Luciano Duarte

Regardless of the line adopted, the critic’s judgment of a literary work will always be conditioned by the strength with which it has penetrated and imprinted itself on his mind. Therefore, the elements he identifies, such as the cohesiveness of the plot, the truthfulness of the characters, the beauty of the expression, the relevance of the themes addressed, all of this is as if they prove to be as effective as they make the work memorable, and consequently change or enrich the critic’s own understanding of reality. Valuing novelty, then, is justified because novelty shines a new light on the mind. As long as the critic continues to judge along these lines, he will be making a criticism that may be subjective, perhaps unfair, but always authentic. On the other hand, taking the opposite route will always be a waste and a deviation from his function.

When we overcome our fear of death and look at it with benevolence, the lines we write are filled with new value. If we ignore it, we can be deluded and adopt a false purpose for writing; we can forget the true value of letters. But if we face it, if we accept it and even come to appreciate it, the act of writing takes on something transcendent, and we see the work as the noblest thing we can do.

From Brazil, it is hard to imagine the European literary environment of the 19th century, in which it was not only possible to make some money from literature, but also to make a living from fiction. Just imagining a payment, any payment, priced by the number of pages written, is something that makes the brain freeze. Less absurd than imagining a publisher paying something for literature is thinking about the act of creation invaded by thoughts such as: “I’ll charge so much per page”, “I’ll offer the work to this and that publisher”, “I need to finish the book to get paid”… And this as a rule! experienced by practically all authors! Then the thought flies to the economic aspects: this work was sold for so much, that one for so much, this author sold so many works a year, that one so many, and so on. And to think of the authors who made up Brazilian literature, financing their own work, publishing out of a mixture of duty and love, and never counting on the possibility of earning a living from literature. The contrast is brutal!