Luciano Duarte | Literature and philosophy

Ulysses, by James Joyce

I read, for these days, our Paulo Coelho saying that the whole Ulysses comes down to a tweet. It seems he made the statement in 2012. The book, to whom does not know, is almost unanimous in criticism. Our Folha de S. Paulo, for example, gave it the title of the greatest novel of the twentieth century. I confess: I am traumatized by Ulysses; a few years ago, I abandoned him on page 400. During the reading, I was tortured, from the beginning thinking of closing it; however, always granting one hundred new pages of credit to the author. Then I closed it, very angry and convinced: “this is not literature”. So I took something from Dostoevsky. It was really good years ago. And today I am rethinking: whenever I find myself convinced, I soon see myself an idiot. Ulysses is literature. I did not go back to the book, but I am sure it is, and that I just could not read it. “The book says nothing…” — says a lot. Leopold Bloom is despicable, that’s right. But how many are not? I think of Eça. Much has already been taxed the characters of Eça as frivolous. I look around. Literature is also the art of language. What about Eça and James Joyce in this regard? And I come back: what more reality looks like: frivolous or impregnated with meaning, almost bursting with meaning? Do people spend their days in banalities, dying like flies, or do they make history Monday through Friday? Do they perform useless functions or mark epoch every day? So I think of my texts: tragics, of fierce moralism. Am I not the opposite of Eça, the opposite of Joyce, and who knows, the opposite of an artist?

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Crítica e profecia: a filosofia da religião em Dostoiévski, by Luiz Felipe Pondé

I closed this work and felt, for the first time, absolutely humiliated by a book. I thought I had some intelligence deficit. And I thank God I never published a line. I, you see, were already a reader of Dostoevsky, and had read six of his books, including the main ones, except The Idiot — and I appreciate not taxing the book by comic… — I thought, among other things, the following: I am immune to nihilism. The response was clear to me in Dostoevsky’s works, and I never even questioned: “Dostoevsky spent his life talking about nihilism, wrote hundreds of lines about nihilism. Who knows the theme has no relevance?”. And Pondé, welcoming me and teaching me how to use my brain, threw me into a nihilistic abyss, where I felt existence weigh. I read his essay and saw that despite two or three thousand pages read, I knew absolutely nothing about Dostoevsky. To summarize: I had never noticed God’s manifestations in Dostoevsky, which allows me to shoot: I had no idea who Dostoevsky was. Of course, I saw God when Sonia reads Lazarus’ passage to Raskolnikov, but I never saw God in silence. And there is everything: Pondé showed me that in Dostoevsky, God is present in silence. I closed the essay decided: I urgently need to leave this thing of studying. But, after, I thanked there being a Pondé and said to me: I need to reread each of Dostoevsky’s books. Today, I think I got the choice right.

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Amy Winehouse

I imagine myself after a year married with Amy Winehouse. Any kind of physical contact would already be impossible; there would be, among us, a poignant and total disgust. There would be no dialogue; clearly, we would not even have character affinity. If any passion had preceded marriage, then it would now be properly buried, cooled by time and temper discrepancies. With absolute certainty, I would be already being betrayed uncovered. And then I imagine myself, in the next room, listening to her daily rehearsing. I wouldn’t ask for a divorce.

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The Sorrows of Young Werther, by Goethe

I read Werther for the first time and — quote! — I didn’t like it. I came from I do not know what reading or, rather, from Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain, and I felt the book being smaller than it is. And life, as usual, made my tongue burn. “Good, but mushy. At one point, it’s sick” — it’s what I’ve said at the end of the reading. I do not deny: I was in charm, drunk from the first contact with Mann. Shortly thereafter, I rethought: it’s very likely that the problem is in me, not in Goethe. I gave the book a new chance — a book, say, of “a sitting” — and the reading took place as follows: I felt chills, my eyes seemed to swallow the lines; sometimes I thought i’d pause, think calmly about everything I was feeling. Immersed in a whirlwind of feelings, thoughts, judging Werther while I was empathizing with the narrative. Almost crying, I close the book. The verdict: “Next to Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich , these were the best few pages I’ve read in my entire life”. And I almost forget the main one: “I will never forgive myself for saying this book is sick. I am forever an idiot”.

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