Arquivo de literature | Page 101 of 111

The Alter Ego in Literature

Some literary characters were fortunate to be classified by critics as the author’s alter ego. Others were born with the stamp from the master who gave birth to them. Alter ego… magical epithet capable of endowing any character with immediate depth, inciting his steps with the weight of real life. Funny! I cannot think of literature that does not contain, to a great extent, the weight of the author’s reality. It is simply impossible for me to imagine a writer writing by giving up his impressions of life, his experiences, his judgments about himself and others, the details of existence that only he notices, the observations he makes about the environment in which he lives. If he is painting an environment, for he will take as his basis an environment he has already witnessed or imagined; if he is describing a character, for he will use the examples that life has given him. Sensations: the simple fact of imagining them in depth is also to feel them, and it is not possible to judge that the author is immune to the feelings that he himself evokes. How would he know to describe them if he were unable to feel them? Thus, the alter ego, a term of multiple senses, can, in psychology, expose an interesting and complex deviation of personality, in literature usually exposes a personality obsessed with himself: the author.

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The Silence of Machado de Assis

A target of numerous criticisms being some, in fact, envious attacks, Machado de Assis, in all his life, silenced himself about it. Did they deserve an answer? or rather: is it up to the artist to answer the criticisms that are directed at him? Without saying a single word, Machado taught us how the great artist should behave. Attacked, the master kept his independence, continued working. And if the criticisms exposed any aesthetic or expressive problem worthy of note, then the answer is very clear in his literature. And the great mass of comments, well, they received what was theirs: contempt.

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Inspiration: Conscious Brain Stimulation

I read somewhere, a few years ago, a psychologist said that Bertrand Russell used an interesting process when he was involved in complex problems. It would be more or less as follows: Russell thought, with maximum concentration and strength of mind, on the particular problem; he outlined the possible solutions, dismembered them into minor issues, formulated various hypotheses and tried to find, in all, the possible flaws. The question occupied him entirely for hours, sometimes days, and then, when he felt exhausted, he did not publish, nor executed the final wording of his conclusions: he abandoned the problem and let him rest, occupying his mind with anything else. Then, after a few days, weeks or months, suddenly the mind pointed the solution, which came as a violent avalanche, and so Russell sat down to write. What would that be, inspiration? If that is the word, then it is necessary to add that there is nothing divine, fantastic, or superhuman about it. What is there is method, conscious brain stimulation. And if the brain, therefore, sometimes does not deliver an immediate response, it does not mean that it does not work, or that it is not working. In the same way, when it decides to boil at an inopportune moment, it is not doing any kind of magic or exhibiting supernatural powers…

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A Narrator Should Not Provide Interpretations of His Own Work

In pages of Umberto Eco, I come across this problem so common and insistent, which has afflicted so much since Nelson Rodrigues to Andrei Tarkovsky, Umberto Eco himself and so many others, which is the exigence of explanations about the work itself. Umberto Eco summarizes, in my direct translation:

A narrator should not provide interpretations of his own work, otherwise he would not have written a novel, which is a machine that generates interpretations.

I believe “novel” applies to any artistic work. Interpreting is not the responsibility of the author, never has been and never will be. Demanding any justification from the artist is no less than trying to destroy his work.

The situation is funny because it is precisely the interpretation that everyone, from the reader to the critic, seems to demand from the author.

Tarkovsky, with his nonlinear montage and scenes of highly subjective and poetic appeal, reveals himself in Sculpting in Time targeted by numerous indignant and offensive letters from spectators simply demanding explanations.

Nelson Rodrigues, in turn, spent his life having to justify why others censored his works when he obviously had nothing to do with the interpretations of his scenes.

The list extends to infinity: playwrights, novelists, filmmakers… many and many targets of the same harmful notion that the author owes explanations to the public.

It is sad to know dissolved the meaning of art, to know that the public is completely unaware of the essence of artistic work and judges the artist as a pamphleteer, someone who wishes to prove his opinion or raise some agreement.

However, there is a positive and perhaps very, very positive side. Knowing his fate, the artist will know how to trace the ideal distance he must take from the public, thus shielding himself and saving his work.

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