D. Pedro II, this man whose life contains a moving tragedy, a tragedy that became even more accentuated after his death, was not capable of putting it in a fair measure in the few verses he composed. They are weak verses, almost innocuous for someone who does not know his biography. But someone who knows it, and imagines the state of atrocious sadness in which they were written, the immeasurable grief of the man whose virtue was paid for with the most revolting injustice on the eve of his death, this person will forgive the aesthetic defects and will sincerely sympathize with the author’s misery. But here lie two moral problems that are hard to admit: the first, that art is indifferent to the sincerity of the author—in art, the most skillful may surpass the most sincere, even if his art amounts to a complete falsification of himself;—the second, that the moral elevation contained in the work matters little, as does the character of what it evokes. It is regrettable… The drama of D, Pedro II is the drama of a Camões, but of a Camões wronged in life and not rewarded by history, that cursed insensitive in which were deposited the last hopes of the noble soul corroded by grief. Would it be different if the verses were better? How useless to answer it…
Tag: literature
The Independence at Stake
I think of these organized literary movements, these attempts to innovate conjointly, these collusions that resulted in magazines and the like, these personal relationships founded on a supposed artistic affinity… I cannot help but conclude that the greatest blessing that can befall an artist is to never meet a single person inclined toward his art. It is the independence that is at stake; full, inviolable independence. It is to create as if no one could ever discover creation, it is to open oneself without embarrassment, without the possibility of others conjecturing unpleasant correlations, it is to never have to hear a friendly compliment and then have to reciprocate it. God, how ungrateful I have always been! Thank you, thank you very much!
A Whisper
I am, concentrated, composing some verses. I feel my mind boiling. I jump from a dictionary to my draft, alter words, conjure up images, and idealize the ideal rhythm. I find a word, fit it into a verse; but I hit the brakes. “Avanças“: this verb lacks rhyme. I want brilliance, I condense the efforts, I energetically stimulate the thought. Then I hear a whisper: “Esquivanças, esquivanças!” Ah, Camões… what a surprise! I automatically smile: I have won the day! An excellent rhyme, excellent, but… what to say? how to disguise my rudeness? I keep smiling. I cannot simply say that times have changed; it is my verses, Mr. Camões, specifically my verses, that have this innate aridity that is refractory to your brilliance and your sensitivity. I do not know how to make this kind of rhyme. Even if I wanted to, even if I force, my fingers will not type this word inside a verse. But I thank you, I thank you very much. I will spend the rest of the day, like a madman, laughing to myself.
I Go Through Several of Osho’s Speeches…
I go through several of Osho’s speeches and am gradually provoked by a funny irony. I, who have repeatedly pinned the “Western mind” and its formalism; I, as I go through these lines, question the author on each page: “Where did you get that from? Where is this and that other quote from the Buddha? And this sutra, where does it come from? Where are all these quotation marks coming from?”… It is as if a force is saying to me: “Isn’t this what you wanted? Weren’t you, even today, debauching the sterile referencing and lame reasoning of a guy?”. Yes, yes… The truth is that I am unbearably Western. I read Orientalists with pleasure, but it is possible that I would not even know how to behave in front of one of them. If I have learned and am learning anything from them, there is no doubt that there is a fundamental discrepancy between us that will never allow me to fully accept any of their doctrines, to see them fully impregnated in my thinking and acting, or, in other words, there is a limit to how much I can accept from them. So I enjoy a few hundred pages, but at some point my mind gets tired and demands a volume with bibliography and footnotes.