Category: Notes

The Poetry of Antero de Quental

To hell with this absurd feeling! I can, of course, separate myself from Antero and judge him. The comparison with Bocage comes in handy. Bocage is the full and sole artist, the technically impeccable poet. Bocage’s refinement in his verse work takes him to the top of the Portuguese language. However, I cannot judge Bocage superior to Antero. Come, stones! Antero fills his art with philosophy or, better said, art is for him the poetic expression of critical thinking. The same is not true of Bocage. The agonies, the torments, the lofty vision and metaphysical restlessness transformed into verse by Antero display a union between form and idea that impresses because it seems complete, satisfying the needs of the spirit. Bocage, the great though only poet, is not able to reason coldly, to isolate the idea; he lacks the vein of the philosopher. But, before that, his verses are concerned with ostensibly ordinary themes. The summary: Antero de Quental’s poetry, although full of flaws, is the expression of a superior spirit.

 

Os Sonetos Completos, by Antero de Quental

This is how this note would begin: “In Os sonetos completos, by Antero de Quental, for the first time I felt before Portuguese compositions that seemed like sprouts of myself.” Incredible! And I feel unfit to criticize them, since doing so, in a strange way, seems to me to be criticizing my own compositions. Why is that? My first impulse is to think: are Antero’s poems commonplace? Except for something from his youth, not at all! How, then, do I feel expressed by countless of his verses? Aesthetically, I think, there is a notable difference between our compositions: the speech, above all, comes out differently. And so? I conclude, after much reflection, that Antero’s torments are mine. Antero’s psychological conflict is identical to the one I experience. Antero’s expression is the corollary of the paths I have walked. And even Antero’s look before existence seems to keep an enormous similarity with mine. Incredible! And to think that Antero, at the end of it all… let’s leave that aside.

Regrets and Maturity

Maturity could be defined as the attitude of one who has suffered enough regrets to lose the childish hope characteristic of the immature, were it not for the implicit notion that successive regrets eventually bear fruit in maturity. The contrast is striking: there are natures that, like wine, are refined with time; others… how badly time does them harm! As the years go by, the ridicule of falling into childishness progressively increases; and there are those who never get over it, except by falling from the highest cliffs, and with each fall, strengthening their convictions! These are sad cases, worthy of sincere compassion, above all because life is not accustomed to show compassion to those who do not assimilate its lessons.

The Emissaries of Good Sense

So abundant and so ancient are the narratives that thoroughly expose the perverse and regular oppression operated by the majority against isolated, helpless individuals, who suffer like martyrs never to be unredeemed by history, that it seems absurd, even today, that majorities are considered to be emissaries of good sense. From this clamorous lie, one would expect men to rid themselves, even if out of necessity or shame. Curiously, the nonsense persists and grows stronger. How to justify it? Explain it, Carlyle! How to reconcile it with your theory of the burial of lies? It seems that, in this world, injustice does nothing but change its mask occasionally.