Luciano Duarte | Literature and philosophy

Nietzsche and the Impotence of Language

Nietzsche was a critic of language. Wisely realized that it is only able to generalize, simplify the world and falsify the real. Pascal said something similar following the same logic: the essence, or the knowledge, is not liable to be put into words — or seized. For Nietzsche, language is a translation, and our cognitive apparatus gives us nothing but a perspective of reality, that is: we are not able to define the thing itself, and knowledge is a question of interpreting and seeking for master the chaos of appearance. Very well! Then I look around and only see convictions, truths, sensible opinions, grounded interpretations, empirical conclusions, all wrapped in an absolute maniqueism. Caution and doubt today are signs of weakness and lack of erudition. So I recognize my absolute incompatibility with my time and my deep contempt for the people around me.

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Quincas Borba, by Machado de Assis

To me, Rubião — the protagonist of Quincas Borba — is the greatest character of Machado de Assis. I have read several critics emphasizing the impotence of Machado’s characters, the inability to live, the ineptitude, the apathy. Very well! Moreover, we do not suffer saying that in Rubião the human figure presents itself in amplitude, in precision. Reading Quincas Borba, we see philosophy buried by passion, intelligence transfigured by love and, above all, Rubião walking the steep slope that every man has to walk on. The book ends, comical and melancholy, ridiculous and sad, ambiguous as life always is. And if it leaves us any doubt as to what to feel, the master advises us:

Come now! Weep for the two newly dead, if you have tears. If you only have laugher, then laugh! It is all the same. The Crux, which beautiful Sofia refused to behold as Rubião asked, is high enought that it cannot make out the laugher or tears of men.

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Hope: the Holy Hootch

If, by one side, hope is supreme stupidity, “the policy of the poor,” the “weed that eats all the other better plants” — paraphrasing Machado de Assis, — by the other side, hope is virtuous, indispensable, so that, abstaining from it, life easily appears unbearable to us. So, and then? What to decide? What to make of this holy hootch? Drink it or not? Of course, each of us should sip the amount one want most — treating abstinence and gluttony, as always, to point out who the imbeciles are.

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Crime and Punishment, by Fyodor Dostoevsky

The first time I read Crime and punishment, it took me two days to finish the 590 pages of my edition. It was unprecedented for me to read a book with such voracity. I remember that on a rainy Saturday, I started reading around 4 p.m.; when the sun came at 6 a.m. on Sunday, I was still with the book in my hands. Censored by the sun, I chose to sleep a few hours. When I woke up, I took the reading session that would shoot the book. But why my delight? What is so special about this book? It was Crime and punishment my first contact with Dostoevsky: I had never read any author who approached his psychological acuity. Reading Crime and Punishment I felt physically in Russia; I felt, terrified, a murderer and I felt, in curse, beset by guilt. For the first time I articulated and validated in mind nihilistic thoughts, which shone in an undeniable logic and showed me the relativity of morality. Pages later, all this falls apart, and Raskolnikov leads me with him to the abyss. Feverish, delirious, makes me feel on my skin the tension of guilt, the fear of persecution. And in the midst of darkness, desperate and repentant, he teaches me what redemption is; together with Sonia, he teaches me what is the flesh and what is the soul; and condemned, he teaches me the true value of things on earth. I closed the book decided: whatever happens, I am going to be a writer.

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