Category: Notes

The letters historically play the role of preventing life from being completely swept away from the Earth when the matter is reached by death. Works, records: by them something, and perhaps most important, is preserved from being punished by fate. I think of this 21st century. There has been, among many other things, an enormous widening in the options of means for the transmission of knowledge and the recording of existence. The ease of access and operation of these means has reached unimaginable levels and has certainly solved problems. However, it is a task that seems almost impossible to pinpoint what there is of value amid tons of waste produced and published daily. How to filter? How to identify and establish a reasonable judgment on what will overcome the barriers of time? It seems unfeasible and it seems, above all, that an unprecedented number of valuable works will be lost forever.

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Read more:

• Victor Hugo’s Lesson
• Slaves of Praise
• The Traditional Melodic and Rhythmic Elements of Poetry
• Some Say There Is Poetry Without Rhythm…

When the monument that constitutes the work of Otto Maria Carpeaux and the rest of Brazilian literary criticism are flanked, it is impossible not to be surprised that there is not a single biographical study worthy of the great intellectual who gave Brazilian critics the only work of universal value that they have. Silence. I think what would happen if Carpeaux, instead of settling in Brazil, had chosen the United States and did, in English, what he did in Portuguese. The smile is automatic. But why Brazil? Why, at the age of forty, break away from his language and dedicate himself to learning and writing in a language unknown until then? And the very difficult, not to say impossible, was erected: the sterile national literary criticism won an immortal colossus as a gift. What did it do with the gift? Nothing, absolutely nothing.

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Read more:

• History of Western Literature, by Otto Maria Carpeaux
• História de Dom Pedro II, by Heitor Lyra [2]
• Endless Injustices
• The Repression of the Subconscious

The poet Carlos Drummond de Andrade said, in his last interview, none of his poems have entered the history of Brazil, leaving of his work only a few “fads” and “idioms”. He was mistaken, and compounds, today, the first bracket of Brazilian poets of all times: it is impossible to have a list of the best poets or an anthology of the best poems that does not include the great mineiro. But the statement, if not extreme modesty or flawed perception, exhibits the discouragement of someone who, dedicating his life to letters, did not even find signs of reward until his last days. Not to mention the technique, Drummond’s work shows a deep understanding of existence, problems common to all humanity, eyes open, attentive, which express their amazement in very strong images. In short: a poet whose work is not restricted to framing clichés in poetic technique—a very rare quality… And, even so, the distinguished Drummond did not see a return after decades of work, and even after garnering great recognition at the national level. The question: where is the problem? This time, my fingers will spare the dear reader’s eyes…

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Read more:

• Force the Brain
• The Passport to Glory
• Those Who Seem to Live a Lot Live Very Little
• The American Bush and the Brazilian Bush

Winter is a literary creation… Thirty-seven degrees Celsius. Sleep is an impossibility, as is thinking in serenity when matter spills discomfort. Several of the benefits of low temperature for the arts of the spirit are said. And it could be added: high temperatures repel thought; being in essence great agitation, they represent precisely the opposite of calm that encourages the mind to reflect. Waking up in fatigue, discouragement due to a bad night’s sleep. One interrupts reasoning by thinking about physical discomfort. Worse: to perceive clothes, shoes, everything contributing to an intolerable sensation. The environment naturally muffled, the forehead wet. And nothing wins, nothing interrupts the sensation of inhabiting a gigantic oven that is impossible to turn off…

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Read more:

• The “Motivational Therapy”
• ABC of Reading, by Ezra Pound
• When I Open a Book, I Do Not Sign a Contract
• The Human Being Does Not Change His Essence