Luciano Duarte | Literature and philosophy

Simplicity and Action

Guy de Maupassant, this great French writer, tells about his artistic conceptions in the essay Le roman, available as a preface to his Pierre et Jean. This essay is very interesting: Maupassant outlines his vision of the varied literary movements of the nineteenth century, says some of his influences and addresses some particularities of the literary creation process.

Let’s look at two interesting points from the essay.

Saying about what he thinks is the role of an artist, says Maupassant (in my translation):

To move us he must reproduce it (life) before our eyes with a scrupulous resemblance. He will, therefore, have to compose his work in such a skillful way, so hidden and of so simple appearance that it will be impossible to see and indicate his plan, to discover his intentions.

This carries some of Flaubert, incidentally, whom Maupassant considered his master. Accuracy, here is the summary. No flourishing, bluntness or excess: the artist must paint life exactly as it is.

This principle goes through the whole essay and influences different aspects of the creative process. At one point, Maupassant says about excessive explanations, about having the artist to be justifying the action of his characters, as if painting his psychological profile to substantiate his actions. Says the author:

Therefore, instead of explaining in detail the state of mind of a character, objective writers seek the action or gesture that this state of mind should fatally induce this man into a given situation. And they make him behave in such a way, from one end of the work to the other, that all his actions, all his movements are the reflection of his intimate nature, of all his thoughts, of all his desires or of all his hesitations.

Let the acts speak; action…

I like very much Maupassant’s style, as well as that of Stendhal, another French writer associated with realism. I do not think the artist should extend into explanations, treat the reader like an idiot. Letting the characters speak — or rather, act — is an effective technique for building a thought-provoking, moving, and real narrative.

We will continue in these notes on another occasion. For now, the message is this: when a teacher teaches, we do well listening to him.

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Literature as a Foundation of Personality

The distinction of someone with a literary culture is conspicuous. In addition to all the pleasures and all the intellectual elevation from reading, we can say this: literature forms, develops, structures personalities. Literature is able to broaden the reader’s knowledge, providing him with experiences he would never have in his life. It teaches how to deal with the most varied situations, makes one feels the most disparate and extreme emotions, throws one under different skins, different geniuses, educating for life. Thus, the good reader finds himself prepared for all kinds of situations, because his knowledge gathers an invaluable arsenal of examples. He finds himself immune to countless weaknesses, countless mistakes made by characters who have taught him a lesson. In addition, the good reader understands infinitely better other people, the world around: he is accustomed to putting himself under different situations. It cries out to the eyes that literature, in a personality, slows down, strengthens, teaches, aggrandizes — thus leaving indelible marks on the temperament and character of the reader.

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The Reader of the Future

Sometimes I imagine myself in front of a reader of the future. I am, to him, a complete stranger; an animal, I would say… absolutely incomprehensible. Our habits do not match, we have no affinity for tastes, our geniuses are exactly opposites. What would he think of me? Of course, everything one thinks about a little evolved animal. And knowing that my customs would cause him astonishment, I know I would never get of him any approval. Through the lens of the reader of the future, I observe, for example, my acute misanthropy: how much revulsion! how strange! How can a modern guy bow to loneliness? And if the contemptuous expression were not enough, I see it easily transmuting into hatred, once perceiving the mutual disdain. This animal, in fact, deserves a good beating! It is a real social cancer! And as cancer it cannot, under any circumstances, proliferate! Laughter, lots of laughter… The reader of the future does not know that the animal is psychologically neutered, that it disgusts the multiplication. But maybe the animal delire, once fantasizing this reader of the “future”…

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History of Western Literature, by Otto Maria Carpeaux

História da literatura ocidental (History of Western Literature), this colossus of almost 3,000 pages, is simply an immortal monument erected in Portuguese and published in Brazil. The Austrian Otto Maria Carpeaux, who adopted our homeland and began to learn our language at the age of forty, gave the national letters what no Brazilian will ever give. We can say, without fear of error, that Carpeaux was the greatest Brazilian scholar of all time. And if we have in the garden this unique colossus, it is impressive that we Brazilians did not give the slightest value. Carpeaux’s words that preface the first edition of the work give an idea of the magnitude of this História da literatura ocidental:

All Romanesque and Germanic literature from Europe and its branches in North and South America were studied; Slavs and others from Eastern Europe; and, of course, the Greek and Neo-Greek literature. (…) More than 8,000 authors have been studied in short. But the work has no claim to be a complete bibliographic dictionary.

Modesty… The study undertaken by Otto Maria Carpeaux and published in 1959 is unique worldwide. That is what Olavo de Carvalho also says, in an excellent essay that prefaces the edition of Topbooks of Ensaios reunidos, another work by Carpeaux:

The man we are talking about is the author of the only history of literature ever written in which the succession of literary ideas and creations in the West, from Hesiod to Valéry, appears as a continuous movement that, beneath the bewildering variety of its manifestations, never loses the unity of meaning.

What to say? I think of Carpeaux and I am amazed at the silence. There is no talk of Carpeaux, there is no comment on the man of greatest relevance in national literary criticism. Today, we are already in a distance that allows us to judge impartially: Carpeaux, among all the critics, was the one who provided the greatest service to the national letters. Nothing in Portuguese compares to his História da literatura ocidental.

História da literatura ocidental is able to provide any student with comprehensive and accurate knowledge about the leading authors of more than twenty centuries of literature. It is been able to guide a study plan for decades. And is wrong who thinks that Carpeaux only presents the authors and inserts them in the context in which they produced their works; Carpeaux criticizes, transits with extreme cunning through the most diverse currents of thought, by the varied styles and varied aesthetic conceptions, analyzes biographies and traces the evolution of the authors, inserts the works in the context in which they were produced showing us, finally, the historical weight of each author according to his judgment.

But where are, for example, the translations of this immense work? Far, far away… I ask this and seem to dream. Carpeaux does not even appear consolidated in Brazil. He did not even attract the interest of biographers. I ask, what are we waiting for? that someone more relevant to write under the Brazilian sun arises? someone of superior culture? Oh, of course… then we will wait… we will wait, perhaps, for many centuries, perhaps forever and ever…

Otto Maria Carpeaux was a huge intellectual. He gave Brazil what we never had, what we always lacked. Can we ignore Carpeaux today? deny his História da literatura ocidental?

It is a choice. Yet it is, before us and very well built, the bridge to integrate our literature to all cultures of all times. But it is up to us to decide whether to cross it — or, of course, to continue as we are: irrelevant on the world stage.

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