gringocarioca

crisis ...

2012-01-19T07:01:00.001-05:00

"Languages are imperfect because multiple; the supreme language is missing. Inasmuch as thought consists of writing without pen and paper, without whispering even, without the sound of the immortal Word, the diversity of languages on earth means that no one can utter words which would bear the miraculous stamp of Truth Herself Incarnate .... But then, esthetically, I am disappointed when I consider how impossible it is for language to express things by means of certain keys which would reproduce their brilliance and aura -- keys which do exist as a part of the instrument of the human voice, or among languages, or sometimes even in one language .... We dream of words brilliant at once in meaning and sound, or darkening in meaning and so in sound, luminously and elementally self-succeeding. But, let us remember that if our dream were fulfilled, verse would not exist -- verse which, in all its wisdom, atones for the sins of languages, comes nobly to their aid."

(Stéphane Mallarmé, "Crisis in Poetry." Trans. Bradford Cook)

the formula ...

2011-11-05T13:42:00.000-05:00

red ink ...

2011-10-30T16:06:00.001-05:00

"So what are we doing here? Let me tell you a wonderful, old joke from Communist times. A guy was sent from East Germany to work in Siberia. He knew his mail would be read by censors, so he told his friends: 'Let’s establish a code. If a letter you get from me is written in blue ink, it is true what I say. If it is written in red ink, it is false.' After a month, his friends get the first letter. Everything is in blue. It says, this letter: 'Everything is wonderful here. Stores are full of good food. Movie theatres show good films from the west. Apartments are large and luxurious. The only thing you cannot buy is red ink.' This is how we live. We have all the freedoms we want. But what we are missing is red ink: the language to articulate our non-freedom. The way we are taught to speak about freedom— war on terror and so on—falsifies freedom. And this is what you are doing here. You are giving all of us red ink."

(Slavoj Žižek, "We are the Awakening." Speech given at Zuccotti Park to the Occupy Wall Street movement on Saturday, October 8, 2011)

"Em uma velha piada da antiga República Democrática Alemã, um trabalhador alemão consegue um emprego na Sibéria; sabendo que todas as suas correspondências serão lidas pelos censores, ele diz para os amigos: 'Vamos combinar um código: se vocês receberem uma carta minha escrita com tinta azul, ela é verdadeira; se a tinta for vermelha, é falsa'. Depois de um mês, os amigos receberam a primeira carta, escrita em azul: 'Tudo é uma maravilha por aqui: os estoques estão cheios, a comida é abundante, os apartamentos são amplos e aquecidos, os cinemas exibem filmes ocidentais, há mulheres lindas prontas para um romance – a única coisa que não temos é tinta vermelha.' E essa situação, não é a mesma que vivemos até hoje? Temos toda a liberdade que desejamos – a única coisa que falta é a 'tinta vermelha': nós nos 'sentimos livres' porque somos desprovidos da linguagem para articular nossa falta de liberdade. O que a falta de tinta vermelha significa é que, hoje, todos os principais termos que usamos para designar o conflito atual – 'guerra ao terror', 'democracia e liberdade', 'direitos humanos' etc. etc. – são termos FALSOS que mistificam nossa percepção da situação em vez de permitir que pensemos nela. Você, que está aqui presente, está dando a todos nós tinta vermelha."

(Slavoj Žižek, "A tinta vermelha". Tradução de Rogério Bettoni)

to make a (Dadaist) poem ...

2011-10-14T19:56:00.000-05:00

"Take a newspaper.
Take some scissors.
Choose from this paper an article the length you want to make your poem.
Cut out the article.
Next carefully cut out each of the words that make up this article and put them all in a bag.
Shake gently.
Next take out each cutting one after the other.
Copy conscientiously in the order in which they left the bag.
The poem will resemble you.
And there you are--an infinitely original author of charming sensibility, even though unappreciated by the vulgar herd."

(Tristan Tzara, "Dada Manifesto on Feeble & Bitter Love." Trans. Barbara Wright)

Ashley Brown In Memoriam 1923-2011

2011-10-13T20:49:00.000-05:00

Who was Ashley Brown? Ashley Brown was not a clown who rode to town in a coffin. He was a literary man, a man of letters, a cultured man. He was an extraordinary, ordinary man of the 20^th century. He was born in another time, in another era. He was a child of nickelodeons: one for a nickel, two for a dime. He was the sound of silent cinema. His fingers tapping away on the piano, his eyes staring away at the screen. He was a scholar. A professor. He knew something about everything. He knew a lot about a little too. He knew almost everyone, it seemed. Flannery O’Conner. Elizabeth Bishop. Elizabeth Spencer (I’d never heard of her). He decided to phone D.H. Lawrence after he found his name in the phone book. He had tea with T. S. Eliot, and a mad tea party with Ezra Pound, who used to call him Ash Wednesday, by the way. To me, he was just Vovô Ashley. He would give my dad a heart attack. His pats would almost break my back. I could not take it but there I was, there, there, back, once more, for more. With his so ons and so forths, he could go on and on, there, there, and so on, and so forth, everywhere we would go. We used to go to Nonnah’s. We used to have lunch every Saturday at Yesterday’s, where a giant man in a cowboy hat with a mustache took a bath in a giant bathtub. He had always been an old man. He told me to watch out for the little green man, before crossing the street. He was funny. He had quite a sense of humor. He was a kind, simple kind of man. A very gentle, gentleman. His glasses were a spectacle. He was a quiet, meditative man. He would overcome death on occasion. He had a hole in his head and a whole lot of ideas, about everything and everyone. Henry James’ illumination at the train station. James Joyce’s evolution from lyric to epic to drama. The Waste Land is no waste of time. “Now, what are you reading these days?” He would ask me. He was interesting and interested in things. He had an amazing book, music, art collection. Paul Klee will stay at my place, ok? Ashley Brown lived in a townhouse downtown on Gregg St. He would sit at his window sipping away his Earl Grey. He was an American with English manners. He had an aristocratic air about him. At dinner he would serve me a glass of Ginger Ale. Before bed he usually had a night cap. At the end of his life he lived in a Glass House, where you can always see who comes to call, where everything hanging from the ceiling and on the walls stays where it is as if by magic, where he slept nights in a glass bed, under glass sheets, where who he was would sooner or later appear etched by a diamond … or maybe not. He ended up at Still Hopes. There was still hope, there, there, and so on and so forth. He passed away one day, into the silence without a sound, not with a bang or a whimper. He was a great one, Ashley Brown, and I will ever be a grateful grandson.

Marco Alexandre de Oliveira

(Read by Marc Minsker)

Rutledge Chapel

University of North Carolina

13 October 2011

o que passa?

2011-09-28T15:43:00.000-05:00

o tempo todo
o tempo passa
passa o tempo
de passagem

passa sempre
o presente
de repente
está passado

o futuro
demora …
e agora,
o que passa?

passa o homem
passa fome
pouco come
desde ontem

hoje mesmo
passa mal
passa como
animal

nunca passa
desse estado
está sem tempo
está sem espaço ...

as pessoas
então passam
e os passos
são pesados

passa tudo
tão depressa
se espera
nada passa

tudo passa
todo tempo
toda hora
eu me lembro

o tempo todo
o tempo passa
passatempo?
passa nada ...

Copyright © 2011 Marco Alexandre de Oliveira

espaçotempo

2011-09-28T15:35:00.001-05:00

o tempo, sendo tempo, está sendo tempo, por um tempo, no espaço, além do espaço, sendo tempo um espaço de tempo, além do tempo, sendo espaço, um tempo de espaço em que passa um espaço de tempo, sendo tempo por um tempo no espaço ...

Copyright © 2011 Marco Alexandre de Oliveira

partir

2011-09-21T10:23:00.001-05:00

coração partido
o pedido de perdão
não cola

Copyright © 2011 Marco Alexandre de Oliveira

L’esprit nouveau ...

2011-09-17T16:30:00.000-05:00

"Même s’il est vrai qu’il ny a rien de nouveau sous le soleil, il ne consent point à ne pas approfondir tout ce qui n’est pas nouveau sous le soleil. Le bon sens est son guide et ce guide le conduit en des coins sinon nouveaux, du moins inconnus.

Mais n’y a-t-il rien de nouveau sous le soleil ? Il faudrait voir.

Quoi ! on a radiographié ma tête. J’ai vu, moi vivant, mon crâne, et cela ne serait en rien de la nouveauté ? À d’autres!"

(Guillaume Apollinaire, "L’Esprit nouveau et les poètes")

"Even if it is true that there is nothing new under the sun, the new spirit does not refrain from discovering new profundities in all this that is not new under the sun. Good sense is its guide, and this guide leads it into corners, if not new, at least unknown.

But is there nothing new under the sun? It remains to be seen.

What? My head has been x-rayed. I have seen, while I live, my own cranium, and that would be nothing new?"

(Guillaume Apollinaire, "The New Spirit and the Poets"." Trans. Roger Shattuck.)

"Mesmo que seja verdade que não há nada de novo sob o sol, não se admite de maneira nenhuma que não se aprofunde tudo o que não é novo sob o sol.

O bom-senso é seu guia e este guia o conduz a ângulos senão novos pelo menos desconhecidos.

Mas não há nada de novo sob o sol? Seria preciso ver.

Ora! Tiraram uma radiografia de minha cabeça. Eu vi, estando vivo, meu crânio e isto não seria uma novidade? Ora essa!"

(Guillaume Apollinaire, "O espírito novo e os poetas." Trans. Gilberto Mendonça Teles.)

new under the sun ...

2011-09-17T16:07:00.002-05:00

"Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.
What profit hath a man of all his labor which he taketh under the sun?
One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever.
The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose.
The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits.
All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full: unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again.
All things are full of labor; man cannot utter it: the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.
The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.
Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us.
There is no remembrance of former things; neither shall there be any remembrance of things that are to come with those that shall come after."

("Ecclesiastes, Or The Preacher." The Holy Bible. King James Version)

"Farolismo" / "Showoffism" ...

2011-09-17T15:58:00.000-05:00

"Escritor de nome disse dos meus amigos e de mim que ou éramos gênios ou bestas. Acho que tem razão. Sentimos, tanto eu como meus amigos, o anseio do farol. Si fôssemos tão carneiros a ponto de termos escola coletiva, esta seria por certo o 'Farolismo'. Nosso desejo: indicaremos o caminho a seguir, bestas: náufragos por evitar."

(Mário de Andrade, "Prefácio interessantíssimo", Paulicéia desvairada.)

"A famous writer said about me and my friends that we were either geniuses or jackasses. I think that he is right. We feel, I as well as my friends, the desire to be showoffs. If we were sheep to the point of forming a collective school, this would surely be 'Showoffism.' Our desire: to illuminate. The extreme left in which we have stationed ourselves will not permit halfway solutions. If we are geniuses: we will point the road to follow; if we are jackasses: shipwrecks to avoid."

(Mário de Andrade, "Extremely Interesting Preface." Hallucinated City. Trans. Jack E. Tomlins)

contrabandista! / smuggler!

2011-09-17T15:43:00.002-05:00

"Dom Lirismo, ao desembarcar do Eldorado do Inconsciente no cais da terra do Consciente, é inspeccionado pela visita médica, a Inteligência, que o alimpa dos macaquinhos e de toda e qualquer doença que possa espalhar confusão, obscuridade na terrinha progressista. Dom Lirismo sofre mais uma visita alfandegária, descoberta por Freud, que a denominou Censura. Sou contrabandista! E contrário à lei da vacina obrigatória."

(Mário de Andrade, "Prefácio interessantíssimo", Paulicéia desvairada.)

