Once the custom of the concise, direct, and objective sentence has become entrenched, so fashionable these days that it is almost a requirement of style, it is a pleasure to sporadically plunge into the pace of other times, slow, cadenced, seeming to show that art is not made in a hurry, that attention asks for details, adds nuances, and singularizes while it is extended. Immersing in this slow pace is like escaping from modern banality, and as the periods progress we are left with the sensation of a depth that escapes this time, which has been lost in futile priorities and has become an enemy of that tranquil state that accentuates the human tendency for contemplation.
Tag: literature
There Is Something Truly Brilliant About Gilberto Freyre
There is something truly brilliant in the way Gilberto Freyre constructs his works. At first, the unclassifiable character of all of them is impressive, that is, the character of a mixture, of works devoted to many, and not only to one science. From the preface, one can already notice an impressive heap of contrasting references, which instigates curiosity about how they will harmonize in the following pages. Then Gilberto Freyre begins his prose, interweaving anthropology and sociology, synthesis and reports, passing from an inventory of customs to historical events, penetrating into the innermost recesses of his characters, and all this pile up slowly forms a complex and vividly colored picture that hardly a purely sociological, anthropological or historiographical work would be able to match. It is as if he methodically changes the shade of the paint after painting several paragraphs with a single color. After many pages, when it is already possible to observe the whole, we feel before a work with historiographical precision, but painted with literary subtlety in the construction of the characters, in the minuteness of details, in the representation of the sociocultural environments that served as background for the historical period approached. It is clear that his works, constructed in this way, cannot please those who are crazy about the objectivity of facts—but these, knowing them, will never be able to interpret them.
There Is Something Brilliant and Very Curious in Symbolism
No matter how much one speaks against the obscurity of Symbolism or, more specifically, of the Symbolist poets, the truth is that there is something brilliant and very curious about this expressive technique that seems to be hidden when, in fact, it opens up to unfathomable possibilities. In poetry, words acquire an unusual weight when evoked. A verse devoid of syntactic nexus but abundant in suggestive words will indeed have a strong effect on the mind of the reader. If one constructs “Rainy day; pain; fatigue and discouragement”, although not logically connected by an argument, the mind, upon reading such words, immediately relates them and forms an image possessing the logical link that seems to be missing. Thus, the poet manages to make them manifest themselves in individualized nuances for each reader. If, at times, obscurity can be boring, at other times it can generate very interesting and almost unlimited effects.
Is Rhyme Indispensable?
Although I particularly appreciate rhymed verse, I would never endorse Bilac and Guimarães Passos, who maintained “that in any verse composition one must not prescind from rhyme. It is indispensable”. There are several reasons for this. But one of them deserves special mention. I do not know how the aforementioned poets composed, but it seems necessary to me, after skipping the whole process of ideation of the poem, that a draft be made of it. If I want to make rhymes, then I first sketch the poem in blank verse, to then concentrate on the rhythm, the rhymes, and the careful selection of words. I realize clearly that if I were to worry about rhymes at this point in the draft, it would only hinder my creative impulse, interrupting the flow of ideas to open a dictionary, something absolutely counterproductive. Therefore, I have to conclude that this creative impulse, in its spontaneous form, calls for manifestation in blank verse—not to say free verse. Well then: I know that not every great artistic effect is spontaneous, quite the contrary, as almost all the brilliance of a work comes from carefully thought out details. Rhyme, therefore, although an artificiality, is justified. But practice shows, time and time again, that to rhyme verses is to adulterate them, and even though one may gain in beauty by doing so, that initial naturalness is lost. Finally, I get where I want to go. There will be verses in which the poet will be so stimulated that he will feel himself emotionally pouring his soul out onto the paper; verses that will come out like an avalanche, that will express his innermost self and will spring forth with a momentum and sharpness different from what he normally creates. I am not sure how much is gained by rhyming such verses, I mean, it seems to me that the poet who deforms them to fit formalities may commit a crime against himself and insult the very singular moment in which he conceived them.