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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The Explosion of an Unbearable Inner Conflict

As opposed to the representation of external phenomena, I perceive great art as the explosion of an unbearable inner conflict. That is to say: the artist prints what torments him or the object of his insatiable desire. Psychological obsessions, feelings that attack him violently… the great art is the consequence of an inner war. Exactly because of that, it rarely presents itself as pleasant. Intensity has nothing to do with peace…

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An Unsuitable Animal [2]

Forced to wait in a line, with nothing to read, I enjoy the moment in a fun activity: trying to list the things I hate most. Here we go: (1) dissimulation, (2) bureaucracy, (3) demagoguery, (4) groups of people, (5) marketing, (6) expansiveness, (7) noise of human voices, (8) futile conversation… I list and have an idea. The smile is immediate. Again, I perceive myself as an unsuitable animal. I consider, perhaps, that my existence is an evolutionist enigma. I have countless contrary manifestations to the environment, so I risk my nature to be the portrait of maladjustment. In me, the intro and the extra are related in hostility, they repel each other without any possible conciliation. I deliberately refuse to integrate the medium, even if I fail and it unbearably persecutes me. I remember the words of Thoreau: “Wherever a man goes, men will pursue and paw him with their dirty institutions, and, if they can, constrain him to belong to their desperate odd-fellow society”. Oh, annoying life! Unbearable conventions! Stupid talk!… Goodbye, note, even you cause me anger.

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An Unsuitable Animal

Once every two years, I am forced by the Brazilian State to leave my home and go to a polling station. The State, authoritarian, forces me under the threat of complicating my life if I do not comply with the obligation I contracted without ever having signed a consent form. That is why, religiously, once every two years I am, on foot, going to a place I do not want, to face a long queue that displeases me and to type numbers that I do not like in an electronic ballot box. This is how I proceed from the age of majority. Well. Given the pretext, the joke: I noticed, in this 2020, that I have never voted for a candidate who has won, for any position, be it municipal or federal: I always choose who loses. I think and automatically the smile sprouts on my face. I rejoice every time I see evidence that I am not like other people. So I have further confirmation of what I already know: I am an unsuitable animal, I have no resemblance of ideas, temperament, or anything else to the people around me. And if the future of Brazil depends on me waking up on a Sunday, facing a queue and I have the right to choose (which, of course, I do not have, despite appearances), the country is chipped…

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