Vivemos em arquipélagos.
Cada um na sua ilha, na sua família, nas suas convicções, nos seus movimentos, julga assim preservar a sua liberdade e segurança. Na verdade a liberdade só começa quando saímos da nossa ilha, e partilhamos com os outros o que é nosso.

Acha mesmo?

Acha mesmo que António Costa vai ser diferente de Passos Coelho?

A morte e renascimento de Camões.

 Após o final da Guerra Peninsular, num momento em que Portugal estava exangue e vivia  em regime de protetorado inglês, com o rei no Brasil, Camões veio ao de cima. Em 1817, o Morgado de Mateus criou a monumental edição ilustrada de "Os Lusíadas", na  oficina de Firmin Didot, em Paris. Em 1818, o compositor João Domingos Bontempo, criou a obra-prima "Missa de Requiem a  quatro vozes, à memória de Camões Em 1824, o pintor exilado Domingos António de Sequeira, expôs no Salão de Paris "A  Morte de Camões de que se conserva o cartão no MNAA.(foto) Em 1825 Almeida Garrett publica o poema "Camões", que inicia o movimento romântico na  literatura, tal como as obras anteriores na musica e pintura. A todos, as fortes estrofes de Camões ofereciam a expressão do pessimismo mas também  o tónico de esperança . E eram tais certezas que levavam o Morgado de Mateus a publicá-lo, Bontempo a tocá-lo,  Sequeira a pintá-lo e Garrett a cantá-lo. Quatro em um...

Mario Joseph, o imã que encontrou o Cristianismo no Corão

Mario Joseph, o imã que encontrou o Cristianismo no Corão
Mario José era um imã aos 18 anos. Em seguida, tornou-se cristão e o seu pai tentou matá-lo. Hoje, é um pregador católico na Índia. O seu caso é único no mundo: é o primeiro clérigo muçulmano a ter abraçado o Cristianismo, o que no mundo islâmico é punível com a morte. No cemitério da sua cidade indiana, há uma lápide com o seu nome, e por baixo dele, um caixão com uma escultura de barro de seu tamanho. O pai disse-lhe: "Se quiser ser um cristão, tenho que matá-lo." 

Um outro mundo - A obra de Cecília Pinto

“La vraie vie est absente” - Arthur Rimbaud
A pintora não está cá….. Mas à nossa frente desfilam como filigranas de um outro mundo os desenhos de um mundo que agora volta à luz pela dedicação de seus filhos Ana e João Pico…
A pintora não está cá….Mas à nossa frente estão os seus desenhos a branco e negro ... Estão as aguarelas de tons subtis, os óleos … e mesmo as fotos de esculturas que ficaram por terras da América.
Olhamos para os retratos que ela pintou e que nos olham de dentro das coisas...
Retratos de família, sobretudo, intimidades que fizeram sentido para quem as viveu mas que de tão poderosamente retratadas, evocam o nosso reconhecimento….
Auto retratos…. Bastantes… Porque reconhecer-se é missão de uma vida inteira e uma imagem autêntica de nós é um dos poucos presentes limpos que podemos oferecer …
E vemos surgir telas e aguarelas com profusão de temas …
Grupos de música de câmara e orquestras … Porque a música é o que mais falta faz ao mundo …Porque evoca os dezasseis violinos que havia em sua casa onde seu pai era músico e lutier.
Grupos sentados em cafés com rostos a que faltam olhos …. Não porque não vejam …mas porque o que de mais importante há para ver está ausente.
Casarios em tons suaves que se erguem nas margens de rios e ribeiros que descansam o nosso olhar… Idílios que gostaríamos de ver transpostos na selva urbana…
Muitos cavalos porque o mundo é movimento … Algumas flores de vez em quando … Poucas …. Que o mundo raramente é risonho.
E depois as cores.. Sempre maravilhosas ... Sempre trovões de cores que explodem em harmonia mesmo que os tons sejam suaves
E podemos continuar a ver … Caricaturas e cartoons onde se nota o gosto da pintora pelo concreto, dos tempos de hoje e do passado. Pelo tempo de Napoleão, da revolução francesa.
E nem faltam as notas políticas com os comentários contra o omnipresente salazarismo que tiranizava os portugueses. Ou contra as touradas. Contra o pensamento único, afinal
Os especialistas dirão das influências de mestres na obra de Cecília Pinto cuja existência discreta e cuja missão secreta é agora resgatada pela Ana e João.
Mas a todos nós pertence a sua inspiração de que um outro mundo é possível.