"Sir Lyricism, when he disembarked from the El Dorado of the Unconscious at the pier of the Land of the Conscious, is inspected by the ship's doctor, Intelligence, who cleanses him of quirks and of all sickness whatever that might spread confusion and obscurity in this progressive little land. Sir Lyricism undergoes one more visit from the customs officials, a visit discovered by Freud who called it Censure. I am a smuggler! I am against the vaccination laws."

(Mário de Andrade, "Extremely Interesting Preface." Hallucinated City. Trans. Jack E. Tomlins)

interessantíssimo / extremely interesting !!!

2011-09-14T10:27:00.000-05:00

"Todo escritor acredita na valia do que escreve. Si mostra é por vaidade. Si não mostra é por vaidade também."

(Mário de Andrade, "Prefácio interessantíssimo", Paulicéia desvairada.)

"Every writer believes in the worth of what he writes. If he shows it, it is out of vanity. If he does not show it, it is also out of vanity."

(Mário de Andrade, "Extremely Interesting Preface." Hallucinated City. Trans. Jack E. Tomlins)

alma-gêmea

2011-08-25T08:53:00.000-05:00

alma gêmea,
o meu corpo geme
ao te (re)encontrar

Copyright © 2011 Marco Alexandre de Oliveira

anti-social types ...

2011-07-25T19:22:00.001-05:00

"The poet, the artist, the sleuth—whoever sharpens our perception tends to be antisocial; rarely 'well-adjusted,' he cannot go along with currents and trends. A strange bond often exists among anti-social types in their power to see environments as they really are."

(Marshall McLuhan, The Medium is the Massage)

cegueira

2011-07-23T08:34:00.000-05:00

ofuscado por tanta luz

tanta luz que me conduz

me conduz a dizer

a dizer que não consigo viver

não consigo viver sem me ver

iluminado por tanta luz

On free spirits ...

2011-07-09T16:56:00.004-05:00

“He is called a free spirit who thinks differently from what, on the basis of his origin, environment, his class and profession, or on the basis of the dominant views of the age, would have been expected of him. He is the exception, the fettered spirits are the rule …. what characterizes the free spirit is not that his opinions are the more correct but that he has liberated himself from tradition, whether the outcome has been successful or a failure. As a rule, though, he will nonetheless have truth on his side, or at least the spirit of inquiry after truth: he demands reasons, the rest demand faith.”

(Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human. §225. Trans. R. J. Hollingdale.)

cotidianas

2011-07-06T09:36:00.000-05:00

o dia a dia

adia

a alegria

...

o trabalho

é chato

pra caralho

...

é bravo

ser escravo

sem saber

...

a sua beleza

cansa

a minha pobreza

...

o trânsito

tem sinais

de pânico

...

chega!

o trem

não vem

tudo em vão

2011-06-30T06:19:00.001-05:00

-- para o "Vovô" Ashley

o velho olha para trás,
até ver o jovem
que olha para frente
até se ver velho
antes e depois do seu tempo.

que diabo é esse
anjo que caiu?
o homen sonhou com asas
e ao criá-las, subiu

um deus aos céus – adeus!

e no espelho dos seus olhos,
o reflexo da reflexão:
nos olhos do espelho
se reflete tudo em vão …

Peanut Butter & Jelly + Bloody Mary

2011-06-26T20:57:00.008-05:00

Samuel Ashley Brown, college professor, writer, and scholar, died from natural causes on June 24, 2011, at Still Hopes Episcopal Retirement Community, Columbia, SC. Born in Louisville, Kentucky on December 19, 1923, to the late Samuel Ashley and Martha Mabel Brown, he was preceded in death by his brother, Robert Holburn Brown, and niece, Carol Brown Wildt.

He received his BA at the University of Louisville in 1945 and his MA at Vanderbilt University in 1946, where he later received his PhD in 1958. In between his graduate degrees he did graduate studies in historiography at Yale University, 1950-51, and taught as an Instructor in English at Washington and Lee, 1946-53, and the University of California, Santa Barbara, 1956-59. From 1959 he taught at the University of South Carolina, Columbia SC, where he was a Full Professor of English and Comparative Literature from 1972 until his retirement in 1996. He was also a two-time Fulbright Lecturer in American Literature at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in 1964-65 and 1971-72.

Known to everyone as Ashley, he lectured widely in Brazil, England, and the U.S. on such modern writers as Mario de Andrade, Elizabeth Bishop, T. S. Eliot, William Faulkner, Robert Frost, Caroline Gordon, Ernest Hemingway, Vinicius de Moraes, Flannery O’Connor, Walker Percy, John Crowe Ransom, Wallace Stevens, Allen Tate, and Peter Taylor. He also published extensively on many of these authors and others in leading literary journals, including Shenandoah: The Washington and Lee University Review, which he helped to found in 1950 while teaching at the college, The Southern Humanities Review, The Southern Review, and The Virginia Quarterly Review, among others. He personally knew many of these same writers, especially Elizabeth Bishop and Flannery O’Connor, and carried on extensive correspondence with them.

He is survived by his brother Franklin R. Brown and sister-in-law Carolyn Brown, one niece and two nephews, and several great nieces and one great nephew. Also by his adopted son Celso Lemos de Oliveira, his wife Bernadette, and their children Laura and Marco.

As his longtime friend (since 1952) and then colleague John L. Kimmey commented recently after reading what he deservedly called Ashley’s “remarkable resumé”: “He always prided himself in being not a specialist but a generalist, sort of like his hero Montaigne.” He and Ashley collaborated on seven anthologies, and perhaps John’s last comments on Ashley are the ones that Ashley himself might want to be remembered by: “So much more to say about him. One of my favorites is his telling me once what he liked for lunch, a peanut butter sandwich and a Bloody Mary. An original.”

He will be buried in Louisville, Kentucky in the family plot.

Plans for a memorial will be announced at a later date.

-- Dr. George Geckle

romance

2011-06-13T21:27:00.002-05:00

Flowers of Poetry …

2011-06-06T20:27:00.004-05:00

"How poetry is related to music through prosody, the roots of which go deeper into the human soul than any classical theory indicates"

"Why any poet who does not know exactly how many rhymes each word has is incapable of expressing any idea whatever"

"That the poetic phrase can imitate (and in this, poetry is like the art of music and the science of mathematics) a horizontal line, an ascending or descending vertical line; that it can rise straight up to heaven without losing its breath, or fall straight down to hell with the velocity of any weight; that it can follow a spiral, describe a parabola, or can zigzag, making a series of superimposed angles"

"That poetry is like the arts of painting, cooking, and cosmetics in its ability to express every sensation of sweetness or bitterness, of beatitude or horror, by coupling a certain noun with a certain adjective, in analogy or contrast"

(Charles Baudelaire, "Preface to the Flowers." Trans. J.M.)

love & life

2011-06-06T20:11:00.004-05:00

love looked life
in the eye
and said:

yes!

life stabbed love
in the heart
and said:

nothing …

Copyright © 2011 Marco Alexandre de Oliveira

desordem e regresso (versão 2)

2011-05-05T23:16:00.001-05:00

From "natural" to "social" man ...

2011-05-05T23:03:00.003-05:00

“Discontented with your present state, for reasons which threaten your unfortunate descendants with still greater discontent, you will perhaps wish it were in your power to go back; and this feeling should be a panegyric on your first ancestors, a criticism of your contemporaries, and a terror to the unfortunates who will come after you.”

…

“What, then, is to be done? Must societies be totally abolished? Must meum and tuum be annihilated, and must we return again to the forests to live among bears? This is a deduction in the manner of my adversaries, which I would as soon anticipate as let them have the shame of drawing. O you, who have never heard the voice of heaven, who think man destined only to live this little life and die in peace; you, who can resign in the midst of populous cities your fatal acquisitions, your restless spirits, your corrupt hearts and endless desires; resume, since it depends entirely on ourselves, your ancient and primitive innocence: retire to the woods, there to lose the sight and remembrance of the crimes of your contemporaries; and be not apprehensive of degrading your species, by renouncing its advances in order to renounce its vices. As for men like me, whose passions have destroyed their original simplicity, who can no longer subsist on plants or acorns, or live without laws and magistrates; those who were honoured in their first father with supernatural instructions; those who discover, in the design of giving human actions at the start a morality which they must otherwise have been so long in acquiring, the reason for a precept in itself indifferent and inexplicable on every other system; those, in short, who are persuaded that the Divine Being has called all mankind to be partakers in the happiness and perfection of celestial intelligences, all these will endeavour to merit the eternal prize they are to expect from the practice of those virtues, which they make themselves follow in learning to know them. They will respect the sacred bonds of their respective communities; they will love their fellow-citizens, and serve them with all their might: they will scrupulously obey the laws, and all those who make or administer them …. But they will not therefore have less contempt for a constitution that cannot support itself without the aid of so many splendid characters, much oftener wished for than found; and from which, notwithstanding all their pains and solicitude, there always arise more real calamities than even apparent advantages.”

(Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men. Trans. G. D. H. Cole)

desentender

2011-04-15T17:16:00.002-05:00

você e eu,
ninguém cedeu,
você e eu

ninguém cedeu,
alguém perdeu,
ninguém cedeu

alguém perdeu,
tudo fudeu,
alguém perdeu

tudo fudeu,
nada valeu,
tudo fudeu

nada valeu,
você e eu,
nada valeu

você e eu ...
(se sente que)
você e eu ...
(a gente se)
você e eu ...
(desentendeu)

Copyright © 2011 Marco Alexandre de Oliveira

um belo dia

2011-04-01T08:20:00.004-05:00

um belo dia de manhã o sol se escondeu atrás de nuvens que de tarde cobriram o céu e alagaram a terra de noite com uma chuva que afogou de madrugada a promessa de amanhã ser um belo dia ...

Copyright © 2011 Marco Alexandre de Oliveira

acesso

2011-03-31T15:27:00.003-05:00

acesso fechado:
assim eu passo
pelo outro lado

sensual poem

2011-03-30T08:22:00.002-05:00

see you
hear you
smell you
touch you
taste you

feel you
all over

in me

poema sensual

2011-03-30T08:13:00.005-05:00

– para tê

ver-te
ouvir-te
cheirar-te
tocar-te
provar-te

sentir-te
toda

em mim

on progress ...

2011-03-22T21:04:00.008-05:00

Some think the world is getting better and better. Others think the world is getting worse and worse. If everyone thought the world was getting much better or worse, then that would be worst. If no one thought the world was getting any better or worse, then that would be best.

– gringocarioca

progress

2011-03-21T14:48:00.004-05:00

to meet destiny’s fate somewhere on the road to anywhere,

to get nowhere sooner rather than later,

to circle around on a straight path,

to move forward while going backward,

to reflect upon the past in the future,

to advance modern theories of ancient ideas,

to discover the old anew,

to rewrite history again,

to memorialize time immemorial,

to establish the permanence of change,

to prolong a temporary situation,

to fix an image in the blink of an eye,

to expect the all of a sudden,

to begin to forgo bygone conclusions,

to recover a sense of loss,

to make the most of less,

to work harder for greater comfort,

to walk far in another man’s shoes,

to have in order to not be had,

to be good-natured but possess an evil disposition,

to moralize a code without ethics,

to unite under divisive banners,

to promote freedom without a choice,

to suspect innocence until proven guilty,

to justify the right to be wrong,

to minimize the threat of maximum security,

to enable the powerless through force,

to champion the battles of the defeated,

to erect the pillars of a fallen empire,

to lay the foundations for ruin,

to save a condemned world from judgment,

to convert to a faith in reason,

to believe in a rational skepticism,

to doubt a certain uncertainty,

to subvert the order of disorder,

to determine the probability of chance,

to exercise control at random,

to totally relativize each and every absolute,

to think much about not thinking too much,

to grasp everything with empty hands,

to create nothing out of something,

to form God in the image and likeness of man,

to strive to succeed to the point of failure.

renewal

2011-03-21T12:18:00.010-05:00

In honor of northern spring: the fruit of work. In honor of southern autumn: the harvest of labor. In honor of World Poetry Day: a collection of words.

