Although I particularly appreciate rhymed verse, I would never endorse Bilac and Guimarães Passos, who maintained “that in any verse composition one must not prescind from rhyme. It is indispensable”. There are several reasons for this. But one of them deserves special mention. I do not know how the aforementioned poets composed, but it seems necessary to me, after skipping the whole process of ideation of the poem, that a draft be made of it. If I want to make rhymes, then I first sketch the poem in blank verse, to then concentrate on the rhythm, the rhymes, and the careful selection of words. I realize clearly that if I were to worry about rhymes at this point in the draft, it would only hinder my creative impulse, interrupting the flow of ideas to open a dictionary, something absolutely counterproductive. Therefore, I have to conclude that this creative impulse, in its spontaneous form, calls for manifestation in blank verse—not to say free verse. Well then: I know that not every great artistic effect is spontaneous, quite the contrary, as almost all the brilliance of a work comes from carefully thought out details. Rhyme, therefore, although an artificiality, is justified. But practice shows, time and time again, that to rhyme verses is to adulterate them, and even though one may gain in beauty by doing so, that initial naturalness is lost. Finally, I get where I want to go. There will be verses in which the poet will be so stimulated that he will feel himself emotionally pouring his soul out onto the paper; verses that will come out like an avalanche, that will express his innermost self and will spring forth with a momentum and sharpness different from what he normally creates. I am not sure how much is gained by rhyming such verses, I mean, it seems to me that the poet who deforms them to fit formalities may commit a crime against himself and insult the very singular moment in which he conceived them.
Category: Notes
The Difference Between the Works of Jung and Frankl…
The difference between the works of Jung and Frankl and almost all of what has been written in psychology is that both have designed a psychology for healthy minds, while the bulk of the rest applies only to sick mental states, emphasizing, always and only, the morbidity from which man can suffer. A person who is even remotely experienced and sane and chooses a work by Freud or Adler to enter the science of the mind will come out amazed and disgusted, overcome by a mixture of strangeness and repulsion because, obviously, the man painted in such works has little or nothing in common with himself. And then he will see, on every page, endless classifications of disorders, complexes, and the like, often associated with natural behaviors, but justified by reasons that seem like direct insults to him who reads. In Jung, in Frankl, how different everything is! In these great psychiatrists, who were also great men, although one can find Freud and Adler, the high spirit can finally recognize itself.
The Taoist Perspective
There is a remarkable beauty when we meditate on reality from the perspective of Chinese philosophy, or more precisely, from a Taoist perspective. The principle of duality is justified because, ultimately, a balance, a harmony is necessary for the world to continue to exist. Taoism is a doctrine that forces us to overcome, in the micro and macro, the apparent chaos, providing only prolonged meditation as a means of overcoming. This will inevitably lead us to the redeeming conclusion, the effect of which is peace. It is impressive to note the applicability of what seems to be a very simple philosophy, since it is possible to verify the principles that support it wherever the lens is directed. It is, without a doubt, a doctrine worthy of admiration.
Everything Indicates That I Will Complete a Full Year…
Everything indicates that I will complete a whole year of exclusive dedication to fifteen miserable poems or, more precisely, to about one thousand seven hundred verses. Laugh, Hugo, laugh! And, at the end of the process, there will be no publication, because it is necessary for the verses to rest—although it seems that this is what they have been doing in the last months. Were these notes not a very efficient way to give vent to the ideas that come and pile up, I would be faced with an impregnable mountain of annotations. I have, at the bottom, some forty perfectly idealized short stories that require no more than a day’s work to be realized on paper. Besides, I do not know how many plots for novels, plays, or whatever. Even for poems, there are excesses that could not be used in this volume. And I am left wondering how, in the past, artists who did not have secretaries would organize themselves after ten, twenty years of creative work. Without a computer, it seems to me that I would be forced to give up…