A pintora não está cá … Mas a sua obra, sim, e continua a inspirar-nos ….
Agosto de 2011
Após revisitar com a Nazaré Barros, a obra de Cecília Pinto
Mendo Henriques

CXXXIX (Re) Leituras -- Die Philosophie des Judentums, de Julius Guttmann, comments by André Bandeira

Finally, what is a jew? And why does one pose the question? There is some room for meaning. One knows that one which some fit guys, with brown shirts on and funny caps, expressed, shouting and yelling, with clubs in their hands, in the thirties, in Germany. And one knows what was the meaning when a medecine doctor, in the prophet’s tombs, decided to shoot his machinegun, at random, on the arab worshipers. But, in between, there is “jewishness”, “jewish blood”, “jewish nose and ears”,”jewish culture”, “semitic”, “semitism”, “Synagogue of Satan”, “sionism”, etc. Guttmann tells us, in this Treatise, that Religion is one thing, and Philosophy is another. It is the most capable History of jewish philosophy I ever read and a very keen History of the main philosophers with a jewish religious background. But finally, is there a “jewish philosophy”, or is there philosophy made by jews? Guttmann never lived up to write a “Theology of Judaism”. It would be interesting to see how a theological reasoning – yes, because Guttmann, despite being an orthodox jew, he was a rationalist – would impact in Philosophy. After reading the book, I think that the religious life of the jewish diaspora, did impinge in its own tribalization, but that, mostly because of the isolation jews have been condemned to, by its neighbours. It wouldn’t have been unimaginable that jewish religion spread beyond the diaspora ethnic boundaries. As a matter of fact it did, with the Kazar in Russia and with the Falasha, in Ethiopia, the most conspicuous among several cases. But it also did, in a way, with all christians. All christians may be considered a kind of jews. In a few sentences: Guttmann defines judaism as a kind of Religion which has philosophical implications. Guttmann was an Historian of Philosophy, with a philosophical expertise. But, whether Judaism has philosophical implications or not, that question doesn’t mean that judaism is a philosophy. Judaism has been so much penetrated by Platonism, Aristotelism, Kantian philosophy or existencialism, as Christianity was. As a matter of fact, it remains Maimonide and Jehuda ben Halevy, or Hermann Cohen and Rosenzweig on both of the recurring lines of division. But something we have to be prepared to, that is to consider that judaism was more philosophical than christianism, because it worked all these years within close doors. That is wrong, says Guttmann. But the hint he has, in his carefully drawn watershed, between Religion and Philosophy, leads to the conclusion that thinking within Religion – such has the one set by jewish worshipers – probably is an alternative to Philosophy ...that greek, pagan, magic illumination. Better close to God, whatever that may mean, than squirting a flash light on his own face, I say.

Dag Hammarskjold - A estrada

Quantas vezes as pessoas ou comunidades divididas estão tão afastadas que é necessário um pacificador para absorver o veneno de ambos os lados? 

Dag Hammarskjold, Secretário Geral da ONU, cumpriu esse papel . 

Foi provavelmente assassinado em 1961 durante a missão de paz que desempenhava na guerra civil no Congo ex-belga . Em 17 de setembro, Hammarskjöld embarcou para discutir um cessar-fogo com Tshombe. O DC-6B que o transportava caiu pouco depois de avistar o aeroporto. Uma investigação das autoridades coloniais concluiu que houve erro do piloto. A ONU não aceitou tal resultado. Uma pesquisa do The Guardian, em 2011, levantou sérios indícios de que o avião foi abatido, pouco antes de pousar, por mercenários ocidentais baseados na Zâmbia.. Em 2012 foi constituída uma comissão internacional para examinar o assunto.

Hammarskjöld ficou reconhecido como modelo para gerações futuras, tendo recebido o Prémio Nobel da Paz, a título póstumo. Deixou muitos escritos merecedores de leitura e reflexão. Quando de sua morte, foi encontrado o seguinte escrito: "Quando nasceste, todos riam, só tu choravas. Vive de maneira tal que, quando morreres, todos riam; só tu não tenhas lágrimas para verter".

