Unfortunately, it is not wise to write only in the last stage of life, since it is not possible to define it previously… Sartre is right when he says that “l’homme est ce qu’il se fait,” and that therefore the act is responsible for materializing the genius, for realizing potentialities that, without action, would end up wasted. The act is the voluntary effort that transforms faculties into reality; by what it does, one man can be distinguished from another; Dante was and became Dante by composing verses, Shakespeare by doing plays; and so, although the conclusion may lead to unhappy results, there is no denying that the most important is the now.
Man and His Circumstance
It is prudent when Ortega y Gasset says that “yo soy yo y mi circunstancia, y si no la salvo a ella no me salvo yo,” and also the realization that, living for his time, man lives for all times. There is, however, a danger in this. Dostoevsky inserted a timeless theme into the setting of his time; Dante represented the morals of his time in sublime verses whose essence lay in an acronymic spiritual drama. It is impossible to abstract them from circumstance without deforming them, yet in both, circumstance does nothing but pigment—individualizing, of course—a universal expression common to men of all times. The author, if obsessed with his circumstance and devoid of a sense of timelessness, tends to lose himself in ephemeral futilities, becoming irrelevant to the future, or even outside his social circle. More than anything, it is necessary that he develops a sense of what passes and what remains, of the detail and the essential; otherwise he will be fatally forgotten.
Declensions and Buddha
I start memorizing Russian declensions and think about Buddha. My mind has always been opposed to deliberate memorization. But it is impossible to assimilate inflected languages without memorizing declinations! What to do? Buddha… Buddha certainly did not handle any of these languages, except for Pali—but when meditating, I doubt that he thought about their declinations. Although I do not know the path to nirvana, I know like no one else a path that makes nirvana impossible, that expels the being from any imaginary nirvana… Prove to me, Buddha, your superiority! Aquila, aquilam, aquilae, aquilae…
Knowing English Is a Duty of the Modern Intellectual
Knowing English is a duty of the modern intellectual. In the first place, because English literature is the greatest in the world—that is, it has the largest number of, and has for the longest time consistently produced, first-rate authors;—secondly, because it is the closest to a universal language—that is, the language of the most common interchange and also the language of specialized literature in most areas of knowledge;—and finally, because the English have translated everything: it is often easier to find an English translation than an original French, Italian or Spanish, to say nothing of less popular languages. Knowing English, therefore, is not only to make one’s study life easier, but an obligation since the lack of English deprives the student of much of the best that is available. From all this, the problem. The Portuguese-speaking writer, for example, the more he gorges himself on English, the more he must fight to not, under any circumstances, allow it to penetrate his writing. A language whose strength, simplicity, is also its greatest weakness: syntactically, English is limited; when translated into Portuguese, its poverty is stark. Bad translations from English are intolerable, and even originals should be read with great care, preferably interspersed with vernacular works, and the precaution should be the same as that of the chemist who puts on gloves before working.