Arquivo de literature | Page 96 of 98

The Artist and the Coherence

I will say here what is an obviousness to me: an artist owes nothing for coherence.. If he thinks it is necessary, he has the freedom to throw it into space. And why do I say that? Because bores me seeing critics say about how incoherent an author is. For me it is very clear: when a philosopher or essayist sits and puts himself to write the goal is one: logic; the author will organize his arguments to expose his reasoning in the most clear and accurate way he can achieve. Not the artist. When an artist sits at the table the goal is another: it is to express the feeling with the greatest power possible, or to make the strongest impression on the reader. Different things. That’s why it is impossible to compare Aristotle and Fernando Pessoa. One does one thing, another does another. And the artist who sacrifices expression for coherence simply diminishes his art: defending ideas does not concern his work. On the verses of a giant:

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself;
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

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Alfred de Vigny: “La solitude est sainte”

“La solitude est sainte” — said, in the nineteenth century, the French romantic poet Alfred de Vigny. Today, I find it impossible to write a phrase like this; I mean, the stones would be the inevitable reception. In our time, everything is collective: men are hand in hand circling around the beautiful world they share. And if, for a moment, someone feels an impulse to seclusion, a need for loneliness, he should not make a fuss! Otherwise, he will be crushed as an insect, censored by anyone who has the displeasure of seeing his lack of social maturity. The loner is sick, not having in himself the sense of collectivity is to be inferior. Today, only the common good matters, and only to the common good should direct the efforts a sensible, modern and conscious human. Therefore, I consider myself to be a quadruped: I judge any kind of collective intelligence impossible and I have no sense of belonging in me. The human being, for me, only develops intellectually in silence and retreat. So I cannot be read, so I cannot even find a Vigny’s book in Portuguese on Amazon. This century is too spacious to provide accommodation for solitude..

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The Idiot, by Fyodor Dostoevsky

The Idiot, by Fyodor Dostoevsky, is certainly a book I will approach at other opportunities. The work, as well as Don Quijote de la Mancha, by Cervantes, is brilliant and can confuse the unwary. As I said on another occasion, I thank so much for not rating this book as hilarious, and I did it just for having read it with some intellectual preparation. Dostoevsky manages, more in this than in other books, to give focus to his obsession with personalities touched by the divine. Prince Myshkin, the protagonist of the book, is the embodiment of the noblest that can be achieved as a human being. Endowed with infinite kindness and complacency, the prince generates empathy wherever he passes; however, he is misunderstood: his fellow men associate his candidness with innocence, lack of sense, taxing him as an idiot. Among all the themes in Dostoevsky, it is this in The Idiot which fascinates me most: human elevation necessarily requires the annihilation of vanity. Myshkin knows himself a misunderstood, or rather: he knows that others judge him an idiot; and yet it does not alter his complacent stance towards anyone. What does it matter what other people think? Myshkin seems immune to lust and can stare evil in the eyes, being light by contrasting with the shadows that evidence around him. His candor assails, molests, and coexistence only exposes his moral superiority before others. Idiot? Like Alyosha of The Brothers Karamazov, it seems that Myshkin walks among men to prove the asymmetry between the human and the divine, the misery and the grace, the earth and the celestial. And he proves to us, undoubtedly, all the mediocrity of small desires, small vanities and pride, which annihilates what would perhaps be the only human virtue worthy of this name.

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Quincas Borba, by Machado de Assis

To me, Rubião — the protagonist of Quincas Borba — is the greatest character of Machado de Assis. I have read several critics emphasizing the impotence of Machado’s characters, the inability to live, the ineptitude, the apathy. Very well! Moreover, we do not suffer saying that in Rubião the human figure presents itself in amplitude, in precision. Reading Quincas Borba, we see philosophy buried by passion, intelligence transfigured by love and, above all, Rubião walking the steep slope that every man has to walk on. The book ends, comical and melancholy, ridiculous and sad, ambiguous as life always is. And if it leaves us any doubt as to what to feel, the master advises us:

Come now! Weep for the two newly dead, if you have tears. If you only have laugher, then laugh! It is all the same. The Crux, which beautiful Sofia refused to behold as Rubião asked, is high enought that it cannot make out the laugher or tears of men.

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