Arquivo de literature | Page 96 of 114

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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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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