Tag: literature

It is not uncommon to encounter authors who, after advancing in their studies and literary careers, renounce their former mentors. And if this is true of mentors, it is even more common for them to renounce authors they once admired, who contributed to their intellectual development. On the one hand, intellectual evolution involves significant shifts in thought, and there are times when the change occurs in the mentor himself, who becomes different from who he once was. However, it is an extremely difficult task to repudiate without simultaneously sweeping away the feeling of gratitude. It may seem to the philosopher, after reaching lofty heights, a shame to have benefited, as a young man, from a journalist, an economist, or some figure from the so-called intellectual lower ranks. What utter nonsense! It is far more honorable, from up there, to remember the unique path that allowed him to ascend.

Sometimes, in biographies, the proper emphasis is not given, or we do not pay enough attention to the times when the subject is helped, encouraged, or spurred on by someone whom the biography ends up overshadowing. One thinks of that anonymous Uncle Cunha, whose importance in the upbringing of the young Fernando Pessoa cannot even be estimated, but was certainly beneficial and fundamental. People like this, like angels, tend to appear only a few times in a lifetime; they exert a decisive influence, but with a subtlety that is often lost over time, frequently leaving no record other than those that should remain forever in the consciousness. It is up to the beneficiary never to forget them: neither when, perhaps, he finds himself in higher realms; nor when he falls and is assailed by the unjustified thought that this earth is deprived of goodness.

The problem with writing an “ode to the futile,” as some poets have done, is that the moment the reader encounters such a poem, continuing to read it means accepting the role of someone interested in the author’s trivialities. Most, of course, accept it, and accept it enthusiastically, and such a poem may possess the genius of resembling, through its words, a television program. But here’s the thing: no one is interested in programs from the past decade, because everything futile possesses this attribute that condemns it to oblivion—it is, necessarily, transient.