Um seu poema A Estrada - mostra bem essa sua faceta.

A estrada, tens de a seguir
A diversão, tens de a esquecer.
A taça, tens de a esvaziar
A dor, tens de a esconder
A verdade, tens de a dizer
O final, tens de o suportar!

Unicidade, de Barnett Newman

Onement


Antes da actual  banalização  da pintura abstracta o pintor americano Barnett Newman  criou Onement I, Unicidade . Considerava- a  a primeira encarnação  do que mais tarde chamou 'zip', uma faixa vertical de cor, sobre o qual executou muitas variações posteriores. O título da pintura é uma derivação da palavra "expiação",  significa " ser feito em um." Para Newman, o zip desigualmente pintado em um campo plano de cor não divide mas funde  a tela. Houve quem comparasse os zips às figuras esguias de Giacometti, reforçando as ligações de Newman entre as suas pintura e os corpos.

Sacrifício, de André Tarkovsky

Trouxe de S. Paulo, da É Realizações este belo foto-livro que narra com guião e imagens o filme de Tarkovsky,  em tradução de Anastassia Bytsenko e Adriano Carvalho Araujo e Sousa.

Uma maneira de ver a obra do artista é considerá-la uma expressão através da beleza para chegar aos outros. O cineasta falou de seu trabalho como realizador de cinema:“A grande função da arte é a comunicação, uma vez que o entendimento mútuo é uma força para unir as pessoas, e o espírito de comunhão é um dos aspectos mais importantes da criatividade artística .. .Eu não consigo acreditar que um artista apenas trabalhe para se exprimir. A expressão só tem sentido se encontrar uma resposta. Criarmos vínculos com as outras pessoas é um processo que custa muito, e sem ganho prático: em última instância, é um acto de sacrifício. E, certamente, não valeria a pena o esforço só para ouvirmos o eco de nós mesmos” (Sculpting in Time, 1986. p.39 e s.)

Aqui nesta edição , destaco o que diz a badana

“A questão de saber o que insistentemente me fascina no tema do sacrifício – dos ritos sacrificiais – tem uma resposta direta: interesso-me essencialmente, eu, homem de fé, por todo indivíduo capaz de se dar em sacrifício, quer em nome de um princípio espiritual, quer por sua própria salvação, ou por essas duas razões ao mesmo tempo. Dar esse passo naturalmente supõe de antemão a renúncia total a todos os interesses, em primeiro lugar aos interesses egoístas; aquele que é tocado age num estado existencial que está além de toda lógica, de toda causalidade "normal", livre do mundo material e das suas leis. Entretanto – ou talvez justamente por causa disso –, o seu ato acarreta mudanças evidentes. O espaço em que evolui aquele que está pronto a sacrificar tudo, e até a dar-se como oferta no sacrifício, representa uma espécie de réplica dos nossos espaços empíricos, habituais; sem que isso o torne menos real.”

Surpresas II - Arrependimento, um filme de Tengiz Abuladze

Para sondar as profundezas da noite escura da alma de um João da Cruz, ou da noite escura de Deus de Nietzsche, penetrar no mistério da Shoah em Auschwitz , pode desenterrar-se um morto, como fez Tengiz Abuladze no seu  filme de 1984, Arrependimento , a forma de mostrar o horror causado por Estaline e seus cúmplices .

Arrependimento (georgiano: მონანიება, Monanieba, russo: Покаяние)  foi filmado em 1984, mas proibido na União Soviética devido a ser uma crítica semi-alegórica do estalinismo. Estreou-se em 1987 no Festival de Cannes, ganhando o Prémio FIPRESCI, Grande Prémio do Júri e o Prémio do Júri Ecuménico.

No plano prosaico, é a história do pós-estalinismo e mesmo da perestroika com as regiões russas a tentarem libertar-se do pesadelo do passado. Mas Arrependimento é tudo menos prosaico; é um poema filmado, cheio de surrealismo. 

