The Book of Disquiet presents as a vital core an inability to act coming from the dialectical tension between the self and the outside world that is experienced by its author. Bernardo Soares inhabits an interstitial space between the thinking pathos and the unattainable immanence of sensation, allowing himself to be plunged into a deep boredom and tiredness conducive to literary production. It is within poiesis that Pessoa's semi-heteronym finds a possibility of existing in constant inaction – a non-living as a method for an aporia-filled existence. The current reflection will focus on this proposal of a non-life, of a non-being, underlying it with the theme of negativity and with the importance of literary positivity as an inside out capable of distending existential antagonisms.