Arquivo de Notes | Page 248 of 282

The Repression of the Subconscious

It is interesting to note how the repression of the subconscious, or of a sphere perhaps autonomous from the conscious itself, seems necessary for the reality not to becomes unbearable. First of all, by the innate repugnance to the random and irrational. Then, by the need for behavioral and psychological unity. The conflicting, the duality, the uncertainty are almost intolerable to human nature, so a choice is forced: a conscious choice, which involves an active effort and is not but the intentional denial of a face of reality. Thus, it seems necessary to falsify life in favor of the practical. The alternative path is frightening. To deny the confrontation, besides, is a good trick not to lose…

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The American Bush and the Brazilian Bush

I do not deny it: reading Thoreau, I have convinced myself that my place is in the bush. And the temptation to drop everything and go into the jungle was strong. But I remembered reading the huge Gilberto Freyre as well. And what a difference to the American bush and the Brazilian bush! Two years in the jungle, bathing in the river, and Thoreau is not bitten even once by a venomous species, his plantation is not plagued by pests, he does not suffer from mosquito or ant infestation… So the bush really looks like peace. I ask: how many would dare to walk in closed woods, at midnight, without a flashlight, to replicate Thoreau in Brazilian soil? Perhaps I am a coward… In any case, I will remain thirsty for my bush, even if its configuration deeply embarrasses the philosopher…

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Composing Free Verses Is a Great Way to Escape the Comparison

Composing free verses is a great way to escape the comparison. In free verse, a poem automatically repels the “aesthetic garbage” classification: it obeys particular criteria. It exchanges “bad” for “different”. And the critics find themselves in trouble when evaluating it, running the risk of confusing the bad with an “I did not like it”. To the artist, it is the right path to victory, since if dares a sonnet, risks direct comparison with Shakespeare. How many submit to the challenge? Easier to invent a new aesthetic…

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The Absence of a More Noble Conception

I think of the major of 20th-century literature. The human being is a multifaceted, ambiguous animal, subject to diverse and contradictory manifestations. In him, the savage mixes with the sublime in a variable—and generally unbalanced—proportions. An author, therefore, is not wrong when he portrays him as a slave of desire, a puppet of the will. And he gets it right when he explores irrationality and immorality. However, a pause. There is in man the manifestation of the beautiful, and amputated is the work that fails to explore it. To give life to the most archaic and animalistic human specimen is a task, let us say, less difficult than to dare to penetrate the mind of the model that rises above the banal. Therefore, the author will be smaller if he escapes from the task of conceiving the rare. Where is the noble? Non-existent? That is what seems to say the literature that is incapable of generating it even though, like Swift, in the form of horses…

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