Tudo no filme vale a pena. Todos os personagens transportam-nos a um tempo e espaço próprios do que todos nós, fora da Geórgia, achamos que terá sido a Geórgia dos anos 50, a mesma terra onde nasceu Josef Vissarionovich Djugashvli dito "Staline", o homem de aço.Varlam, o vilão é uma mistura de Estaline e Hitler e Mussolini de aldeia, com as capacidades de um herói de ópera bufa. A música não podia ser melhor escolhida, do bufo ao heróico, do hino à alegria de Beethoven ao cântico final místico em que as vozes parecem responder à velha senhora que pergunta "Para que serve uma rua, se não conduz a uma Igreja?". Feito antes da queda do Muro, Arrependimento mostra como o Muro teria de cair.

Cheio de pormenores surrealistas,  o filme tem várias culminâncias, como a cena em que Abel aterrorizado se vai confessar a uma figura invisível., afinal o seu pai Varlam, o tirano da vila, que dele se ri. "Vieste confessar-te ao diabo!" E assim , entre medos e arrependimentos, somos levados às profundezas da noite escura de que poucos hoje falam mas que está sempre aí, na consciência.

Walker Percy -

Alguns anos antes de morrer, no final de uma entrevista com Robert

Cubbage , Walker Percy foi questionado sobre o segredo da sua escrita :

“Se um escritor tem um segredo, não é que ele tenha algo de especial, mas

que ele tem um nada de especial. Nestes tempos, acho eu, um escritor

sério tem de ser um ex-suicida, uma nulidade , um nada, zero. Ser um

nada é a condição de fazer qualquer coisa. Esse é o segredo.

As pessoas não sabem que escrever bem é simplesmente uma questão de desistir,

de se entregar, de deixar ir . Tu dizes: " Tudo está perdido . Pára o baile.

Rendo-me. Nunca voltarei a escrever. Admito a derrota total. Estou acabado."

O que te estou a dizer é que nada sei de nada. É uma questão de ser tão

lamentável que Deus fica com pena de ti, olha para baixo e

diz: " Ele está feito num oito. Vamos deixá-lo fazer um par de boas frases. "

( Percy, l987 “Writing in the ruins”, Notre Dame Magazine, autumn, p.31 )

É fácil substituir "filósofo" por escritor, pelo menos do tipo socrático. Sobretudo quando se tentar escrever sobre a humanidade.

Tivadar Csontvary - Supresas 1

Volto a publicar no Duas Cidades, após quatro anos.
Diz a Wikipedia: Tivadar Kosztka Csontváry (Sabinov, Eslováquia 5 de julho de 1853 - Budapeste, Hungria, 20 de junho de 1919), foi um pintor húngaro, dos primeiros a se tornar conhecido na Europa. Embora estimasse as suas raízes húngaras, cresceu falando uma mistura de língua eslovaca e alemão. Durante a juventude, foi farmacêutico.
Porque me surpreendeu? Porque, para mim, fala uma linguagem artística, nova, esmagadoramente bela. Não sei onde as suas experiências se encaixam em uma filosofia da humanidade. Mas sei que, pelo menos depois de ter respirado profundamente meditando a sua obra, o duro trabalho de compreensão pode recomeçar. Fica a sugestão.

CXXXVIII (Re)leituras -- Carmen - Carmen Miranda, a vida da brasileira mais conhecida do Séc. XX, by Ruy Castro, comments by André Bandeira