Please check out the relaunch of:

http://gringocarioca.com/

Enjoy!

La búsqueda del presente ...

2011-03-04T23:58:00.003-05:00

“Sentí que el mundo se escindía: yo no estaba en el presente. Mi ahora se disgregó: el verdadero tiempo estaba en otra parte. Mi tiempo ... era un tiempo ficticio. A pesar del testimonio de mis sentidos, el tiempo de allá, el de los otros, era el verdadero, el tiempo del presente real. Acepté lo inaceptable .... Así comenzó mi expulsión del presente.”

“Decir que hemos sido expulsados del presente puede parecer una paradoja. No: es una experiencia que todos hemos sentido alguna vez; algunos la hemos vivido primero como una condena y después transformada en conciencia y acción. La búsqueda del presente no es la búsqueda del edén terrestre ni de la eternidad sin fechas: es la búsqueda de la realidad real.”

“Comencé a escribir poemas. No sabía qué me llevaba a escribirlos: estaba movido por una necesidad interior difícilmente definible. Apenas ahora he comprendido que entre lo que he llamado mi expulsión del presente y escribir poemas había una relación secreta. La poesía está enamorada del instante y quiere revivirlo en un poema; lo aparta de la sucesión y lo convierte en presente fijo. Pero en aquella época yo escribía sin preguntarme por qué lo hacía. Buscaba la puerta de entrada al presente ....”

“Así como hemos tenido filosofías del pasado y del futuro, de la eternidad y de la nada, mañana tendremos una filosofía del presente. La experiencia poética puede ser una de sus bases. ¿Qué sabemos del presente? Nada o casi nada. Pero los poetas saben algo: el presente es el manantial de las presencias.”

“Entonces las puertas de la percepción se entreabren y aparece el otro tiempo, el verdadero, el que buscábamos sin saberlo: el presente, la presencia.”

(Octavio Paz, Conferencia Nobel 1990)

La búsqueda de la modernidad ...

2011-03-04T23:44:00.002-05:00

“Buscaba la puerta de entrada al presente: quería ser de mi tiempo y de mi siglo. Un poco después esta obsesión se volvió idea fija: quise ser un poeta moderno. Comenzó mi búsqueda de la modernidad.”

“¿Qué es la modernidad? Ante todo, es un término equívoco: hay tantas modernidades como sociedades. Cada una tiene la suya. Su significado es incierto y arbitrario .... Un nombre que cambia con el tiempo, ¿es un verdadero nombre? La modernidad es una palabra en busca de su significado: ¿es una idea, un espejismo o un momento de la historia? ¿Somos hijos de la modernidad o ella es nuestra creación? Nadie lo sabe a ciencia cierta. Poco importa: la seguimos, la perseguimos.”

“No referiré mis aventuras en la persecusión de la modernidad: son las de casi todos los poetas de nuestro siglo. La modernidad ha sido una pasión universal .... En los últimos años se ha pretendido exorcizarla y se habla mucho de la ‘postmodernidad’. ¿Pero qué es la postmodernidad sino una modernidad aún más moderna?”

“La búsqueda de la modernidad nos llevó a descubrir nuestra antigüedad .... Inesperada lección histórica que no sé si todos han aprendido: entre tradición y modernidad hay un puente. Aisladas, las tradiciones se petrifican y las modernidades se volatilizan; en conjunción, una anima a la otra y la otra le responde dándole peso y gravedad.”

“La búsqueda de la modernidad poética fue una verdadera quéte, en el sentido alegórico y caballeresco que tenía esa palabra .... Porque la modernidad no es una escuela poética sino un linaje, una familia esparcida en varios continentes y que durante dos siglos ha sobrevivido a muchas vicisitudes y desdichas .... Ser una tradición y no una doctrina le ha permitido, simultáneamente, permanecer y cambiar. También le ha dado diversidad: cada aventura poética es distinta y cada poeta ha plantado un árbol diferente en este prodigioso bosque parlante. Si las obras son diversas y los caminos distintos, ¿qué une a todos estos poetas? No una estética sino la búsqueda. Mi búsqueda no fue quimérica, aunque la idea de modernidad sea un espejismo, un haz de reflejos. Un día descubrí que no avanzaba sino que volvía al punto de partida: la búsqueda de la modernidad era un descenso a los orígenes. La modernidad me condujo a mi comienzo, a mi antigüedad. La ruptura se volvió reconciliación. Supe así que el poeta es un latido en el río de las generaciones.”

“La modernidad es la punta del movimiento histórico, la encarnación de la evolución o de la revolución, las dos caras del progreso.”

“Asistimos al crepúsculo del futuro. La baja de la idea de modernidad, y la boga de una noción tan dudosa como ‘postmodernidad’, no son fenómenos que afecten únicamente a las artes y a la literatura: vivimos la crisis de las ideas y creencias básicas que han movido a los hombres desde hace más de dos siglos.”

“En mi peregrinación en busca de la modernidad me perdí y me encontré muchas veces. Volví a mi origen y descubrí que la modernidad no está afuera sino adentro de nosotros. Es hoy y es la antigüedad más antigua, es mañana y es el comienzo del mundo, tiene mil años y acaba de nacer .... Presente intacto, recién desenterrado, que se sacude el polvo de siglos, sonríe y, de pronto, se echa a volar y desaparece por la ventana. Simultaneidad de tiempos y de presencias: la modernidad rompe con el pasado inmediato sólo para rescatar al pasado milenario y convertir a una figurilla de fertilidad del neolítico en nuestra contemporánea. Perseguimos a la modernidad en sus incesantes metamorfosis y nunca logramos asirla. Se escapa siempre: cada encuentro es una fuga. La abrazamos y al punto se disipa: sólo era un poco de aire. Es el instante, ese pájaro que está en todas partes y en ninguna. Queremos asirlo vivo pero abre las alas y se desvanece, vuelto un puñado de sílabas. Nos quedamos con las manos vacías.”

(Octavio Paz, Conferencia Nobel 1990)

on vocation ...

2011-02-09T19:25:00.002-05:00

“By this time I should have been delivered of any problems about my true identity. I had already made my simple profession. And my vows should have divested me of the last shreds of any special identity.

But then there was this shadow, this double, this writer who had followed me into the cloister.

He is still on my track. He rides my shoulders, sometimes, like the old man of the sea. I cannot lose him. He still wears the name of …. Is it the name of an enemy?

He is supposed to be dead.”

…

“Maybe in the end he will kill me, he will drink my blood.

Nobody seems to understand that one of us has got to die.

Sometimes I am mortally afraid. There are the days when there seems to be nothing left of my vocation – my contemplative vocation – but a few ashes. And everybody calmly tells me: ‘Writing is your vocation.’”

(Thomas Merton, The Seven Storey Mountain.)

diálogos (des)familares 3

2011-02-09T13:23:00.004-05:00

Descansado

Filho: Tô muito cansado.

Pai: Quer descansar?

Filho: Tô cansado de descansar!

Copyright © 2011 Marco Alexandre de Oliveira

tudo está sob descontrole

2011-01-13T11:54:00.002-05:00

“Who are our nomads today?”

2010-12-10T12:45:00.004-05:00

"It is true that, at the center, the rural communities are absorbed by the despot's bureaucratic machine, which includes its scribes, its priests, its functionaries. But on the periphery, these communities commence a sort of adventure. They enter into another kind of unit, this time a nomadic association, a nomadic war machine, and they begin to decodify instead of allowing themselves to become overcodified. Whole groups depart; they become nomads. Archaeologists have led us to conceive of this nomadism not as a primary state, but as an adventure suddenly embarked upon by sedentary groups impelled by the attraction of movement, of what lies outside."

"It is common knowledge that nomads fare miserably under our kinds of regime: we will go to any lengths in order to settle them, and they barely have enough to subsist on …. But the nomad is not necessarily one who moves: some voyages take place in situ, are trips in intensity. Even historically, nomads are not necessarily those who move about like migrants. On the contrary, they do not move; nomads, they nevertheless stay in the same place and continually evade the codes of settled people. We also know that the problem for revolutionaries today is to unite within the purpose of the particular struggle without falling into the despotic and bureaucratic organisation of the party or state apparatus. We seek a kind of war-machine that will not re-create a state apparatus, a nomadic unit related to the outside that will not revive an internal despotic unity."

"And even if the journey is a motionless one, even if it occurs on the spot, imperceptible, unexpected, and subterranean, we must ask ourselves, 'Who are our nomads today …?'"

(Gilles Deleuze, "Nomad Thought")

la calle / the street ...

2010-12-09T19:14:00.004-05:00

La calle

Es una calle larga y silenciosa.

Ando en tinieblas y tropiezo y caigo

y me levanto y piso con pies ciegos

las piedras mudas y las hojas secas

y alguien detrás de mí también las pisa:

si me detengo, se detiene;

si corro, corre. Vuelvo el rostro: nadie.

Todo está oscuro y sin salida,

y doy vueltas y vueltas en esquinas

que dan siempre a la calle

donde nadie me espera ni me sigue,

donde yo sigo a un hombre que tropieza

y se levanta y dice al verme: nadie.

– Octavio Paz

The Street

A long and silent street.

I walk in blackness and I stumble and fall

and rise, and I walk blind, my feet

stepping on silent stones and dry leaves.

Someone behind me also stepping on stones, leaves:

if I slow down, he slows;

if I run, he runs. I turn: nobody.

Everything dark and doorless.

Turning and turning among these corners

which lead forever to the street,

where nobody waits for, nobody follows me,

where I pursue a man who stumbles

and rises and says when he sees me: nobody

– Octavio Paz (Trans. Muriel Rukeyser)

aguardo

2010-12-06T22:19:00.002-05:00

aguardo

sem guarda-chuva

nem anjo da guarda

identicalities 4

2010-12-06T22:15:00.000-05:00

(sur)real freedom ...

2010-11-23T14:11:00.003-05:00

"the idea that freedom, acquired here on earth at the price of a thousand – and the most difficult – renunciations, must be enjoyed as unrestrictedly as it is granted, without pragmatic considerations of any sort, and this because human emancipation – conceived finally in its simplest revolutionary form, which is no less than human emancipation in every respect, by which I mean according to the means at every man's disposal – remains the only cause worth serving. Nadja was born to serve it, if only by demonstrating that around himself each individual must foment a private conspiracy, which exists not only in his imagination – of which, it would be best, from the standpoint of knowledge alone, to take account – but also – and much more dangerously--by thrusting one's head, then an arm, out of the jail – thus shattered – of logic, that is, out of the most hateful of prisons."

(André Breton, Nadja. Transl. Richard Howard)

re-vê-la

2010-11-21T09:20:00.001-05:00

foda

2010-11-20T22:54:00.003-05:00

e agora,

como é que pode?

você me fode,

e vai embora ...

a minha revolta,

é ato de desespero!

de fato eu espero

a sua volta ...

A Red, Red Rose

2010-11-19T18:22:00.002-05:00

(For my love …)

O my Luve 's like a red, red rose

That 's newly sprung in June:

O my Luve 's like the melodie

That's sweetly play'd in tune!

As fair art thou, my bonnie lass, 5

So deep in luve am I:

And I will luve thee still, my dear,

Till a' the seas gang dry:

Till a' the seas gang dry, my dear,

And the rocks melt wi' the sun; 10

I will luve thee still, my dear,

While the sands o' life shall run.

And fare thee weel, my only Luve,

And fare thee weel a while!

