Arquivo de literature | Page 93 of 111

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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Those Who Seem to Live a Lot Live Very Little

I beat these notes, always, in a static environment, in complete solitude. Everything rigorously immobile, except my naughty fingers. Just now, I thought of Fernando Pessoa. To my amazement, he appeared alive at my side. How? That is what I would like to know. I had thought, just before, of writing the following: “Existence is only justifiable to me as an answer to the authors I read, as the continuity of what they began.” And I would conclude that, despite being dead, they did not die. Then Pessoa bursts into my room. It is curious: a century ago, he was, like me, locked in a room in any corner of Lisbon, reflecting in solitude. Did he know the power of his verses? that they would resist, vigorously, the tyranny of time? He knew… Pessoa knew… And, naturally, in the eyes of the world, locked in a room, the poet “was not living”. I ask: and now, and for the rest of eternity, who lives and will live more: the guy who “lived,” or the poet who “was not living”? A century later, Pessoa, breaking the barrier of time and space, finds himself in my room. And if I open his Ode Marítima, I will be taken by a real and strong euphoria, more alive than any other sensation that a contemporary person could give me. And that is obvious: live little—very, very little—precisely those who seem to live a lot, in the eyes of conventional myopia…

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The Philosophy of Composition, by Edgar Allan Poe

In The Philosophy of Composition, Edgar Allan Poe explains in detail his process of poetic creation, exemplifying through his best-known poem, the marvelous The Raven.

Without intending to summarize even more what is already extremely summarized in the few pages of the essay, let’s go to some interesting topics.

Poe begins:

I select “The Raven” as most generally known. It is my design to render it manifest that no one point in its composition is referrible either to accident or intuition— that the work proceeded, step by step, to its completion with the precision and rigid consequence of a mathematical problem.

Any surprises? Of course not.

Sweet illusion to those who think that a great artistic creation is the fruit of any divine illumination: it is the fruit of hard work, criteria, and rigor.

The Raven is, aesthetically, impeccable. The atmosphere and musicality that emanate from this little poem are magnificent.

And it is interesting to verify the progression of Poe’s creative process: first, the idea; then, the tone; then, the format; and finally, the composition.

That is to say: by composing The Raven, by thinking about how he would develop The Raven, Poe sat already knowing what he would compose, how much he would compose, and how he would compose. The unity achieved was not the result of luck.

Another interesting aspect of The Philosophy of Composition is the way Poe emphasizes the importance of the tone of the poem: primary, once defined, influences all other stages of poetic construction.

Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears. Melancholy is thus the most legitimate of all the poetical tones.

And The Raven, imbued with melancholy, overflows the feeling, and the reader, in a few verses, sees himself in a similar state of mind.

This occurs, first, because of the pictorial effects: the tempestuous night, the loneliness in the room, and the raven that erupts from the darkness.

Then, because of the melancholy coming from the death of the beloved woman.

And finally, because of the repetition of the closed, grave, and long phonemes at the end of the stanzas—”nevermore”, “nevermore”, “nothing more”, “nothing more”…

The Raven is a wonderful, untranslatable poem that, after closed, remains echoing. And if something is concluded after knowing its constructive process, it is that the high level, in poetry, is reached only as a result of tremendous rigor.

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