She died young, such as Gloria Swanson, Marylin Monroe or Montgomery Clift. Some commentators I heard say that she stands as a symbol for the gay movement. She was not gay but she had a kind of repertory which allows the confusion and exasperation of categories, something quite advantageous for the advancement of their «revolution». That is secondary, anyway. Carmen has always been portuguese, not because she was born in Portugal, but also because she never applied for brazilian citizenship. That is one of the grounds for her to be attacked by so many journalists, both at he inception of her career, as at the end of it. She attracted very much the US public, because she portrayed the latin-american identity which was needed for the american people to stay away from european conceit. After all, «Latin» was the first blend of european with mediterranean and north-african, something that the US citizens of her time didn't manage with their own natives. Racism is always a dissimulation of attraction, notwithstanding a vicious and jealous exclusivity, able to reduce human kind to a pet. The americans needed to import a white woman, of catholic background, just to have a simulation of a latin component among them. Carmen was also a product of the war -- she was cultivated to further a «good neighborood» policy with white southerners of european descent who, otherwise, would leaning on the side of Mussolini and Hitler.The book amounts to a cathedral of biographic documentation and it is a genuine report on History. But one quickly understands why so many living public figures, in Brazil, sue the selfmade biographers who haven't been previously authorized to write about them. The book gestures to replace History, with some kind of Byohistory. Notwithstanding the  matters of fact, the narrative is pushing an ideological agenda. For example: the detail around the fact that the child Carmen used to make fun of a young neighbor with a limp in his leg, or the comment on the match-making of her sister, who had the same handicap, emerges at a very precise juncture, just to prophetize the unhappy marriage of Carmen with Dave Sebastian, who had one leg shorter than the other. The book also displays some degree of ignorance, when it wonders about the fact that, sometimes, Carmen was cast for a character were she would play the daughter of a Latin and an Irish. The book ignores completely the very conspicuous celtic roots of the portuguese region where Carmen was born and who bear fruit very vividly, both in her coreographies and in her style. The book almost commits suicide in her last paragraph: it describes Carmen's death as a kind os scenic whisk, in the honor of entertainment, because she died with a massive infartus, in the upper room of her mansion, while her guests -- as usual -- were having fun downstairs, till late in the night. On drugs and booze she was, as well as under one of the heaviest family reponsabilities, voluntarily taken upon her shoulders, Carmen has been exploited till her death by one of the most obscene and warlike subsystems of free market: the wild capitalism in Hollywood. The author seems to write with a superb self conviction, because he thinks he has read and searched everything possible about «the best-known brazilian woman of the XXth century». That's why he just describes, and doesn't even explain why Carmen bursts out crying when once welcome by a group of portuguese, dressed in their traditional clothes. She was stumbling in portuguese everytime, beginning with her family and their acquaintances. But those clothes were the image of a colour and of a gaiety which brazilians thought was purely brazilian, that means, an anacronic dividend of their former slaves' culture. Yes, as a matter of fact, all through her life, Carmen Miranda was, after all, the best known portuguese woman of the XXth century. She was brazilian, yes, but she never relinquished of being portuguese, despite the lack of subtility of her biographer.

CXXXVII- (Re)leituras: The demoralization of Western Culture, by Ralph W. Fevre, comments by André Bandeira

This is a book on Sociology, with a preface of Zygmunt Bauman, the inventor of «postmodernism» and its ferocious critic. It's already 14 years old. How can these books be secluded by the press? How can modern democracy pretend they do not exist? I suspect these books are deliberately obfuscated because they moderately denounce the swindle which the Left has operated in the West, in order to serve the most unconfessable purposes. The book has a small, modest objective: to clear the way for a re-moralization of society. It doesn't come out of fundamentalism, neither extremism, nor it claims to show its democratic credentials as some totalitarian turncoats do. The book cannot be placed neither in the Right, nor in the Left, nor even in the Centre. It is a book openly against common-sense. Most of all, it stands against the tiranny of economic rationality, which it claims to have been extended to all levels of life. The fault may be either attributed to science, or to bureaucracy. There are obviously things, which cannot be known -- despite what (bad) science claims -- since using science where one should weigh feelings and sentiment, is non-sense. I'll never know why I fell in love for someone. If I insist in knowing, I'll end up collecting divorces, and measuring my satisfaction with my partners, as a pornography athlete. And it is already too late: women began thinking as men used to think. There are no «opposite sexes» anymore, so there are not anymore room for completion of anything, nor even between parents and children, exception made for the incoming vindication of the legalization of incest. The author advises us to extol from politicians (or fire them) that they warrant us time for sentiment, time for being with our children, instead of devoting overtime to the bosses. He quotes an important study, led by Lawson, among women who came of age in the 70's, and proves how they decided to become faithful to their husbands, probably too late, after a series of bitter experiences. He accuses the Kinsey report of being based on fraud. The book navigates in a nightmare, the one of relativism, and tries to find the appropriate mix of sentiment and reason, in order to make us get out of hell. It describes the idealism in Hitler and the designs of Marx, proving how bad was the science both of them chose to found their doctrines on. Neither Darwin said what Hitler contended for, nor Economics was what Marx said it was. In both of them there is an old idea: the triumph of Mephistopheles over Faust. Faust was a lowsy scientist, as Goethe was, a sort of wreckless alchimist. I read all this but I confess it is too late: in the affair Clinton-Lewinsky, the american public decided, first to accuse the President, just for perjury and then, later, the american public abdicated of any moral judgement. Clinton even got more popular than before, neither because he was having sex, as the actor Jack Nicholson once celebrated, nor because he managed to wash his hands in the Senate, and Monica took her blue dress to the laundry. He became more popular because he proved that, in practice, common sense made moral maxims null and void. Should we re-moralize our society? The author ends his book telling that people, after all, they don't run and die for money. They run for things that people used to run, before, when there was no money, and death used to cut short our chasing around. Neither romantic love was invented by the Bourgeosie. Its roots go back in our History to the Middle-Ages and much before. The trouble is that the agressive noise of modern democracy, where the Left invented «anti-capitalism» or even «capitalism» to engineer a future Paradise, while releasing all our sensuality in our lifetime, makes this reading, to short, too late. Even the author states, at some point, that we were condemned to make our living with labour, that incuding the labour of birth. We signed a Pact with the devil, and the collector is knocking at every door. This game of words betrays how carried away we may be by the magma of of a sensations vulcanoe and signs, while trying to surface and jump out of the furnace. In the many books and articles which are being bribed or outright faked, as science and democracy are, we have to read between the lines. As the soothsayers, once, were able to read the future in the tea leaves, so we'll do with the leftovers of a boiling cauldron.