And I will come again, my Luve, 15

Tho' it were ten thousand mile.

– Robert Burns

a sharp, sharp thorn

2010-11-19T18:05:00.006-05:00

my love's like a red, red rose

your love's like a sharp, sharp thorn

dream within a dream ...

2010-11-05T22:30:00.002-05:00

"Ese múltiple dios le reveló que su nombre terrenal era Fuego, que en ese templo circular (y en otros iguales) le habían rendido sacrificios y culto y que mágicamente animaría al fantasma soñado, de suerte que todas las criaturas, excepto el Fuego mismo y el soñador, lo pensaran un hombre de carne y hueso. Le ordenó que una vez instruido en los ritos, lo enviaría al otro templo despedazado cuyas pirámides persisten aguas abajo, para que alguna voz lo glorificara en aquel edificio desierto. En el sueño del hombre que soñaba, el soñado se despertó."

(Jorge Luis Borges, "Las ruínas circulares." Ficciones.)

"The manifold god revealed to the man that its earthly name was Fire, and that in that circular temple (and others like it) men had made sacrifices and worshipped it, and that it would magically bring to life the phantasm the man had dreamed – so fully bring him to life that every creature, save Fire itself and the man who dreamed him, would take him for a man of flesh and blood. Fire ordered the dreamer to send the youth, once instructed in the rites, to that other ruined temple whose pyramids still stood downriver, so that a voice might glorify the god in that deserted place. In the dreaming man's dream, the dreamed man awoke."

(Jorge Luis Borges, "The Circular Ruins." Fictions. Trans. Andrew Hurley)

on revolution ...

2010-10-21T07:29:00.001-05:00

"Revolution is war. Of all the wars known in history, it is the only lawful, rightful, just, and truly great war."

(Vladimir Lenin, quoted in Sergei Eisenstein's The Battleship Potemkin)

reflection(s) on art ...

2010-10-19T16:08:00.002-05:00

"Art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible."

– Paul Klee, "Creative Credo." (Trans. Norbert Guterman)

"Art is not a reflection of reality. It's the reality of a reflection."

– Jean-Luc Godard, La chinoise

master vs. slave ...

2010-10-19T16:03:00.001-05:00

"Two equals struggle each for recognition by the other: the one is willing to sacrifice life for this supreme value. The other, a heroic coward in the … sense of loving the body and the material world too well, gives in, in order to continue life. The Master – now the fulfillment of a baleful and inhuman feudal-aristocratic disdain for life without honor – proceeds to enjoy the benefits of his recognition by the other, now become his humble serf or slave. But at this point two distinct and dialectically ironic reversals take place: only the Master is now genuinely human, so that 'recognition' by this henceforth sub-human form of life which is the slave evaporates at the moment of its attainment and offers no genuine satisfaction. 'The truth of the Master,' Hegel observes grimly, 'is the Slave; while the truth of the Slave, on the other hand, is the Master.' But a second reversal is in process as well: for the slave is called upon to labor for the master and to furnish him with all the material benefits befitting his supremacy. But this means that, in the end, only the slave knows what reality and the resistance of matter really are; only the slave can attain some true materialistic consciousness of his situation, since it is precisely to that that he is condemned. The Master, however, is condemned to idealism – to the luxury of a placeless freedom in which any consciousness of his own concrete situation flees like a dream, like a word unremembered on the tip of the tongue, a nagging doubt which the puzzled mind is unable to formulate."

(Fredric Jameson, "Third-World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism")

América es real maravillosa ...

2010-10-14T10:09:00.002-05:00

"Pero es que muchos se olvidan, con disfrazarse de magos a poco costo, que lo maravilloso comienza a serlo de manera inequívoca cuando surge de una inesperada alteración de la realidad (el milagro), de una revelación privilegiada de la realidad, de una iluminación inhabitual o singularmente favorecedora de las inadvertidas riquezas de la realidad, de una ampliación de las escalas y categorías de la realidad, percibidas con particular intensidad en virtud de una exaltación del espíritu que lo conduce a un modo de 'estado límite'".

...

"¿Pero qué es la historia de América toda sino una crónica de lo real maravilloso?"

(Alejo Carpentier, Prólogo a El reino de este mundo)

http://www.lajiribilla.cubaweb.cu/2001/n32_diciembre/859_32.html

identicalities 3

2010-10-13T23:53:00.004-05:00

La poesía es fantástica ...

2010-10-13T21:00:00.001-05:00

"Ya no sé quién dijo, una vez, hablando de la posible definición de la poesía, que la poesía es eso que se queda afuera, cuando hemos terminado de definir la poesía. Creo que esa misma definición podría aplicarse a lo fantástico, de modo que, en vez de buscar una definición preceptiva de lo que es lo fantástico, en la literatura o fuera de ella, yo pienso que es mejor que cada uno de ustedes, como lo hago yo mismo, consulte su propio mundo interior, sus propias vivencias, y se plantee personalmente el problema de esas situaciones, de esas irrupciones, de esas llamadas coincidencias en que de golpe nuestra inteligencia y nuestra sensibilidad tienen la impresión de que las leyes, a que obedecemos habitualmente, no se cumplen del todo o se están cumpliendo de una manera parcial, o están dando su lugar a una excepción."

(Julio Cortázar, "El sentimiento de lo fantástico")

http://www.ciudadseva.com/textos/teoria/opin/cortaz5.htm

(i)legal

2010-10-11T16:42:00.002-05:00

On (Third) World Intellectuals ...

2010-10-11T16:16:00.002-05:00

"All of which slowly brings us to the question of the writer himself in the third world, and to what must be called the function of the intellectual, it being understood that in the third-world situation the intellectual is always in one way or another a political intellectual. No third-world lesson is more timely or more urgent for us today, among whom the very term 'intellectual' has withered away, as though it were the name for an extinct species."

…

"We have allowed ourselves, as first-world cultural intellectuals, to restrict our consciousness of our life's work to the narrowest professional or bureaucratic terms, thereby encouraging in ourselves a special sense of subalternity and guilt, which only reinforces the vicious circle. That a literary article could be a political act, with real consequences, is for most of us little more than a curiosity of … literary history."

(Fredric Jameson, "Third-World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism")

poor trait of an artist

2010-10-02T16:14:00.003-05:00

ripples on the sea of time,
waves upon the shore,
once upon an ever after,
once forever more

the sun projects a shadow,
I suspect it might be mine,
on a path towards the horizon,
where the heavens draw the line

a portrait of reflection
in the mirror of my eye,
as I answer with a question:
why not ask not why?

I walk along ahead against
the current moment past
the dunes of never ever
doomed to beg again,
to begin again,
to beg to begin again
at last ...

Danger Mouth …

2010-09-26T13:47:00.004-05:00

"I would have preferred to be enveloped in words, borne way beyond all possible beginnings. At the moment of speaking, I would like to have perceived a nameless voice, long preceding me, leaving me merely to enmesh myself in it, taking up its cadence, and to lodge myself when no one was looking, in its interstices as if it had paused an instant, in suspense, to beckon me. There would have been no beginnings: instead, speech would proceed from me, while I stood in its path—a slender gap—the point of its possible disappearance.

…

A good many people, I imagine, harbour a similar desire to be freed from the obligation to begin, a similar desire to find themselves, right from the outside, on the other side of discourse, without having to stand outside it, pondering its particular, fearsome, and even devilish features. To this all too common feeling, institutions have an ironic reply, for they solemnize beginnings, surrounding them with a circle of silent attention; in order that they can be distinguished from far off, they impose ritual forms upon them.

Inclination speaks out: 'I don't want to have to enter this risky world of discourse; I want nothing to do with it insofar as it is decisive and final; I would like to feel it all around me, calm and transparent, profound, infinitely open, with others responding to my expectations, and truth emerging, one by one. All I want is to allow myself to be borne along, within it, and by it, a happy wreck.' Institutions reply: 'But you have nothing to fear from launching out; we're here to show you discourse is within the established order of things, that we've waited a long time for its arrival, that a place has been set aside for it - a place that both honours and disarms it; and if it should have a certain power, then it is we, and we alone, who give it that power.'

Yet, maybe this institution and this inclination are but two converse responses to the same anxiety: anxiety as to just what discourse is, when it is manifested materially, as a written or spoken object; but also, uncertainty faced with a transitory existence, destined for oblivion—at any rate, not belonging to us; uncertainty at the suggestion of barely imaginable powers and dangers behind this activity, however humdrum and grey it may seem; uncertainty when we suspect the conflicts, triumphs, injuries, dominations and enslavements that lie behind these words, even when long use has chipped away their rough edges.

What is so perilous, then, in the fact that people speak, and that their speech proliferates? Where is the danger in that?"

(Michel Foucault, "The Discourse on Language." Trans. A. M. Sheridan Smith)

On theater and cinema ...

2010-09-21T17:12:00.003-05:00

"'The theater,' says Baudelaire, 'is a crystal chandelier.' If one were called upon to offer in comparison a symbol other than this artificial crystal-like object, brilliant, intricate, and circular, which refracts the light which plays around its center and holds us prisoners of its aureole, we might say of the cinema that it is the little flashlight of the usher, moving like an uncertain comet across the night of our waking dream, the diffuse space without shape or frontiers that surrounds the screen."

(André Bazin, What is Cinema? Trans. Hugh Gray)

House of Being ...

2010-09-14T09:56:00.001-05:00

"Language is the house of Being. In its home man dwells. Those who think and those who create with words are the guardians of this home. Their guardianship accomplishes the manifestation of Being insofar as they bring the manifestation to language and maintain it in language through their speech."

(Martin Heidegger, "Letter on Humanism." Trans. J. Glenn Gray)

(re)enter Caliban ...

2010-09-09T21:39:00.005-05:00

"CALIBAN

As wicked dew as e'er my mother brush'd
With raven's feather from unwholesome fen
Drop on you both! a south-west blow on ye
And blister you all o'er!

PROSPERO

For this, be sure, to-night thou shalt have cramps,
Side-stitches that shall pen thy breath up; urchins
Shall, for that vast of night that they may work,
All exercise on thee; thou shalt be pinch'd
As thick as honeycomb, each pinch more stinging
Than bees that made 'em.

CALIBAN

I must eat my dinner.
This island's mine, by Sycorax my mother,
Which thou takest from me. When thou camest first,
Thou strokedst me and madest much of me, wouldst give me
Water with berries in't, and teach me how
To name the bigger light, and how the less,
That burn by day and night: and then I loved thee
And show'd thee all the qualities o' the isle,
The fresh springs, brine-pits, barren place and fertile:
Cursed be I that did so! All the charms
Of Sycorax, toads, beetles, bats, light on you!
For I am all the subjects that you have,
Which first was mine own king: and here you sty me
In this hard rock, whiles you do keep from me
The rest o' the island.

PROSPERO

Thou most lying slave,
Whom stripes may move, not kindness! I have used thee,
Filth as thou art, with human care, and lodged thee
In mine own cell, till thou didst seek to violate
The honour of my child.

CALIBAN

O ho, O ho! would't had been done!
Thou didst prevent me; I had peopled else
This isle with Calibans.

PROSPERO

Abhorred slave,
Which any print of goodness wilt not take,
Being capable of all ill! I pitied thee,
Took pains to make thee speak, taught thee each hour
One thing or other: when thou didst not, savage,
Know thine own meaning, but wouldst gabble like
A thing most brutish, I endow'd thy purposes
With words that made them known. But thy vile race,
Though thou didst learn, had that in't which
good natures
Could not abide to be with; therefore wast thou
Deservedly confined into this rock,
Who hadst deserved more than a prison.

CALIBAN

You taught me language; and my profit on't
Is, I know how to curse. The red plague rid you
For learning me your language!"

