There is something really funny about Bocage’s burlesque verses that, if read in small amounts, provoke sincere laughter. However, the fun boils down to this. They are verses that cannot be read in piles without causing boredom. This is the way obscenity is: it only causes effect as long as it astonishes; once the astonishment disappears, it can only generate boredom and aversion.
Category: Notes
The Moralist Is Someone Who Swallows Stones
The moralist is someone who swallows stones and, unable to digest them, feels them tearing him from the inside in a painful journey that turns into literary groans. Nothing is gained from them, except the realization that they have occurred and will occur again. The moralist can do nothing against the stones, and there seems to be something in him that urges him to eat them again and again.
There Must Be a Difference…
There must be a difference between long meditated verse and verse carved out in seconds. If not the reader, it is the poet who must feel it. Otherwise, it is admitting that neither the mind nor the effort are of any use. And patience a virtue of those who have no talent. No, no… there seems to be a contradiction here, just as there is justice in the greater gratification that comes from the completion of long works. Great art asks for time, even if it is to ratify a creation conceived suddenly.
Bandeira’s Fundamental Criticism
It seems easy to note that Bandeira’s fundamental criticism, in Os sapos, was directed at the futility of the cultivators of form. He expressed his repulsion for useless aesthetic discussions and frivolous, though refined poetry. The curious thing is that this does not seem to have been noticed by those who, inspired by the poem, founded a new aesthetic, which developed into an even more passionate cult of form. But the worst thing is not this; the worst thing is to see that the new aesthetic has plunged itself into banalities not like the Parnassian ones, but infinitely worse, if not obscene and repulsive, into creations that do nothing but manifest the turpitude of the mind that created them. It is an aesthetic present most often in poems that combine ignorance with artistic inability and lowliness of spirit. On second thought, what a feat!