CXXXVI (Re)leituras - Getúlio, by Lira Neto (2nd)Volume, comments by André Bandeira

Second volume of the biography of former dictator Getúlio Vargas, of Brazil, by the journalist Lira Neto. The former volume was published last year. It is a pleasure reading it.Major findings: the cover has two quotes, one by the former President Fernando Henrique Cardozo and the other from his follower, the also former President Lula. Both of those quotes completely ignore the fact that Vargas was a dictator and had blood in his hands. Well, who cares? Blood in the hands seems to give that little bit of tone which makes our interest and curiosity more compelling than our responsibility. We are not reading to change the world. We are reading to enjoy it, otherwise we wouldn't set aside some of our time, to let the eyes navigate in the graphics. Other major findings: this second volume confirms the idea that, in Brazil, the Left and the Right have both the same origins,that means the young lieutenant movement in the twenties. I had a discussion on that matter with two brazilian labour leaders: one only kept me asking whether the distinction between Left and Right was so clearcut in Europe. I answered him that it depended on the countries (in Spain it was clearcut, but in Italy one couldn't ignore neither that the most radical and beloved Left wing leader, Benito Mussolini, had been the founder of Fascism, nor that he was no lonerider in that endeavour, by all means). The second of both of my occasional interlocutors, sort of excused himself by saying that the brazilian state was a very centralized and authoritarian one. The other finding amounts to no novelty: the dictator Vargas worked as a family clan, transferred from the South, with his sons and daughters placed or led to in key-positions. The cronology is easy: «liberal-democrat» movement in 1930, which takes Vargas to the top and casts away the old republic; 1932, reaction by the cosmopolitan middle-classes and oligarchs from S.Paulo; 1936, military movement led by the communists; 1938, attempt by the fascists to seize power and kill the dictator. All along, Vargas always manages to hold the reins and act as the «Time» once described him, a «democratic opportunist». The author shares the strange cult of Vargas: he emphazises that, in 1936, he managed to outwit the military and prevent the comunists to line up in front of the death squad. On the other hand, in 1938, the military lined up the fascists who assaulted the President's residence, and shooted them against the wall, on the spot.Here, the author seems to alleviate Vargas'responsibility.In conclusion: somewhere in the western shores, where there was room to procrastinate some decisive duels, settled in Europe, fascism and communism where no twin ideas. They were the very same idea.They also shared some genetical military nurturing. Moreover, in the genealogy of ideas, the most enthusiastic defenders of Nazism and Fascism, managed to show up, in the last days of the Second World War, as enthusiastic defenders of the re-democratization. The historical leader of the Communist movement, the once lieutenant Luís Carlos Prestes, nicknamed «Knight of Hope», was released from jail by the dictator and openly supported him to stay in power, against the US push. It is not impossible that Vargas was playing the soviet card against Washington, in 1945, the same way he played the nazi card in 1939, and the US card against Rome and Berlin in 1942. The author depicts us a dictator who wanted to modernize Brazil, resorting to alternate foreign reserves. But he did believe instrinsically in a republican authoritarian tradition. He has been more than once, close to commit suicide. Was he a patriot? At the very inception of his ideas he despised tradition and he cherished authoritarianism. He was deeply convinced that the Education he received and the conclusions he got to were self-evident and that, despite being a small, secondary child of a patriarch he had been unctioned as leader of an imperial Republic who, despite his tiny features, lectured History and Nature on the revenge of human humilliation. That's why he looks like so much as Buster Keaton. He is the revenge of a silent movie against radio stars such as Roosevelt, Churchill, Hitler, or Mussolini.