(William Shakespeare, The Tempest)

*http://shakespeare.mit.edu/tempest/full.html

diálogos (des)familiares 2

2010-09-07T19:47:00.004-05:00

Idade nova

Filho: Você tá ficando velhinho?

Pai: Tô ficando mais velho, sim. E você, tá ficando velhinho?

Filho: Não tô ficando velhinho, não ... Tô ficando novinho!

Bon Voyage ...

2010-09-07T16:47:00.002-05:00

- oui, pour toi, ma T.

"Tu connais cette maladie fiévreuse qui s'empare de nous dans les froides misères, cette nostalgie du pays qu'on ignore, cette angoisse de la curiosité? Il est une contrée qui te ressemble, où tout est beau, riche, tranquille et honnête, où la fantaisie a bâti et décoré une Chine occidentale, où la vie est douce à respirer, où le bonheur est marié au silence. C'est là qu'il faut aller vivre, c'est là qu'il faut aller mourir!

Oui, c'est là qu'il faut aller respirer, rêver et allonger les heures par l'infini des sensations. Un musicien a écrit l'Invitation à la valse; quel est celui qui composera l'Invitation au voyage, qu'on puisse offrir à la femme aimée, à la soeur d'élection?

Oui, c'est dans cette atmosphère qu'il ferait bon vivre, - là-bas, où les heures plus lentes contiennent plus de pensées, où les horloges sonnent le bonheur avec une plus profonde et plus significative solennité."

(…)

"Des rêves! toujours des rêves! et plus l'âme est ambitieuse et délicate, plus les rêves l'éloignent du possible. Chaque homme porte en lui sa dose d'opium naturel, incessamment sécrétée et renouvelée, et, de la naissance à la mort, combien comptons-nous d'heures remplies par la jouissance positive, par l'action réussie et décidée? Vivrons-nous jamais, passerons-nous jamais dans ce tableau qu'a peint mon esprit, ce tableau qui te ressemble?

Ces trésors, ces meubles, ce luxe, cet ordre, ces parfums, ces fleurs miraculeuses, c'est toi. C'est encore toi, ces grands fleuves et ces canaux tranquilles. Ces énormes navires qu'ils charrient, tout chargés de richesses, et d'où montent les chants monotones de la manoeuvre, ce sont mes pensées qui dorment ou qui roulent sur ton sein. Tu les conduis doucement vers la mer qui est l'infini, tout en réfléchissant les profondeurs du ciel dans la limpidité de ta belle âme; - et quand, fatigués par la houle et gorgés des produits de l'Orient, ils rentrent au port natal, ce sont encore mes pensées enrichies qui reviennent de l'Infini vers toi."

(Charles Baudelaire, "L'invitation au Voyage." Petites poèmes en prose: le spleen de Paris)

"Você conhece esta doença febril que toma conta de nós nas frias misérias, esta nostalgia da terra que ignoramos, esta angústia da curiosidade? Existe uma região que se parece com você, onde tudo é belo, rico, tranqüilo e honesto, onde a fantasia construiu e decorou uma China ocidental, onde a vida é doce de se respirar, onde a felicidade está casada com o silêncio. É lá que é preciso ir viver, é lá que é preciso ir morrer!

Sim, é lá que é preciso ir respirar, sonhar e alongar as horas pelo infinito das sensações. Um músico escreveu O convite à valsa, quem é que irá compor O convite a viagem, que se possa ofertar à mulher amada, à irmã dileta?

Sim, é nesta atmosfera que seria bom viver - lá, onde as horas, mais lentas, contêm mais pensamentos, onde os relógios batem a felicidade com mais profunda e significativa solenidade."

(...)

"Sonhos! Sempre sonhos! E quanto mais ambiciosa e delicada é a alma, mais sonhos a afastam do possível. Cada homem traz em si sua dose de ópio natural, incessantemente secretada e renovada, e, do nascimento à morte, quantas das horas que contamos são repletas de gozo positivo, de ação bem-sucedida e decidida? Haveremos de viver, de passar algum dia para este quadro que meu espírito pintou, este quadro que se parece com você?

Estes tesouros, estes móveis, este luxo, esta ordem, estes aromas, estas flores milagrosas, são você. São ainda você, estes grandes rios e estes canais tranquilos. Estes enormes navios que eles carregam, todos repletos de riquezas, e de onde se elevam os cantos monótonos da manobra, são meus pensamentos que dormem ou que rolam sobre o seu seio. Você os conduz suavemente para o mar que é o Infinito, refletindo as profundezas do céu na limpidez de sua alma linda - e quando, cansados pelo marulho e cevados dos produtos do Oriente, eles voltam ao porto natal, são ainda meus pensamentos enriquecidos que voltam do Infinito a você."

(Charles Baudelaire, "O Convite à Viagem". Pequenos poemas em prosa: O spleen de Paris. Traduzido por Dorothée de Bruchard.)

Beauty and the Fool ...

2010-09-06T18:35:00.003-05:00

"Et ses yeux disent: « Je suis le dernier et le plus solitaire des humains, privé d'amour et d'amitié, et bien inférieur en cela au plus imparfait des animaux. Cependant je suis fait, moi aussi, pour comprendes et sentir l'immortelle Beauté! Ah! Déesse! ayez pitié de ma tristesse et de mon délire! »

Mais l'implacable Vénus regarde au loin je ne sais quoi avec ses yeux de marbre."

(Charles Baudelaire, "Le Fou et la Vénus")

"And his eyes said: 'I am the least of humans and the most solitary, deprived of love and friendship, and thus inferior to the most imperfect of animals. But still I was created, I too, to perceive and feel immortal Beauty! Ah, Goddess! Have pity on my sorrow and my madness!'

But the implacable Venus with her eyes of marble only gazed out at something, I don't know what, in the distance."

(Charles Baudelaire, "The Fool and Venus." Translated by Raymond N. MacKenzie)

já era

2010-08-23T22:36:00.001-05:00

era uma vez ...
... nunca mais

Eldorado, ou a Terra Brasilis em Transe

2010-08-22T08:40:00.027-05:00

Eldorado

– Edgar Allen Poe

Gaily bedight,

A gallant knight,

In sunshine and in shadow,

Had journeyed long,

Singing a song,

In search of Eldorado.

But he grew old-

This knight so bold-

And o'er his heart a shadow

Fell as he found

No spot of ground

That looked like Eldorado.

And, as his strength

Failed him at length,

He met a pilgrim shadow-

"Shadow," said he,

"Where can it be-

This land of Eldorado?"

"Over the Mountains

Of the Moon,

Down the Valley of the Shadow,

Ride, boldly ride,"

The shade replied-

"If you seek for Eldorado!"

Mapa do lago Parime, Hessel Gerritsz (1625) [1]

Eldorado: terra imaginária ou fantástica, repleta de delícias e riquezas. Existiria no Norte da América do Sul, às margens do lago Parime. Seria a cidade lendária de Manoa, o "lago" ("manoa") del dorado. Uma utopia que nem a Terra Prometida, um mito que nem a Idade de Ouro.

Terra Brasilis, Atlas Miller (1519) [2]

Terra Brasilis: nome dado à terra brasileira na carta Tabula hec regionis magni Brasilis, mapa renascentista atribuído aos renomados cartógrafos portugueses Lopo Homem, Pedro Reinel e Jorge Reinel, que criaram a Atlas Miller de 1519 [3]. É uma terra real e surreal ao mesmo tempo, a história de uma exploração geográfica e econômica do mesmo espaço. A imagem exótica retrata a extração do pau-brasil nativo e a subjugação dos povos indígenas pelos navegadores e conquistadores estrangeiros que descobriram e fundaram este novo mundo nos trópicos.

Glauber Rocha [4]

Transe: 1 Lance difícil, momento crítico, situação angustiosa. 2 Susto ou apreensão de um mal que se julga próximo. 3 Crise, lance, perigo. 4 Ato ou feito arriscado. 5 Combate, duelo. 6 Aflição, dor, angústia. 7 Falecimento. 8 Ânsia mortal; agonia. 9 Inquietação, medo. 10 Estado de subordinação do hipnotizado ao hipnotizador. 11 Folc Estado em que ficam, nos candomblés, os cavalos-de-santo para receber a visita de um orixá. [5]

Cartaz do filme Terra em transe (1967)

Terra em transe: filme polêmico de Glauber Rocha, diretor consagrado do movimento cinema novo, que surgiu durante um momento crítico e fundamental da cultura brasileira (e latino-americana) através de um diálogo internacional. Manifesto "prático" de um cinema tricontinental, revolucionário, visando à descolonização cultural e vislumbrando a invenção cinematográfica através da intervenção de uma eztetyka da fome (ou da violência), produzida apenas por "uma câmera na mão, e uma idéia na cabeça." A história se passa em Eldorado, país tropical com capital homônima, e representa uma clara – embora enigmática – alegoria do Brasil que implica toda a América Latina. Entre os seus personagens principais estão figuras emblemáticas como: o elitista fanático Porfírio Diaz, senador conservador que conspira para coroar-se imperador; o demagogo populista Felipe Vieira, vereador e depois governador da província de Alecrim, que aspira a eleger-se presidente da República; o burguês liberal Don Julio Fuentes, empresário e dono da mídia nacional, cujos negócios estão ameaçados de extinção pela concorrência imperialista – ou neo-colonialista – da empresa multinacional Explint (Compañia de Explotaciones Internacionales); e o jornalista e poeta Paulo Martins, narrador-protagonista ambivalente e dividido entre as diversas contradições presentes, que incorpora, então, diante da dialética deste entre-lugar, "a consciência em transe de Eldorado" [6]. Figura(s) em transe de uma terra em transe ... Como seria este Eldorado alegórico, o que significaria este transe metafórico no filme Terra em transe?

transição

Ao longo do filme Terra em transe, Eldorado passa por um "lance difícil", um "momento crítico" na sua história que se torna uma "situação angustiosa" que proporciona, à consciência, o "susto ou apreensão de um mal que se julga próximo". A "crise" e o "perigo" que a caracteriza surgem do embate entre um populismo progressista, por um lado, e um fascismo reacionário, pelo outro, e culminam tanto no "falecimento" (ou morte) da República por conta do coup d'etat, quanto na "ânsia mortal" da revolução cultural por causa da repressão política. Esta passagem da democracia para a ditadura, do sonho idealista para um pesadelo realista, figura como uma transição que marca Eldorado como uma terra em transe.

A transição pela qual Eldorado passa em Terra em transe é uma alegoria do momento histórico que o Brasil sofre nos anos 60, quando a instabilidade ou "inquietação" cultural devida aos movimentos sociais e/ou socialistas cria as condições para um golpe de estado em 1964 que depõe o então presidente da República, João Goulart, e institui a ditadura e seu regime militar. Esta transição atingiu também o próprio movimento do cinema novo, que surgiu no início da década com idéias utópicas e pretenções revolucionárias não apenas para o cinema nacional, mas para toda a cultura brasileira. Apesar das naturais divergências entre os autores e/ou diretores, houve um sentimento profundo de desilusão e desespero comum devido às circunstâncias em nada ideais: a realidade da demagogia de uma esquerda impotente diante da ideologia de uma direita poderosa. O filme, então, alegoricamente questiona qual seria o papel e/ou o lugar do artista-cineasta diante desta configuração complexa (e contraditória) de interesses políticos, sociais, econômicos e culturais. Assim, o jornalista e poeta Paulo transita entre as figuras de Diaz, Vieira e Fuentes sem encontrar um modo de sintetizar a estética e a política, de consolidar a vocação intelectual com o compromisso social, senão através do seu martírio e da sua morte. Diga-se de passagem, a "agonia" ambígua do poeta, fuzil erguido ao céu com ar heróico de resistência, talvez em si indique outro caminho – o da violência – para que a revolução stricto sensu se realize após o momento de transe e/ou transição.

transcrição

O transe do Eldorado, além de figurar como alegoria da transição pelo qual o Brasil passa, representa também uma forma de transcrição da História para a história do filme Terra em transe. Não se trata de uma "cópia literal de um escrito", mas a condensação ou "redução de um sistema de escrita a outro": a cinematografia [7]. A preponderância da citada técnica da "câmera na mão", tão característica do cinema novo, faz com que o filme se torne uma forma de documento, uma versão original do chamado cinéma-vérité. Segundo Glauber Rocha, o filme exibe um "tom documentário. Tudo o que pode parecer imaginário é de fato verdadeiro" [8]. O diretor ainda acrescenta que

O que aconteceu com Terra em transe foi que muitas pessoas disseram tratar-se de uma invenção surrealista quando o filme era um documentário extremamente verdadeiro. Quando se estuda a sua técnica, ainda que o estilo seja bastante desigual, nota-se que, em planos muito diferentes, a câmera tem uma posição documental .... Eu filmei os jornais, as transmissões da televisão [9].

