Free The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa by Fernando Pessoa Page B

listeningto this transpontine* discussion, broke in at this point, saying, “Where there can be no more or less, there is nothing.”
    “And why is that?” asked Fernando.
    “Because there can be more or less of everything that’s real, and nothing but what’s real can exist.”
    “Give us an example, Caeiro,” I said.
    “Rain,” replied my master. “Rain is something real. And so it can rain more or rain less. If you were to say, ‘There can’t be more or less of this rain,’ I would say, ‘Then that rain doesn’t exist.’ Unless of course you meant the rain as it is in this precise instant; that rain, indeed, is what it is and wouldn’t be what it is if it were more or less. But I mean something different—”
    “I already see what you mean,” I broke in, but before I could go on to say I can’t remember what, Fernando Pessoa turned to Caeiro. “Tell me this,” he said, pointing his cigarette: “How do you regard dreams? Are they real or not?”
    “I regard dreams as I regard shadows,” answered Caeiro unexpectedly, with his usual divine quickness. “A shadow is real, but it’s less real than a stone. A dream is real—otherwise it wouldn’t be a dream—but it’s less real than a thing. To be real is to be like this.”
    Fernando Pessoa has the advantage of living more in ideas than in himself. He had forgotten not only what he’d been arguing but even the truth or falseness of what he’d heard; he was enthused about the metaphysical possibilities of this new theory, regardless of whether it was true or false. That’s how these aesthetes are.
    “That’s an extraordinary idea!” he said. “Utterly original! It never occurred to me.” (And how about that “it never occurred to me”? As if it were impossible for an idea to occur to somebody else before it occurred to him, Fernando!) “It never occurred to me that one could think of reality as that which admits of degrees. That’s equivalent to thinking of Being as a numerical idea rather than as a strictly abstract one....”
    “That’s a bit confusing for me,” Caeiro hesitated, “but yes, I think that’s right. My point is this: To be real means there are other real things, for it’s impossible to be real all alone; and since to be real is to be somethingthat isn’t all those other things, it’s to be different from them; and since reality is a thing like size or weight—otherwise there would be no reality—and since all things are different, it follows that things are never equally real, even as things are never equal in size or weight. There will always be a difference, however small. To be real is this.”
    “That’s even more extraordinary!” exclaimed Fernando Pessoa. “So you evidently consider reality to be an attribute of things, since you compare it to size and weight. But tell me this: What thing is reality an attribute of? What is behind reality?”
    “Behind reality?” repeated my master Caeiro. “There’s nothing behind reality. Just as there’s nothing behind size, and nothing behind weight.”
    “But if a thing has no reality, it can’t exist, whereas a thing that has no size or weight can exist....”
    “Not if it’s a thing that by nature has size and weight. A stone can’t exist without size; a stone can’t exist without weight. But a stone isn’t a size, and a stone isn’t a weight. Nor can a stone exist without reality, but the stone is not a reality.”
    “Okay, okay,” said Fernando impatiently, grabbing at uncertain ideas while feeling the ground give way beneath him. “But when you say ‘a stone has reality,’ you distinguish stone from reality.”
    “Naturally. The stone is not reality; it has reality. The stone is only stone.”
    “And what does that mean?”
    “I don’t know. It’s like I said. A stone is a stone and has to have reality to be stone. A stone is a stone and has to have weight to be stone. A man isn’t a face but has to have a face to be a man. I don’t