Arquivo de Notes | Page 264 of 269

The Substance of These Lines

I throw these notes like I am smoking, and my pleasure is nothing but seeing them get lost in the air. To me, the grace to write seems to know the uselessness of words, knowing that they dissolve and fly. There is in art, however, something noble: the renunciation of life. Hitting the keyboard I abstain myself from the boredom of living, in genuine and utter disinterest. Life can not offer me nothing, and I hope nothing from it. I joke about the phrases, alternating the placement of words, thinking about images and laughing when talking to the computer. Beyond the window, the world proceeds as usual. But the world does not instill me but revulsion. I therefore take refuge here as in a cave, a retreat, where I find grace saying in silence, to no one, far from the unbearable rumor of life. I know I am building sand castles, but there is the substance that permeates these lines: disinterest.

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Gulliver’s Travels, by Jonathan Swift

First, the specialist; then the amateur. Let’s see some of Otto Maria Carpeaux’s comments about the book and the author, in my translation:

Jonathan Swift — a humanist cleric, faithful-unfaithful to the Church of which he was a priest —is one of the greatest satirists of universal literature, perhaps the greatest of all. Gulliver’s Travels is the cruelest book there is. Lilliput’s warp and useless activities ridicule parliamentary life in 18th-century England and in all countries and times of constitutional and professional politics. Sketching this political landscape, Swift remembered his pamphleteer times in the service of the Conservative Party, the Tories; it’s a scathing satire against the Whigs. But soon after, Swift describes the patriarchal regime in the kingdom of Brobdingnag giants; and this is nothing better. On the contrary, the size of the giants grotesquely makes all the details enormous, that is, the infamy of the “conservative classes”. Nor are the intellectuals who, in the country of Laputa, vegetate as complete imbeciles. In the last part, the praise of the Houyhnhms, that is, the horses, nobler and smarter than men, is the absolute condemnation of the human race in totum. Finally, the episode of the Struldbrugs, which owe scientific progress to the immortality of life, not escaping, but to the diseases, weaknesses and senility of extreme old age, and who cannot die, already condemns life itself. The countless spirited and biting digressions — the description of the horrors of war as if they were the most natural things in the world, the mockery of Christian dogmas and rites, incredible in the mouth of a high dignitary of the Church — reveal in Swift the most radical representative rationalism in Illustration; not even Voltaire dared so much.

There are Carpeaux’s lucid words — and there are many more of them about Swift in História da Literatura Universal (vol. 2). — For my part, I say this: Gulliver’s Travels was perhaps the book that marked me the most. I always come back to it, reread excerpts, and have it throbbing in me. When I write and, for a moment, I think I am exaggerating in my judgments, I think of Swift. I remember Nelson Rodrigues once said that fiction, to purify, needs to be atrocious. According to this reasoning, few books purify as much as Gulliver’s Travels; and I share the trial. Swift’s “great soul, noble and wound” — still using Carpeaux’s words —can impregnate us with deep discomfort and revulsion towards our nature; however, no doubt, it ends up making us better people.

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História de Dom Pedro II, by Heitor Lyra [2]

I said a few words yesterday about this book; insufficient, though. I emphasized my respect for the author, but I forgot the protagonist. I redeem myself on this note: Dom Pedro II is the greatest example of honor and prudence in the history of Brazil. He ruled for more than half a century, always being an icon of tolerance and detachment from power; Brazil was able, thanks to his temperament, to make an exchange of regime peacefully — how many countries can say the same? — and in return, he was expelled from the country as a thief, condemned to exile and sorrow, spending his last days in a bleak solitude. When he died, lonely, having a sachet with sand from Copacabana in his pocket, the military, led by abject Floriano Peixoto, denied him even a diplomatic representation at the funeral, which was monumental, but paid by France, gratefully, between other things, for being Dom Pedro II the first statesman to visit the country after devastated by the Franco-Prussian War. The poignant of the whole story is that the “grandson of Marcus Aurelius”, as Victor Hugo referred to him, resigned stoically in being the target of cruel injustice, believing the story would reward him. Today, we well know, the memory of Dom Pedro II is non-existent; our students learn only half a note about his life and his character. And there is one of the beautiful ironies of history, very well represented by the fire of the Museu Nacional: being the museum, the character; and the fire, the reward.

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História de Dom Pedro II, by Heitor Lyra

This is undoubtedly the best storybook I have ever read in my entire life. In this work, divided into three volumes that add up to just over 700 pages, Heitor Lyra traces, in a light, precise and passionate writing, the most glorious period in all Brazilian history. Who indicated it to me? The answer is for all those who bother me by asking: “How are you so smart and admire Olavo de Carvalho?”. This book, like many others, I only had access because of the teacher’s recommendation, which classified it as “wonderful”. If depended on the publishers, I would never have access to this work, only available in sebums and in very rare units. I remember that to gather all three volumes, I had to fish in Rio de Janeiro, Porto Alegre and São Paulo. Well, it was worth every penny. And I reflect: What do schools give young Brazilians to study the 19th century? — I do not remember what I studied myself… — Heitor Lyra had access to the best possible documentation on the period and especially on the greatest symbol of Imperial Brazil. The book, according to the author, “was written in Europe”, where he had access to the vast documentation of the emperor’s foreign correspondents and, moreover, had opened to himself the “priceless archive of the Brazilian imperial family”, arranged at the time at Castle D’Eu , in the care of Dom Pedro de Orléans e Bragança, grandson of Dom Pedro II. At the time, Heitor Lyra was the first and only historian that had access to this archive, which is now reduced to ashes after the fire at the Museu Nacional. I think, think and hesitate to put into words my frustration… What bothers me is not only not seeing new editions of this work and almost all the good history books I have had access to; is to contrast what I find in good books with the vague and stupid vision that I unconsciously nourished from the period; is to find out, suddenly, that I was unaware of almost all the great figures that my country has produced. So I reflect: Why do not we find Heitor Lyra, or Varnhagen, or José Maria Bello on Amazon? It seems to me that, blatantly, there was and there is an effort to tell an alternative history of Brazil.

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