De fato, a técnica de filmagem às vezes remonta a do cine-jornal da época, e inclusive há planos retirados do documentário e/ou "reportagem" Maranhão 66, curta metragem de Glauber Rocha sobre a política. Tais técnicas e transposições acrescentam tanto a verossimilhança quanto a veracidade da representação encenada da história. O transe do Eldorado então se manifestaria como uma transcrição verdadeira do real, uma realidade historiográfica além de uma surrealidade cinematográfica.

transformação

Como transcrição de uma transição, o transe do Eldorado no fundo visa uma terra em transformação. Na verdade, o que se procura revelar em Terra em transe é a figura da revolução, a libertação do povo brasileiro e/ou latino-americano através de uma(s) tomada(s) de consciência e muita luz, câmera e ação. No país de Eldorado, o real é surreal, uma realidade absurda e irracional. Faz sentido, então, o que diz Glauber Rocha, quando afirma que "o surrealismo é coisa latina .... O nosso não é o surrealismo do sonho, mas da realidade" [10]. Mas qual seria a função deste surrealismo tropical, este denominado "tropicalismo"? O diretor acrescenta que

A função histórica do surrealismo no mundo hispano-americano oprimido foi aquela de ser instrumento para o pensamento em direção a uma liberação anárquica, a única possível. Hoje utilizada dialeticamente, em sentido profundamente político, em direção ao esclarecimento e à agitação. [11]

De fato, lembra-se que o surrealismo histórico de André Breton visava transmutar as energias do inconsciente em ações conscientes. A liberação da consciência individual então possibilitaria a libertação coletiva, a realização de uma revolução social. Por sua vez, o "tropicalismo" de Glauber Rocha e do cinema novo, ao trazer à luz a verdade mascarada de uma (sur)realidade latina, proporciona consciência e ação ao mesmo tempo. Quando o diretor diz que fez Terra em transe "com a aspiração de que fosse uma bomba. Lançada com toda intenção", fica evidente como os autores do movimento pretendiam promover uma revolução tanto no sentido estético quanto político [12]. O transe então figura como "ato ou feito arriscado", além de um "combate" ou "duelo" entre forças antagônicas e/ou contraditórias. Em Eldorado é o poeta-escritor, dilacerado por forças interiores (psíquicas) e exteriores (sociais), que arrisca a própria vida para lutar contra o poder e transformar o mundo. Apesar do seu sacrifício, realiza a revolução apenas como alucinação, como visão ou fantasia. No entanto, como a forma e o conteúdo se complementam, as inovações técnicas e estruturais do filme realizam outro modo de transformação, uma revolução cinematográfica, que visa tanto à formação de um novo cinema quanto a de um novo (3º) mundo, através da descolonização cultural.

transculturação

Eldorado, como o Brasil, é um país subdesenvolvido, colonizado pela exploração internacional e "hipnotizado" pela ordem e progresso nacional. Terra em transe então retrata um Estado em "estado de subordinação" por forças econômicas, políticas, sociais e culturais. Para se libertar do neo-colonialismo, a revolução do cinema novo visava à transformação da realidade atual através de uma teoria e prática de transculturação. Além das citadas relações entre o tropicalismo latino-americano e o surrealismo europeu, nota-se que Terra em transe dialoga com o cinema capitalista de Hollywood e o cinema socialista de Moscou. Por um lado, há referências ao filme Citizen Kane, de Orson Welles, como a estrutura do flashback e a representação dos noticiários [13]. Como admite Glauber Rocha:

Trata-se de uma referência quista e programada. Sem querer nenhum paralelo, porque para mim o filme de Welles é uma obra excepcional, pretendi mesmo realizar uma espécie de paródia a Cidadão Kane, pois, aquele filme me parecia apresentar a estrutura idealista de filme político americano, e visto que o Brasil é uma colônia latino-americana, me parecia útil e significativo nos confrontos da situação brasileira. Assumi Cidadão Kane como ponto de referência. [14]

Por outro lado, há a influência das teorias cinematográficas de Sergei Eisenstein, como a técnica da montagem vertical (imagem + som) que acompanha o monólogo interior do poeta na última seqüência do filme, quando o transe do Eldorado culmina com a coroação de Diaz e a derrota de Paulo [15]. A confluência de tais referências e/ou influências sintetiza várias tendências cinematográficas internacionais do 1º mundo em prol da formação de um cinema nacional e tricontinental do 3º mundo.

O diálogo do cinema novo com o cinema de autor europeu, o cinema commercial americano e o cinema revolucionário soviético, ao invés de tratar de uma dependência cultural, na verdade trata de uma apropriação crítica e subversiva da tradição do cinema mundial para a criação de um cinema original, diferente. Segundo Glauber Rocha:

Quando fiz Terra em transe ... quis que fosse uma ruptura a mais radical possível com esse tipo de influências .... Terra em transe foi a tentativa de conseguir em cinema uma expressão complexa, indefinida, mas própria e autêntica a respeito de tudo que poderia ser um cinema da América Latina. [16]

Assim como a cultura latino-americana, o cinema novo assume uma face mestiça e/ou híbrida através da mistura antológica de diversos códigos cinematográficos. Para Glauber Rocha, a transculturação se torna um ritual: um culto ao cinema. Como ato selvagem de homenagem, o bárbaro devora os produtos da civilização, e o universal é incorporado e então transformado pelo local. A descolonização cultural se realiza através da in(ter)venção de uma outra eztetyka, (in)formada por uma lógica dialética e antropofágica. Deste modo, Terra em transe combina aspectos modernos e folclóricos, históricos e mitológicos, religiosos e mágicos, e até eruditos e populares. Afinal, o transe do Eldorado gira em torno de melodias de música clássica e jazz, por um lado, e ritmos de samba e candomblé, por outro, gerando figuras (quase que) possuídas e/ou alteradas por forças tanto alheias quanto próprias.

transfiguração

Figuras em transe de uma terra em transe ... o que significaria este transe metafórico no filme Terra em transe, como seria este Eldorado alegórico? Segundo Glauber Rocha:

Convulsão, choque de partidos, de tendências políticas, de interesses econômicos, violentas disputas pelo poder é o que ocorre em Eldorado, país ou ilha tropical. Situei o filme aí porque me interessava o problema geral do transe latino-americano e não somente do brasileiro. Queria abrir o tema "transe", ou seja a instabilidade das consciências. É um momento de crise, é a consciência do barravento. [17]

Afinal, o transe do Eldorado se realiza através da alteração de consciências, da passagem ou transição para outro estado de consciência, para outra realidade. O transe prefigura o chamado "barravento", ou "momento de transformação", que seria o momento da revolução e da descolonização cultural [18]. Deste modo, a história do Eldorado em Terra em transe se torna a transfiguração da história do Brasil, das suas origens até o momento atual. Os personagens são figuras ou tipos significativos, personificações de diversas forças (sur)reais. Por exemplo, Diaz entra em cena reencenando o descobrimento, e rouba a cena com o coup d'etat. O ciclo da exploração se repete, como o ciclo narrativo em flashback do próprio filme. Assim, o tempo cíclico transforma a própria história em mito, em uma "alegoria de subdesenvolvimento" [19]. Neste anti-drama (neo)barroco, carnavalesco e tropicalista, a alegoria se manifesta em forma de outra estética, de outro discurso: o cinema novo. Como diria Haroldo de Campos, seria exemplo de "um duplo dizer do outro como diferença: dizer um código de alteridades e dizê-lo em condição alterada" [20]. Como consciência "alterada" da subalternidade, o transe do Eldorado, enfim, se reflete no transe cinematográfico, que visa à invenção de um novo cinema, à construção de um novo mundo.

Gilles Deleuze, ao comentar a obra de Glauber Rocha, destaca a significância fundamental do transe no que seria um "cinema de minorias" [21]:

O transe, o fazer entrar em transe é uma transição, passagem ou devir: é ele que torna possível ou ato de fala, através da ideologia do colonizador, dos mitos do colonizado, dos discursos do intelectual. O autor faz entrarem em transe as partes, para contribuir à invenção de seu povo. [22]

O transe, então, possibilitaria a ação, o discurso do outro, a invenção de um "povo" que viria a ser. Por sua vez, Terra em transe, como "manifesto prático da estética da fome" segundo Glauber Rocha, trata da (re)invenção de um país e/ou continente, da (des)construção da sua história, através de um cinema novo e tricontinental que conclamaria a própria voz e/ou existência do 3º mundo [23]. Se o transe do Eldorado é, por um lado, tanto uma alegoria do Brasil quanto da América Latina, por outro lado, constata-se que Eldorado, como lugar utópico, não existe e nunca existiu em "lugar nenhum", senão como fantasia. Como no Carnaval, a fantasia revela a inconsciência da realidade tropical, enquanto a alegoria transfigura a história em outra, uma heuztorya alter-nativa e certamente mito-lógica: "Eldorado, ou a Terra Brasilis em transe".

*apresentado no Décimo Congresso Internacional da BRASA (Brazilian Studies Association), Brasília - DF, 22-24 de julho de 2010

Notas:

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Guaiana_ofte_de_Provincien_tusschen_Rio_de_las_Amazonas_ende_Rio_de_Yuiapari_ofte_Orinoque.jpg

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Brazil_16thc_map.jpg

[3] Leia-se o texto de Maria Dulce de Faria, “A Representação Cartográfica no Brasil Colonial
na Coleção da Biblioteca Nacional.” http://consorcio.bn.br/cartografia/cart_colonial.html

[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Glauber_rocha.jpg

[5] Michaelis Moderno Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa.

http://michaelis.uol.com.br/moderno/portugues/index.php

[6] Hélio Pellegrino, citado em http://www.tempoglauber.com.br/f_terra.html

[7] Michaelis Moderno Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa.

http://michaelis.uol.com.br/moderno/portugues/index.php

[8] Glauber Rocha, Revolução do cinema novo. São Paulo: Cosac Naify, 2004. (p. 123)

[9] Glauber Rocha, Revolução do cinema novo. São Paulo: Cosac Naify, 2004. (p. 209-210)

[10] Glauber Rocha, Revolução do cinema novo. São Paulo: Cosac Naify, 2004. (p. 153)

[11] Glauber Rocha, Revolução do cinema novo. São Paulo: Cosac Naify, 2004. (p. 153)

[12] Glauber Rocha, Revolução do cinema novo. São Paulo: Cosac Naify, 2004. (p. 171)

[13] Leia-se Robert Stam, “Land in Anguish.” Brazilian Cinema. Ed. Randal Johnson and Robert Stam. New York: Columbia University Press, 1995.

