The most difficult thing about portraying the temporal circumstance in a literary work is to specify it to the point where it becomes special, while at the same time synthesizing its action as an external agent in a scheme that goes beyond time. Tend to either side, and the artist will fail to make the work arouse lasting interest, which is only possible when different but inseparable layers of meaning are built up, connecting the comprehensive to the particular.
The Most Impressive Thing About Medieval Art…
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.