Luciano Duarte | Literature and philosophy

The Alter Ego in Literature

Some literary characters were fortunate to be classified by critics as the author’s alter ego. Others were born with the stamp from the master who gave birth to them. Alter ego… magical epithet capable of endowing any character with immediate depth, inciting his steps with the weight of real life. Funny! I cannot think of literature that does not contain, to a great extent, the weight of the author’s reality. It is simply impossible for me to imagine a writer writing by giving up his impressions of life, his experiences, his judgments about himself and others, the details of existence that only he notices, the observations he makes about the environment in which he lives. If he is painting an environment, for he will take as his basis an environment he has already witnessed or imagined; if he is describing a character, for he will use the examples that life has given him. Sensations: the simple fact of imagining them in depth is also to feel them, and it is not possible to judge that the author is immune to the feelings that he himself evokes. How would he know to describe them if he were unable to feel them? Thus, the alter ego, a term of multiple senses, can, in psychology, expose an interesting and complex deviation of personality, in literature usually exposes a personality obsessed with himself: the author.

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The Silence of Machado de Assis

A target of numerous criticisms being some, in fact, envious attacks, Machado de Assis, in all his life, silenced himself about it. Did they deserve an answer? or rather: is it up to the artist to answer the criticisms that are directed at him? Without saying a single word, Machado taught us how the great artist should behave. Attacked, the master kept his independence, continued working. And if the criticisms exposed any aesthetic or expressive problem worthy of note, then the answer is very clear in his literature. And the great mass of comments, well, they received what was theirs: contempt.

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Inspiration: Conscious Brain Stimulation

I read somewhere, a few years ago, a psychologist said that Bertrand Russell used an interesting process when he was involved in complex problems. It would be more or less as follows: Russell thought, with maximum concentration and strength of mind, on the particular problem; he outlined the possible solutions, dismembered them into minor issues, formulated various hypotheses and tried to find, in all, the possible flaws. The question occupied him entirely for hours, sometimes days, and then, when he felt exhausted, he did not publish, nor executed the final wording of his conclusions: he abandoned the problem and let him rest, occupying his mind with anything else. Then, after a few days, weeks or months, suddenly the mind pointed the solution, which came as a violent avalanche, and so Russell sat down to write. What would that be, inspiration? If that is the word, then it is necessary to add that there is nothing divine, fantastic, or superhuman about it. What is there is method, conscious brain stimulation. And if the brain, therefore, sometimes does not deliver an immediate response, it does not mean that it does not work, or that it is not working. In the same way, when it decides to boil at an inopportune moment, it is not doing any kind of magic or exhibiting supernatural powers…

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The Unbearable “I”

I hope, if not in these notes, I will never speak that unbearable word — “I” — in the first person. I find it funny how, still here and just now, I combine the verbs in the first person repetitively, when none other than myself have categorical disgust for this modern obsession with one’s own being and consider myself the most insignificant singularity of the whole universe. However, here are the justifications and the confession: (1) the “I”, in these notes, will never be but a low-lying expressive appeal, when the object of these lines is entirely another — confessing, I hope to expel the intrusive word; — (2) if one day, and I beg it not to happen, but if one day the “I” take the opposite path and start to occupy the center of these notes, then I will have exhausted myself as an artist and as an explorer of issues that go beyond my petty reality. Let’s see what will happen…

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