CXXXV (Re)leituras -- Memorial de Aires, by Machado de Assis, comments by André Bandeira

This is a Memoir of a retired diplomat, who -- according to his own words -- decided to retire in order to believe in the capabality of others of being sincere. He also states, at a certain point, that he doesn't have neither the wearinesses of office, nor the hopes of being promoted. Again, Machado de Assis, who, this time, writes his Memoir as a diary, confronts us with the weight of death, or, in other words, he depicts the resilient presence of death in a life which is withering away. At a certain point, he conjecturates that dead have the strength of fighting the living, who, in he following, never fully cast them away. The plot is difficult to follow, once it is fragmented in annotations, comments, entries. In the end, one sees that there was a widow, Fidélia, who never really managed to overcome the attachment she has to her deceased husband. She is named Fidélia, as the protagonist of Beethoven's Opera. One sees that the narrator, Aires, cherishes the hope of marrying to er but, finally, it is a young doctor, devoted to Politics, and a good man, who takes the prize. He just takes note of that, he retreats with no feeling of jealousy, whatsoever. He is an old man, young people have the right of loving each other and being happy. He even helps as a confident and a kind of oracle interpreter. His own fantasies just blow away, as anacronic fallen leaves in the spring wind. The final scene depicts two oldmen, among his acquaintances, who wait for him, as some previously deceased friends, lining up on the receiving bank of the river of death. They try to smile and exhibit some contentment. According to the ending, they try to get some consolation from the memory of themselves, as two images looking at each other on a mirror. It is a very pessimistic book, albeit some kind of philosophy prevailis in it. Machado de Assis is this high civil servant who reached glory in Literature and who never travelled away from the capital, farther than 120 Kms. He was a man who liked to seat at one peer of Rio's port an stare at the open sea. He was hard-working, early riser but distant and meticulous in human approach, as his language testifies. Still his phantasies and sensitive heart emerged very clearly in the fluence of the language, alongside the narrative.He sees death coming along and he wants to close his reflection with some embedded conclusions and an inherent wit where everything tends to corroborate the inevitable end. His maxims just make the ending lighter, running faster to the aim before this one has been really attained. They find some life and variety in the considerations which raise and fall in a narrowing final room. In the conclusion they are symbolized by the two oldmen, a kind of twins who populate, in a way, the final desolation, with some stupid irony. That's it: there is no beyond. There is just a duty to be followed till the very end. There is no final scene. There is only the one-before-the-last scene. All this novel is an eulogy of the final power of death in pulverize everything.But before reaching that state, the presence of death, the widowhood's rules, the contrast between fresh flowers and tombs, all of them set the pace of time and keep us wonderfully tied up as Machado de Assis, the child of a former slave, wanted to see a whole epoch and a society he managed to master. He was really the «old witch of Cosme Velho» and, besides being competent, he was just delighted in exerting his power. Maybe he got all his life, sick, because of that but he was to primitive in his worldview. Life casts all these kind of compensations: Machado de Assis was primitive in his feelings. So life gave him a superb writing in order to conceal his feelings. A man cannot throw hell over the society of his time without some elegance, otherwise he would be totally burned out by that very hell. That is why we tend to differentiate Beauty and Good. In an ongoing calvary, they are, indeed, different concepts.