In the first volume of Casos, the wild rips, the drama and violence border on the absurd. Perhaps I paid a style homage to the one from whom I inherited the format. In the second volume, I took out the blood, loosened the dramatic arcs and, structurally, tried writing almost always without restraints, while keeping the format, to see if the narratives would come out more natural. The result? I fail to conclude… Certainly, they were less impactful narratives; but, perhaps, more spontaneous and sincere.
Wonders of This Century
It is a real wonder to be able to find, in a few clicks, from the end of the world, audios in dead languages pronounced according to the original speech. I think about the study of languages in past centuries. It is inevitable to see myself as privileged. For a long time I read English without knowing the correct pronunciation: a crass and compromising error—and I only understood it when I started reading poetry. In poetry, if one does not know the pronunciation, one does not understand contractions that may occur, sometimes the metrics seem confusing and, above all, one ignores the sounding of the verses which, in many cases, is fundamental. In The Raven, for example, pronounce open the closed tonic “o” that repeats itself closing all the stanzas of the poem, and the frowning effect, the idea and the feeling suggested by the phoneme are gone. Nevermore, nevermore, nothing more, nothing more… Here we already have an “r” which, in the English pronunciation, prolongs and amplifies the preceding vowel. From this the obvious conclusion: to understand the expressiveness of great poets, it is indispensable to know the phonetics of the language in which they composed. And, in this respect, the reader of this century only sins by neglect.
The Verses of Augusto dos Anjos
I can honestly say that the aesthetic pleasure I experience when reading Augusto dos Anjos’ verses is comparable to what I feel when reading Camões, Dante, or any other poetic greatness. The funny thing is that, technically, Augusto’s poetry breaks all the conventions: syneresis in every verse, words of very difficult pronunciation, and so on. But the vivid and brilliant images that are revealed in each stanza, the explosive expression, the surprise in seeing unexpected and original relationships between apparently disconnected themes, all this seems to generate a more powerful and determining effect than the aesthetic conventions. In Augusto there is a despair, an exacerbated pessimism that borders on the ridiculous but materializes, however, a peerless brilliance.
Metaphysical Speculations
Theosophists say, to my amusement, that man is given the freedom to choose his birthplace. My mind flies… The veracity of this curious revelation matters little: the fun is to reason about the hypothesis. I imagine myself, in front of a supreme entity, pointing out, on a map of the world, the city where I was born. Infinite options and, by simple volition, I choose a city in the interior of São Paulo—a city of which I have not a single and solitary memory. I want to believe that the entity has presented me with other places, exposed me from its geographical to its cultural aspects and that, even so, I chose to be born where I was born. The next question is: why? One single justification seems reasonable to me: my pride—and correct me the theosophists if manifestations of pride are possible in these spheres of existence—must have thought something like: “I will prove that I am capable of developing in an environment hostile to my nature.” Very well! Then have I and my analytical mind, after long and careful meditation, judged this one to be the most interesting of all the possibilities? Or maybe, if it is true what the theosophists say about us being born and reborn numerous times, I got sick of paradise beaches, varied architecture, high HDIs and all the rest? No, no, not “get sick”. What to conclude?