[14] Glauber Rocha, Revolução do cinema novo. São Paulo: Cosac Naify, 2004. (p. 240)

[15] Leia-se Ismail Xavier, “Land in Anguish: Allegory and Irony”. Allegories of Underdevelopment: Aesthetics and Politics in Modern Brazilian Cinema. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1997.

[16] Glauber Rocha, Revolução do cinema novo. São Paulo: Cosac Naify, 2004. (p. 170)

[17] Glauber Rocha, citado em http://www.tempoglauber.com.br/f_terra.html

[18] Glauber Rocha, Reprodução do pressbook original escrito por Glauber Rocha para o lançamento commercial de Terra em transe em 8 de maio de 1967.

[19] O termo vem do livro de Ismail Xavier, Allegories of Underdevelopment: Aesthetics and Politics in Modern Brazilian Cinema. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1997.

[20] “Da Razão Antropofágica: Diálogo e Diferença na Cultura Brasileira.” Metalinguagem & outras metas: ensaios de teoria e crítica literária. São Paulo: Perspectiva, 2006. (p. 240-241)

[21] Gilles Deleuze, A imagem-tempo. Tradução Eloisa de Araujo Ribeiro. São Paulo: Brasiliense, 2005. (p. 262)

[22] Gilles Deleuze, A imagem-tempo. Tradução Eloisa de Araujo Ribeiro. São Paulo: Brasiliense, 2005. (p. 265)

[23] Glauber Rocha, “Eztetyka do sonho”. Revolução do cinema novo. São Paulo: Cosac Naify, 2004. (p. 248)

in honor of Caliban ...

2010-08-16T12:51:00.003-05:00

"But within the colonial world there exists a case unique to the entire planet: a vast zone for which mestizaje is not an accident but rather the essence, the central line: ourselves, 'our mestizo America.'" (p. 4)

"Our symbol then is not Ariel, as Rodó thought, but rather Caliban. This is something that we, the mestizo inhabitants of these same isles where Caliban lived, see with particular clarity: Prospero invaded the islands, killed our ancestors, enslaved Caliban, and taught him his language to make himself understood. What else can Caliban do but use that same language - today he has no other - to curse him, to wish that the 'red plague' would fall on him? I know no other metaphor more expressive of our cultural situation, of our reality." (p. 14)

"We can and must contribute to a true assessment of the history of the oppressors and that of the oppressed. But of course, the triumph of the latter will be the work, above all, of those for whom history is a function not of erudition but of deeds. It is they who will achieve the definitive triumph of the true America, reestablishing - this time in a different light - the unity of our immense continent." (p. 38-39)

(Roberto Fernández Retamar, "Caliban: Notes Toward a Discussion of Culture in Our America." Caliban and Other Essays. Trans. Edward Baker.)

cursing Prospero ...

2010-08-16T12:42:00.002-05:00

"... the intelligentsia that considers itself revolutionary must break all ties with its class of origin (frequently the petit bourgeoisie) and must besides sever the nexus of dependence upon the metropolitan culture from which it has learned, nonetheless, a language as well as a conceptual and technical apparatus. That language will be of profit, to use Shakespearean terminology, in cursing Prospero." (p. 40)

(Roberto Fernández Retamar, "Caliban: Notes Toward a Discussion of Culture in Our America." Caliban and Other Essays. Trans. Edward Baker.)

casa de areia

2010-08-11T14:34:00.000-05:00

duna do nada
além de tudo
miragem dourada
reflexo mudo
da lua na terra
deserta e alagada

areal do real
a casa de areia
a cada momento
semeia ideias
no ventre do vento
do espaço sideral

os passos perdidos
pelo homem afora
passam despercebidos
por outrem ... ora
a passagem do tempo
pela paisagem parada

a paisagem do tempo,
a passagem parada

*publicado no jornal Plástico Bolha Ano 5 - Número 28

www.jornalplasticobolha.com.br
jornalplasticobolha.blogspot.com

PLÁSTICO BOLHA #28 ... "É INVOLUNTÁRIO"

2010-08-11T14:29:00.001-05:00

"É com muita felicidade que contamos que, depois de uma longa pausa, finalmente nasce mais uma edição impressa do jornal literário Plástico Bolha. A edição #28 vem com muitas novidades, algumas reformulações e a boa literatura de sempre. Confira quem está na edição e aguarde, pois em breve o Plástico chegará até você!"

PLÁSTICO BOLHA #28
.
BEATRIZ BASTOS + ANGELO ABU + HEINZ LANGER + CLARA BALBI +

LAURA LIUZZI + DIEGO GRANDO + CLAUDIA CHIGRES +

ROSÁLIA MILSZTAJN + ANA BEATRIZ FERREIRA BATISTA +

TÂNIA TIBURZIO + LAURA ASSIS + CONSTANZA DE CÓRDOVA +

DIANA SANDES + LUCAS VIRIATO + LETÍCIA SIMÕES +

ANDRÉ CAPILÉ + SUELI RIOS + DOMINGOS GUIMARAENS +

SANTUZA CAMBRAIA NAVES + JONAS SOARES LANA +

MAURO FERREIRA + RODRIGO CAZES COSTA +

MIGUEL DEL CASTILLO + GRINGO CARIOCA + CARLOS JÚNIO +

JOÃO LIMA + FELIPE RIBEIRO + THIAGO ROCHA + ALINE OSORIO +

MIRIAM SUTTER + JOÃO INADA + LUIZ FERNANDO PRIAMO +

DADO AMARAL + ALICE SANT’ANNA + ANA GUADALUPE +

RAÏSSA DEGOES + LUCIANO LANZILLOTTI +

RUY ESPINHEIRA FILHO + ISMAR TIRELLI NETO

prazer

2010-08-03T23:14:00.005-05:00

tanto prazer
não ter nada pra dizer
nada pra valer
...
tudo a ver

o mar

2010-07-31T01:24:00.003-05:00

dia de sol:
o mar se encontra
só

identicalities II

2010-07-04T21:43:00.007-05:00

now here

2010-06-29T23:07:00.005-05:00

he was not from there. he was from somewhere other than there. he was from somewhere else, from who knows where. he came here from there, from somewhere other than here. he came, then, from there. he is therefore not from here, you know. in another place, in another time, there he was, and now he is here. here he is still. he is still here. there are many differences between here and there. here is much different than there. everywhere here is different from anywhere there. here is the difference: everything is different. everyone here is different. or, in other words, there is the difference: it is all different. always different. anyway … where is he now? nowhere, really. who is he now? who knows? no one really knows. here is a stranger in a strange land. another stranger in another, stranger land. in this no man's land no man from afar ever knows who i am or who you are. there is no way, no how, to know at all. no man knows anything about anybody. no one knows anyone, then. no man knows anybody other than himself. here comes everybody. however, there is nobody else. there is no one here, or there, or anywhere. by himself, alone with his lonesome self, he is never himself. he is someone being somebody else. he longs to belong to someone. he longs to be not apart, but a part of something. but he is a long way from there. he is not all there, really. he is all over the place. he is lost in time and in space. he wonders if there is anybody out there. and then nobody answers … here!

these odd ones ...

2010-06-29T22:59:00.004-05:00

"you won't see them often
for wherever the crowd is
they
are not.

these odd ones, not
many
but from them
come
the few
good paintings
the few
good symphonies
the few
good books
and other
works.

and from the
best of the
strange ones
perhaps
nothing.

they are
their own
paintings
their own
books
their own
music
their own
work."

(Charles Bukowski, "The Strongest of the Strange")

a new (third) world ...

2010-06-25T18:32:00.004-05:00

"Now, comrades, now is the time to decide to change sides. We must shake off the great mantle of night which has enveloped us, and reach for the light. The new day which is dawning must find us determined, enlightened and resolute."

"Man's condition, his projects and collaboration with others on tasks that strengthen man's totality, are new issues which require genuine inspiration.
Let us decide not to imitate Europe and let us tense our muscles and brains in a new direction. Let us endeavor to invent a man in full, something which Europe has been incapable of achieving."

"The Third World must start over a new history of man which takes account of not only the occasional prodigious theses maintained by Europe but also its crimes, the most heinous of which have been committed at the very heart of man, the pathological dismembering of his functions and the erosion of his unity, and in the context of the community, the fracture, the stratification and the bloody tensions fed by class, and finally, on the immense scale of humanity, the racial hatred, slavery, exploitation and, above all, the bloodless genocide whereby one and a half billion men have been written off."

"But if we want humanity to take one step forward, if we want to take it to another level than the one where Europe has placed it, then we must innovate, we must be pioneers."

"For Europe, for ourselves and for humanity, comrades, we must make a new start, develop a new way of thinking, and endeavor to create a new man."

(Frantz Fanon, Conclusion to The Wretched of the Earth. Trans. Richard Philcox.)

decolonize the mind ...

2010-06-23T00:00:00.007-05:00

"In its narcissistic monologue the colonialist bourgeoisie, by way of its academics, had implanted in the minds of the colonized that the essential values – meaning Western values – remain eternal despite all errors attributable to man. The colonized intellectual accepted the cogency of these ideas and there in the back of his mind stood a sentinel on duty guarding the Greco-Roman pedestal. But during the struggle for liberation, when the colonized intellectual touches base again with his people, this artificial sentinel is smashed to smithereens. All the Mediterranean values, the triumph of the individual, of enlightenment and Beauty turn into pale, lifeless trinkets. All those discourses appear a jumble of dead words. Those values which seemed to ennoble the soul prove worthless because they have nothing in common with the real-life struggle in which the people are engaged."

(Frantz Fanon, "On Violence." The Wretched of the Earth. Trans. Richard Philcox.)

decolonization of man ...

2010-06-22T23:42:00.005-05:00

"whatever the name used, whatever the latest expression, decolonization is always a violent event. At whatever level we study it ... decolonization is quite simply the substitution of one 'species' of mankind by another. The substitution is unconditional, absolute, total, and seamless."

"Decolonization, which sets out to change the order of the world, is clearly an agenda for total disorder. But it cannot be accomplished by the wave of a magic wand, a natural cataclysm, or a gentleman's agreement. Decolonization, we know, is a historical process. In other words, it can only be understood, it can only find its significance and become self coherent insofar as we can discern the history-making movement which gives it form and substance."

"Decolonization never goes unnoticed, for it focuses on and fundamentally alters being, and transforms the spectator crushed to a nonessential state into a privileged actor, captured in a virtually grandiose fashion by the spotlight of History. It infuses a new rhythm, specific to a new generation of men, with a new language and a new humanity. Decolonization is truly the creation of new men. But such a creation cannot be attributed to a supernatural power. The 'thing' colonized becomes a man through the very process of liberation."

(Frantz Fanon, "On Violence." The Wretched of the Earth. Trans. Richard Philcox.)

assault on poetry ...

2010-06-22T23:26:00.004-05:00

"Lorca was shot down in the road but here
in America the poets never anger anybody.
the poets don't gamble.

their poetry has the smell of clinics.
their poetry has the smell of clinics
where people die rather than live.

here they don't assassinate the poets

they don't even notice the poets."

(Charles Bukowski, "Assault.")

think!

2010-06-17T22:28:00.002-05:00

"Everyone can think what he likes, provided however that he thinks."

(Jean-Paul Sartre, Preface to The Wretched of the Earth, by Frantz Fanon. Trans. Richard Philcox)

the striptease of humanism ...

2010-06-17T21:52:00.006-05:00

"You who are so liberal, so humane, who take the love of culture to the point of affectation, you pretend to forget that you have colonies where massacres are committed in your name."

