Pär Lagerkvist is truly a great writer, who managed to convey the essence of his harrowing experience through his writing; and he did so in such a way that, from the very first encounter, the reader finds himself in the presence of an extraordinary spirit. It is curious: the person who advances in thought without allowing it to detach from experience, and who moves forward feeling it, trying to integrate it, wishing to use it only to obtain answers to the questions he considers fundamental, always ends up entering the realm of religion. And then, one of two things happens: either he is the fortunate type who obtains answers, or he is, like Lagerkvist, the type who cannot obtain them, nor rid himself of the questions, and who soon finds himself overcome by an invincible obsession. The latter type seems to produce more prolific writers; and not just writers: it produces men who, through a lifetime of effort, ultimately give meaning to their lives, thereby also giving meaning to the endless anguish that will always be passed down from generation to generation.
Tag: literature
It Is an Almost Heroic Act to Devote…
It is an almost heroic act to devote the final hours of an exhausting day to literature, when body and mind seem unable to bear any further effort. It really is the devil, as Carpeaux once vented. And through another venting, that of Ferreira de Castro, one realizes that the situation never takes any form other than that of a grueling struggle: even habit does not seem strong enough to prevent those days when one succumbs to exhaustion, when one cannot think, and cannot write. Ah, how much easier life would be without these two occupations! And yet, such is the lot of most writers, and it was under similar conditions that duty overcame nature and produced much of the best that literature has to offer.
Literarily Speaking, There Is No Doubt…
Literarily speaking, there is no doubt that the didactic and confessional tones are not among the most refined forms, and that they often provoke aversion in experienced readers. However, if we take Tolstoy as an example, we will see that, although they are certainly not his masterpieces, the books he wrote using these tones possess a special charm. It is as if the great author, the man of indisputably recognized qualities, were to strip himself of all sorts of artifice in order to objectively express what has most deeply affected him and what, if he could, he would like to teach us. For a novelist, this is an act that requires courage, because it means producing a work lacking in literary charm, a work that will likely displease. But we, who read it, cannot deny that, through it, we come a little closer to the man who chose neither to hide nor to protect himself.
Gilberto Freyre, Mário Ferreira dos Santos and Otto Maria Carpeaux…
Gilberto Freyre, Mário Ferreira dos Santos, and Otto Maria Carpeaux: three authors who, on their own, could transform Brazil into a new civilization. Add to that, just to stick with them, the dozens of excellent poets the country has already produced, and we would have a broad and fertile literary landscape, sufficient to lay the foundations for a solid intellectual education. All of this already exists and is available to anyone interested. One need only get to know them to see how foolish the claim that “Brazilian literature is worthless” really is. The new civilization, however, may never come; but the offshoots of the one that once existed have already proven themselves worthy of a place in the pantheon of universal culture.