Luciano Duarte | Literature and philosophy

Beat or Succumb to Death

It seems, at the end of all torments, to sum up life in the following question: beat or succumb to death? And the answer, which is nothing but the work itself, gives an additional torment (torments… are never exhausted!): overcoming death seems to depend on an uncontrollable external factor and subject to uncertainty, that is, subject to failure even if it is unjust. That is to say: the damned fortune, even at the end of all things, even after all trials and even after formidable answers, seems to have a decisive influence. And so the impulse to curse life seems to be irresistible.

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Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov

Vladimir Nabokov is an author who shakes me like few others. His Lectures on Russian Literature have given me a very strong and ambiguous impression. Then, interviews, like that of the Paris Review, consolidated the image I have in mind of him: a giant, but of an arrogance that escapes my understanding. And I simply do not understand some stones thrown by Nabokov, as in Dostoevsky in particular: I remain on the wall judging them envious or expressing intellectual honesty. Whatever: my mind suffers from this unbearable need for judgment; I do not. For I open Lolita and, repeating what I said a few days ago: one page is enough to perceive myself before a great writer, one page is enough to impress me with wonderful, elegant prose, brilliant in style and powerful in content. Nabokov’s prose, in Lolita, is endowed with the body that the English language seems to lack. And that is not the only reason why the work shines: Nabokov teaches the pairs of his century that writing about moral corruption does not demand the corruption of the language. Lolita digs deep: these are frightening pages about the psychology of a pedophile, ambiguous from the beginning, either by the controversial moralism, or by the behavior of Humbert Humbert, the protagonist, who oscillates between sarcasm, love, dissimulation, and desire, terribly corrupting a young girl and installing in our heads the infamous doubt: has he really corrupted? The mere questioning is the confession of immorality that inhabits our minds. And the masterpiece is the full proof that in man the hideous mixes with the sublime.

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The Clash Between Vanity and Conscience

Some natures impress by the complete absence of the clash between vanity and conscience. Perhaps by the very weakness of conscience, which justifies seeing it ignored by the most popular currents of psychology. In some, it seems simply that it does not manifest. But it is incredible to think of someone who, not once in his life, prays for the pettiness of his own conduct, for the motivators of his own “will”. To do so and not proceed with condemnation would be understandable, but the fact is that, in most people, there is not the slightest trace of conflict.

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A Confession, by Leo Tolstoy

Funny how a single page is enough to see oneself before a great soul. What is the difference between the great writer to the average writer? Leaving aside aesthetics, the great writer addresses the great questions of life. And Tolstoy, in this essay called A Confession, shows why he is among the greatest writers of all times: he recognizes and faces the greatest human problems. Why live, if life is about destroying everything that exists? Why make any effort if the end is invariably nothing? How can not consider life as the supreme evil, since it always leads to sickness and mortification? Is there anything that death does not destroy? How to accept fate, or rather: how to interpret it? These and other questions fill the few pages of this magnificent work, like everything I have come into contact with from the pen of this genius. One page, I repeat, one page of Tolstoy is enough to understand that great literature will never be about only telling a good story—that also does the shallow literature. Great literature is thirsty for a reply to the tormenting question: Why?

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