Arquivo de literature | Page 114 of 132

Victor Hugo’s Lesson

For three months now, dedicating myself to closing a small volume of poems, fighting against the discouraging sensation of never considering a single sonnet finished, it is with amazement that I think of the more than 150 thousand verses that Victor Hugo finished in just one life. Once, I read someone saying that such productivity compromised the quality of these verses. Reasoning too obvious and that does not resist an accurate examination. To me, the scandalous in Victor Hugo is the discipline worthy of the greatest name in French literature. Immense merit, and quite instructive…

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When I Open a Book, I Do Not Sign a Contract

I remember the day I made this magnificent discovery: when I open a book, I do not sign a contract committing myself to read it until the end. Soon the idea shone, I transferred, smiling, the volume of my hands to the shelf. Since then, I have exercised my right more and more often. The works vary, so do the reasons: sometimes contempt speaks; for others, my inaptitude cries out. And, using this very useful technique of pressing the cover against the back of the book with my hands, I have learned that some works require the moment, require adequate preparation (especially in terms of mastery of the language) to prove themselves useful or enjoyable. Thus, closing a book can save time, avoid unnecessary wear and tear and prevent a rewarding future experience from being burned by an unjustified rush.

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ABC of Reading, by Ezra Pound

I read ABC of Reading, by Ezra Pound and I find, between a virtuous exhibition and lucid passages from a great intellectual, the obvious apparently ignored:

Music rots when it gets too far from the dance. Poetry atrophies when it gets too far from music.

What to say? The search for originality and new means of expression in literature has often given way to a disfigurement of literary art itself or, in other words, a worse aesthetic. Much as a result of an obsessive vision in the establishment of laws, the guidelines, the tools capable of endowing literary construction with an artistic character fell into contempt, became “antiques”. The problem, however, only makes one flee from the essential: why the arc of action in dramaturgy? Why metrics in poetry? Because they are instruments that, if used with dexterity, differentiate literary art from the spoken discourse, making it aesthetically superior; they are instruments capable of giving unity to artistic construction, capable of producing interesting expressive effects. The artist who does not know them will not be able to establish qualitative criteria for his art, that is, he will not be able to improve it, even to evaluate its aesthetic quality, handling something that he ignores the substance. Obviousness, obviousness, while extremely necessary.

The bad draughtsman is bad because he does not perceive space and spatial relations, and cannot therefore deal with them.

The writer of bad verse is a bore because he does not perceive time and time relations, and cannot therefore delimit them in an interesting manner, by means· of longer and shorter, heavier and lighter syllables, and the varying qualities of sound inseparable from the words of his speech.

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The Lyrical Love Poetry Is Doomed to Disappear

The lyrical love poetry, if not dead, is doomed to disappear. This is undoubtedly the conclusion that screams after an accurate observation of the last decades. What happened was not a change in the character of relationships, but a definitive burial of how much served as inspiration for the verses that no longer touch. I could cite current thinking, the socially accepted psyche preacher of detachment. But this is too fragile, only applicable as a mask of the individual psyche and only relevant as a manifestation of hypocrisy. What happens, however, is that people have become dishes on a menu always online and accessible to a touch. Distance, fear of loss, and especially lack of means and options have always acted as fortifiers of a relationship, despite appearances. The lament, in a verse, is nothing but the expression of affection for someone who looks special and irreplaceable. Today, all this is over. And if the present century seems to have evolved, we will see how it will react when exposed to the terrible and immense emptiness opened up by the mass loss of affective bonds—once the fulcrums of meaning,—by the endorsement of false solutions and the gradual dehumanization of human beings. I imagine frightened children clogging up the psychological clinics…

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