A congress that brought together all those who claim to believe in the future of mankind would undoubtedly end in a terrible riot. Heated discussions, blood-stained faces and angry looks: this is the only way it could happen. The psychology of someone who worships words like “future” and “progress” is very simple. This person takes himself seriously, believes in himself, has “convictions.” To believe in the future of mankind is to believe in oneself as a transforming agent, to have solutions and want to propose them, defend them, fighting whoever presents opposition. “I believe in the future of mankind,” says someone, and the intelligent listener already infers “and you should believe too!”.
Category: Notes
How Is It Possible?
“Man never assumes himself to be unintelligent”—so I said, and I add: it was the greatest humiliation for me to discover myself, as an adult, an illiterate. I was absolutely humiliated to find myself unable to read in my own language and, therefore, I found myself exactly illiterate. Intolerable! A single resource of style—those present in every sentence of a great writer—deprived me of the meaning of a period—a real terror to judge the dictionary itself useless!—But why do I say this? Realizing me ignorant, I began to study grammar with almost religious fervor. Today, the surprise: these boring books have seemed enjoyable to me. How is it possible?
The Man Assumes Himself to Be Unfair, but Never Unintelligent
The man assumes himself to be unfair, rude and bad character, but never unintelligent. That is his only intolerable humiliation. Even the lowest of the low—and this one especially—thinks he is intelligent, or at least smart. Make the world an auditorium and ask only the beasts to raise their hands: not a single hand will be raised. The man—himself and his vanity—does not allow for this possibility. To do otherwise would be to consciously level oneself to an animal—something inadmissible, and impossible when he lacks conscience.
Camões Is The Lusiads
Pessoa says, in free translation:
Camões is The Lusiads. The lyric, in which the inferiors focus the admiration that denotes them as inferiors, was, as in other epics of equally remarkable sensibility, only the inorganic surplusage of the epic.
And, on another occasion:
Camões mourns the loss of his gentle soul; and after all the one who mourns is Petrarch. If Camões had had the emotion sincerely, he would have found a new form, new words—everything but the sonnet and the ten-syllable verse. But no: he used the sonnet in decasyllables as he would use mourning in life.
What to say? First, it is diminishing for Camões to classify him as an epic poet: Camões was a poet. Like Pessoa, a poet of multiple manifestations, a great poet. Next, the aesthetic judgment. To reduce poetry to form is as low as judging a novel by the number of pages. There are sonnets in which one can find everything except Petrarch. What should be asked is: what is the poet doing in decasyllables? Is it possible to see him in his sonnets? We notice the obvious: when Camões cries, Camões is the one crying. And, if I were my vocabulary, I would add that the cry is more beautiful because it is shared, because it establishes a link with the past and is a manifestation of empathy, humility, and respect. Originality does not require the creation of a new format, sincerity does not necessarily have to invent the model of its own expression: it is enough that it expresses itself. It is notorious the brilliance of the poet when, composing under known rules, he expresses his individual soul.