"First of all we must confront an unexpected sight: the striptease of our humanism. Not a pretty sight in its nakedness: nothing but a dishonest ideology, an exquisite justification for plundering; its tokens of sympathy and affectation, alibis for our acts of aggression. The pacifists are a fine sight: neither victims nor torturers! Come now! If you are not a victim when the government you voted for and the army your young brothers served in, commits 'genocide,' without hesitation or remorse, then, you are undoubtedly a torturer. And if you choose to be a victim, risking one or two days in prison, you are simply trying to take the easy way out. But you can't; there is no way out. Get this into your head: if violence were only a thing of the future, if exploitation and oppression never existed on earth, perhaps displays of nonviolence might relieve the conflict. But if the entire regime, even your nonviolent thoughts, is governed by a thousand-year-old oppression, your passiveness serves no other purpose but to put you on the side of the oppressors."

"Perhaps, then, with your back against the wall, you will finally unleash that new violence aroused in you by old, rehashed crimes. But, as they say, that is another story. The history of man. The time is coming, I am convinced, when we shall join the ranks of those who are making it."

(Jean-Paul Sartre, Preface to The Wretched of the Earth, by Frantz Fanon. Trans. Richard Philcox)

read this!

2010-06-14T23:57:00.002-05:00

diálogos (des)familiares

2010-06-14T23:54:00.003-05:00

O bebedouro

Pai: Você quer água?

Filho: Eu quero.

...

Pai. Você quer mais?

Filho: Não.

Pai: Eu também vou tomar, então.

...

Filho: Chega de água!

Pai: Vou beber mais um pouco.

Filho: Che-ga de á-gua!

Pai: Só mais um pouquinho.

Filho: VAI ACABAR TODA A ÁGUA!

As sementes

Filho: O que é isso?

Pai: São grãos. São como sementes.

Filho: Eu não gosto.

Pai: Por que?

Filho: Eu não gosto de comer sementes.

Pai: As sementes são pequenas mas viram grandes árvores. Se você comer vai crescer e ficar grande e forte.

Filho: Eu vou ficar igual a uma árvore?

identicalities

2010-06-01T23:54:00.002-05:00

lua cheia

2010-05-28T21:10:00.014-05:00

olhar distante –

a lua está cheia

de lágrimas

you don't say ...

2010-05-28T13:49:00.003-05:00

"the best writers have said very
little
and the worst,
far too much."

(Charles Bukowski, "As The Poems Go.")

on academic poets ...

2010-05-28T13:44:00.004-05:00

"now our moderns
lecture at universities
in tie and suit,
the little boys soberly studious,
the little girls with glazed eyes
looking
up,
the lawns so green, the books so dull,
the life so dying of
thirst."

(Charles Bukowski, "The Replacements.")

anti-poiesis

2010-05-25T21:31:00.006-05:00

o eterno subversivo ...

2010-05-24T23:13:00.003-05:00

"O pior é que ninguém sabe mesmo o que deseja o homem depois de casa, comida, educação e saúde. O cérebro esqueceu disto: necessita de poesia e para que haja poesia é necessário inconsciência."

"Nunca se falou tanto em liberdade, nunca se perseguiu tanto artistas e intelectuais.
O único eterno subversivo do mundo é o artista."

(Glauber Rocha, "Alphaville." O século de cinema.)

anjo malandro

2010-05-24T09:52:00.004-05:00

simply dialogical ...

2010-05-18T20:36:00.003-05:00

GringoCarioca says:

Wikipedia is fundamentally unreliable

de-joaquinality says:

anything is

GringoCarioca says:

I prefer a “system” of checks and balances, even if also unreliable ... it is more reliable than the alternative

de-joaquinality says:

wikipedia is checks and balances

GringoCarioca says:

Wikipedia IS capitalist-bourgeois ideology at its best

GringoCarioca says:

“everybody” is an academic

GringoCarioca says:

“everybody” has power

GringoCarioca says:

ha ha ha ... I’m not fooled

de-joaquinality says:

knock-knock

GringoCarioca says:

go away

de-joaquinality says:

knock-knock …

GringoCarioca says:

get out!

de-joaquinality says:

knock-knock

GringoCarioca says:

I have a gun

de-joaquinality says:

will you let a man tell a joke?

de-joaquinality says:

knock-knock

GringoCarioca says:

who is it?

de-joaquinality says:

banana

GringoCarioca says:

banana who?

de-joaquinality says:

knock-knock

GringoCarioca says:

what do you want you mudda ...

de-joaquinality says:

knock-knock

de-joaquinality says:

let the man tell his joke!

de-joaquinality says:

knock-knock

GringoCarioca says:

WHO IS MUDDAFUCKIN there?

de-joaquinality says:

banana

GringoCarioca says:

banana who goddammit!

de-joaquinality says:

knock-knock

de-joaquinality says:

trust me, it’s almost there

de-joaquinality says:

knock-knock

GringoCarioca says:

who cares?

de-joaquinality says:

knock-knock

GringoCarioca says:

who’s there?

de-joaquinality says:

orange

GringoCarioca says:

orange who?

de-joaquinality says:

orange you glad I didn’t say banana?

GringoCarioca says:

bye-bye you anarchist you ...

de-joaquinality says:

tears of laughter

de-joaquinality says:

I assume …

GringoCarioca says:

sweet dreams ... oh wait, you already are dreaming!

de-joaquinality says:

I ass you me

de-joaquinality says:

lemme ass you this:

GringoCarioca says:

go wikipedia the word “dream” and change everything to signify “waking”

de-joaquinality says:

GringoCarioca says:

with that in mind ...

GringoCarioca says:

good night

de-joaquinality says:

lave lun lin lalaland

(2005)

on (dis)agreements ...

2010-05-09T18:33:00.005-05:00

"And the reason this has not been emphasized is because the current fashion is to insist that everything is a language, to such an extent that what is said is overpowered and reduced to nothing by how one says it. This is a very common illusion. The angry lover shouts to his faithless mistress, 'You don't understand me!' But she understands him only too well; the case is simply that she no longer loves him. Whether filmic or verbal, language cannot suppress reality; on the contrary, it is rooted in reality. If men do not 'understand' each other, it is not only because of words, but also because of what the words contain. How many 'misunderstandings' are actually the result of too great an understanding! People always see a lack of understanding where there is real disagreement."

(Christian Metz, "The Cinema: Language or Language System." Film Language: A Semiotics of the Cinema." Trans. Michael Taylor. p. 73-74)

"A thing or being yields its singularity through expression in a message that implies no answer. Even the most harmonious love is not a dialogue so much as it is a kind of duet. Jacques tells Nicole of his love for her; Nicole tells Jacques of her love for him. They are therefore not speaking about the same thing, and one says rightly that their love is 'shared' (divided). They do not answer each other – indeed how can one really answer a person expressing himself?
Shared, their love is divided into two loves, which yield two expressions. For Jacques and Nicole, expressing as they did two different sentiments, to evolve, rather than the give-and-take of a dialogue, the agreement of a true encounter tending toward a fusion that abolishes all dialogue, there had to be a kind of coincidence – hence the rareness of the occurrence – rather than the interplay of influences and after-the-fact adjustments by which a dialogue is characterized. Like Jacques (without Nicole) or like Nicole (without Jacques), films and books express themselves and are not really answered."

(Christian Metz, "The Cinema: Language or Language System." Film Language: A Semiotics of the Cinema." Trans. Michael Taylor. p. 84)

an insane craft ...

2010-05-09T18:04:00.006-05:00

"Literature – especially poetry – is a so much more improbable art! How can that insane craft ever succeed?– To bestow an aesthetic expressiveness (that is, in a natural way) upon those 'words of the tribe' Mallarmé railed against – where linguists agree in recognizing only a small portion of expressiveness and a very large portion of arbitrary signification ..."

"But when the poet has succeeded in his initial alchemy and has made words expressive, the greater part of his task is done: In this respect, literature, which is a difficult art, enjoys at least that advantage. It's endeavor is so arduous that the weight it bears is hardly a danger. There are a great number of books entirely lacking in art; there are a few books possessing enormous art."

(Christian Metz, "The Cinema: Language or Language System." Film Language: A Semiotics of the Cinema." Trans. Michael Taylor. p. 77-78)

a arte da desrazão ...

2010-05-01T18:28:00.003-05:00

"Uma obra de arte revolucionária deveria não só atuar de modo imediatamente político como também promover a especulação filosófica, criando uma estética do eterno movimento humano rumo à sua integração cósmica."

"As vanguardas do pensamento não podem mais se dá ao sucesso inútil de responder à razão opresiva com a razão revolucionária. A revolução é a anti-razão que comunica as tensões e rebeliões do mais irracional de todos os fenômenos que é a pobreza."

"Há que tocar, pela comunhão, o ponto vital da pobreza que é seu misticismo. Este misticismo é a única linguagem que transcende ao esquema racional de opressão. A revolução é uma mágica porque é o imprevisto dentro da razão dominadora. No máximo é vista como uma possibilidade compreensível. Mas a revolução deve ser uma impossibilidade de compreensão para a razão dominadora de tal forma que ela mesma se negue e se devore diante de sua impossibilidade de compreender."

"O irracionalismo liberador é a mais forte arma do revolucionário. E a liberação, mesmo nos encontros da violência provocada pelo sistema, significa sempre negar a violência em nome de uma comunidade fundada pelo sentido do amor ilimitado entre os homens. Este amor nada tem a ver com o humanismo tradicional, símbolo da boa consciência dominadora."

"Hoje recuso falar em qualquer estética. A plena vivência não pode se sujeitar a conceitos filosóficos. Arte revolucionária deve ser uma mágica capaz de enfeitiçar o homem a tal ponto que ele não mais suporte viver nesta realidade absurda."

(Glauber Rocha, "Eztetyka do sonho.")

A fábula do leite de coco e da coca cola

2010-04-28T22:05:00.003-05:00

"As pessoas preferem os potes de conservas importados; ninguém tem a coragem de dizer-lhes que o leite de coco é melhor que a coca cola."

"A fábula do leite de coco e da coca cola é muito simples!!! Desgraçadamente, a publicidade da coca cola faz os povos do Terceiro Mundo esquecer que o coco se encontra nas imensas praias e que simplesmente necessita pegar uma faca e partir o coco para que possa saboreá-lo."

(Glauber Rocha, "Das sequóias às palmeiras," Revolução do cinema novo.)

A revolução de Brasília ... 50 anos

2010-04-21T09:59:00.005-05:00

"Mas Brasília foi a revolução cultural do Brasil; com sua construção, o Brasil pôde se livrar de seu complexo diante do colonialismo. O despertar político e a consciência do subdesenvolvimento datam da construção de Brasília. Isso é bastante contraditório porque Brasília era uma espécie de Eldorado, a possibilidade que os brasileiros tinham de construir eles mesmos alguma coisa .... De fato, mesmo se o Brasil tem um governo fascista, esse é o país mais revolucionário de toda a América Latina. Tudo se modifica e se agita sem cessar .... O país caminha numa direção revolucionária. É por isso que, embora ainda não consiga ver precisamente o tipo de revolução que acontecerá no Brasil, posso afirmar que ela se dará de uma forma muito original."

(Glauber Rocha, Revolução do cinema novo, p. 200)

que saudade!

2010-03-26T17:49:00.001-05:00

saudade de tanta coisa,
tanta coisa que não fiz

saudade de como não era,
e não era porque não quis

fosse o que não foi,
o que seria nem se diz,

saudade de tanta coisa,
tanta coisa ... que feliz!

Copyright © 2010 Marco Alexandre de Oliveira

poesia em pessoa

2010-03-21T21:58:00.002-05:00

storm

2010-03-20T18:05:00.002-05:00

para poesia pura

2010-03-14T17:48:00.003-05:00