The most impressive thing about medieval art, in which there is a fabulous and dizzying profusion of symbols, both as a whole and in detail, is that it reveals a man accustomed to extracting meaning from everything, a man for whom nothing can exist without an implicit meaning, a man incapable of representing something that only speaks in a literal sense. This marvelous imaginative capacity, in itself, is a trophy that consecrates an era.
The Individual Who Does Not Read Fiction
The individual who does not read fiction usually considers literature to be futile and incapable of having a practical influence on his life. But whether he knows it or not, to deprive oneself of literature is to deprive oneself of the apprehension of possibilities, which practically means limiting one’s own life. Still in practical terms, the illiterate will always distinguish himself by taxing the old as new, and by standing in front of an infinity of trivialities without knowing how to react.
In Brazil, the Average Citizen Spends…
In Brazil, the average citizen spends his entire adult life without reading a single work of fiction. This cannot be normal, except in a culturally dead society. It is safe to say that no Brazilian writer today has the slightest influence on society, despite what the names of some streets and monuments might suggest. There is not a single literary work whose characters or moral lessons are present in the collective imagination, and so the most astonishing fact about Brazil today is that it has no cultural base to serve as a foundation and common heritage. It is not just an educational tragedy, but a human one.
The False Writer Gives Up His Individuality…
The false writer gives up his individuality in order to please, and for this he receives the prize of social acceptance. He is false, firstly, because he does not assert himself, and secondly, because he believes that social acceptance is a prize. How much easier things are for the true writer! He sees the dilemma as a wonderful win-win situation: he affirms himself by displeasing, and thus receives the benefit of social rejection.