Faced with the possibility of near death, the average man collapses in terror and begins to behave like a primate. In other words: fear overrides his reason and makes him look like a child. For this reason and others, the fear of death is the first to be overcome and it is the fear that frees, stimulates and hardens the spirit. To overcome it is to transform oneself and, in a way, to overcome all other fears.
This Behavioral Tendency of Man Towards…
This behavioral tendency of man towards his contemporaries is very peculiar: at the same time that he is unimpressed with, when he does not despise, the truly extraordinary, he endorses and praises everything that makes up the range from the mediocre to the truly despicable. That is why one can never trust a contemporaneous judgment on anything, at the risk of embarking on the most scandalous frauds and injustices. We always have to wait for history to dispassionately put everything in its proper place.
It Has Already Been Noted That Great Authors…
It has already been noted that great authors often emerge as reactions to major social crises, and that an aggressive environment is more stimulating than a quiet, controlled, harmless one that does not directly threaten the author and therefore only promotes inertia. All of this is correct; but it remains to be seen that, for the reaction to take place, there needs to be an education that makes it possible to see the scale of the crisis, in other words, the author needs to be very clear about the basic foundations of a civilization, something that requires him, above all, to distance himself from the one in which he lives so that he can use it as an element of comparison.
What Enchants in Provençal Poetry…
What enchants in Provençal poetry and in medieval French fixed forms is above all the melodious sonority, which only occurs because there is an inalienable link with music in both, that is, it only occurs because the compositions, if not intended for singing, are always intended to be recited with musical accompaniment. So rhythm and melody must necessarily harmonize in them as a constructive requirement, having an effect, or rather, endowing the composition with the delicious quality that modern poetry has striven to strip away.