eat
your chocolates, little
girl,
Eat your chocolates!
Believe me, there's no
metaphysics on earth like chocolates,
And all religions put
together teach no more than the candy shop. Eat, dirty little girl, eat!
If only I could eat
chocolates with the same truth as you!
But I think and, removing the
silver paper that's tinfoil,
I throw it all on the ground,
as I've thrown out life.)
But at least, from my
bitterness over what I'll never be,
There remains the hasty
writing of these verses,
A broken gateway to the
Impossible.
But at least I confer on
myself a contempt without tears,
Noble at least in the
sweeping gesture by which I fling
The dirty laundry that's
me-with no list-into the stream of
things,
And I stay at home,
shirtless.
(O my
consoler, who doesn't
exist and therefore consoles,
Be you a Greek goddess,
conceived as a living statue,
Or a patrician woman of Rome,
impossibly noble
and dire,
Or a princess of the
troubadours, all charm and grace,
Or an eighteenth-century
marchioness, decolleté and aloof,
Or a famous courtesan from
our parents' generation,
Or something modern, I can't
quite imagine what-
Whatever all of this is,
whatever you are, if you can inspire, then
inspire me!
My heart is a poured-out
bucket.
In the same way invokers of
spirits invoke spirits, I invoke
My own self and find nothing.
I go to the window and see
the street with absolute clarity.
I see the shops, I see the
sidewalks,
I see the passing cars,
I see the clothed living
beings who pass each other.
I see the dogs that also
exist,
And all of this weighs on me
like a sentence of exile,
And all of this is foreign, like everything else.)
I've
lived, studied, loved,
and even believed,
And today there's not a
beggar I don't envy just because he isn't me.
I look at the tatters and
sores and falsehood of each one,
And I think: perhaps you
never lived or studied or loved or believed
(For it's possible to do all
of this without having done any of it);
Perhaps you've merely
existed, as when a lizard has its tail cut off
And the tail keeps on
twitching, without the lizard.
I made of myself what I was
no good at making,
And what I could have made of
myself I didn't.
I put on the wrong costume
And was immediately taken for
someone I wasn't, and I said
nothing and was lost.
When I went to take off the
mask,
It was stuck to my face.
When I got it off and saw
myself in the mirror,
I had already grown old.
I was drunk and no longer
knew how to wear the costume that I
hadn't taken off.
I threw out the mask and
slept in the closet
Like a dog tolerated by the management
Because it's harmless,
And I'll write down this
story to prove I'm sublime.
Musical
essence of my useless
verses,
If only I could look at you
as something I had made
Instead of always looking at
the Tobacco Shop across the street,
Trampling on my consciousness
of existing,
Like a rug a drunkard
stumbles on
Or a doormat stolen by
gypsies and it's not worth a thing.
But the
Tobacco Shop Owner
has come to the door and is standing
there.
I look at him with the
discomfort of a half-twisted neck
Compounded by the discomfort
of a half-grasping soul.
He will die and I will die.
He'll leave his signboard,
I'll leave my poems.
His sign will also eventually
die, and so will my poems.
Eventually the street where
the sign was will die,
And so will the language in
which my poems were written.
Then
the whirling planet
where all of this happened will die.
On other planets of other
solar systems something like people
Will continue to make things
like poems and to live under things
like signs,
Always one thing facing the
other,
Always one thing as useless
as the other,
Always the impossible as
stupid as reality,
Always the inner mystery as
true as the mystery sleeping on the
surface.
Always this thing or always
that, or neither one thing nor the other.
But a
man has entered the
Tobacco Shop (to buy tobacco?),
And plausible reality
suddenly hits me.
I half rise from my
chair-energetic, convinced, human-
And will try to write these
verses in which I say the opposite.
I light
up a cigarette as I
think about writing them,
And in that cigarette I savor
a freedom from all thought.
My eyes follow the smoke as
if it were my own trail
And I enjoy, for a sensitive
and fitting moment,
A liberation from all
speculation
And an awareness that
metaphysics is a consequence of not feeling
very well.
Then I lean back in the chair
And keep smoking.
As long as Destiny permits,
I'll keep smoking.
(If I
married my washwoman's
daughter
Perhaps I would be happy.)
I get up from the chair. I go
to the window.
The man has come out of the
Tobacco Shop (putting change into
his pocket?).
Ah, I know him: it's un-metaphysical
Esteves.
(The Tobacco Shop Owner has
come to the door.)
As if by divine instinct,
Esteves turns around and sees
me.
He waves hello, I shout back
"Hello, Esteves!" and the universe
Falls back into place without
ideals or hopes, and the Owner of the
Tobacco Shop smiles.
15
January 1928
Tiệm
Thuốc Lá
Fernando
Pessoa
Tôi
chẳng là gì
Tôi luôn luôn chẳng là gì
Tôi không thể muốn là gì
Nhưng tôi có trong tôi tất cả những giấc mộng của thế gian này
Cửa sổ phòng
tôi,
Căn phòng của một trong triệu triệu căn phòng của một kẻ chẳng ai biết
(Giả sử họ biết tôi, thì sẽ biết cái gì?)
ngó xuống sự bí mật của một con phố lúc nào cũng có người qua kẻ lại
Một con phố từ khước bất cứ một tư tưởng, mọi tư tưởng,
Thực, thực không thể nào nào thực được, chắc chắn, chắc chắn không thể
nào biết
được
Với sự bí mật của những sự vật ở bên dưới lớp sỏi đá, và những sinh vật
Với cái chết làm cho những bức tường ẩm ướt và tóc người trắng ra
Với Số Mệnh lái chiếc xe goòng hữu thể xuống con phố hư vô
Bữa
nay tôi bị đánh bại như thể tôi ngộ ra chân lý
Bữa
nay tôi sang suốt như thể sắp đi xa, sắp ngỏm củ tỉ.
Tôi
chẳng có tí máu mủ ruột thịt lớn lao gì với mọi vật để mà nói giã biệt
Tòa
nhà này, con phố bên phía này
Trở
thành 1 dãy xe cộ, với tiếng còi khởi hành
U
u trong đầu tôi
Đầu
óc tôi rối bời, xương thịt như bị lóc xẻo ra
Bữa
nay tôi hoang mang, như 1 người ngạc nhiên, và khám phá ra, và quên mẹ
mất.
Bữa
nay tôi bị cấu xé, dằng co giữa lòng trung thành mà tôi mắc nợ
Với
thực tại bên ngoài của Tiệm Thuốc Là bên kia đường
Và
với thực tại bên trong của ý nghĩ, tình cảm của tôi, rằng mọi thứ chỉ
là một giấc
mộng
Tôi thất bại
trong mọi chuyện
Bởi là vì tôi không có tham vọng, có lẽ, tôi thất bại trong...
chẳng có gì
Tôi rời bỏ học vấn mà tôi được ban
Bò xuống cửa sổ, phía sau một căn nhà.
Tôi đi về vùng quê với những chương trình lớn
Nhưng tất cả những gì mà tôi thấy, thì là cỏ và cây
Và khi có người, thì cũng giống như những người khác.
Tôi lui khỏi cửa sổ và ngồi xuống 1 cái ghế.
Tôi nghĩ gì bi giờ?