o que passa?

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

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

coração partido
o pedido de perdão
não cola


Copyright © 2011 Marco Alexandre de Oliveira

L’esprit nouveau ...

"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 ...

"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" ...

"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!

"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 !!!

"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

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

Copyright © 2011 Marco Alexandre de Oliveira

anti-social types ...

"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

cego de tanta luz

tanta luz que me conduz

me conduz a dizer

a dizer que não consigo viver

não consigo viver sem me ver

cego de tanta luz

Copyright © 2011 Marco Alexandre de Oliveira

On free spirits ...

“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.)

tudo em vão

-- 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 …

Copyright © 2005 Marco Alexandre de Oliveira

Peanut Butter & Jelly + Bloody Mary

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

Flowers of Poetry …

"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

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)

 

Copyright © 2011 Marco Alexandre de Oliveira

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

“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

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

um belo dia de manhã o sol nasceu de novo e se escondeu atrás de uma nuvem que de tarde cobriu o céu e assombrou a terra de noite com uma chuva que afogou a madrugada e apagou a promessa de amanhã ser um belo dia ...

Copyright © 2012 Marco Alexandre de Oliveira

acesso

acesso fechado:
assim eu passo
pelo outro lado

Copyright © 2011 Marco Alexandre de Oliveira

sensual poem

see you
hear you
smell you
touch you
taste you

feel you
all over

in me

Copyright © 2011 Marco Alexandre de Oliveira

poema sensual

– para tê


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

sentir-te
toda

em mim

Copyright © 2011 Marco Alexandre de Oliveira

on progress ...

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

renewal

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 ...

“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 ...

“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 ...

“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

Descansado


Filho: Tô muito cansado.

Pai: Quer descansar?

Filho: Tô cansado de descansar!


Copyright © 2011 Marco Alexandre de Oliveira

tudo está sob descontrole

Copyright © 2011 Marco Alexandre de Oliveira

“Who are our nomads today?”

"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 ...

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

aguardo

sem guarda-chuva

nem anjo da guarda

Copyright © 2010 Marco Alexandre de Oliveira

identicalities 4

Copyright © 2010 Marco Alexandre de Oliveira

(sur)real freedom ...

"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

Copyright © 2010 Marco Alexandre de Oliveira

foda

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 ...

Copyright © 2010 Marco Alexandre de Oliveira

A Red, Red Rose

(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

my love's like a red, red rose

your love's like a sharp, sharp thorn

Copyright © 2010 Marco Alexandre de Oliveira

dream within a dream ...

"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 ...

"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 ...

"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 ...

"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 ...

"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

Copyright © 2010 Marco Alexandre de Oliveira

La poesía es fantástica ...

"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

Copyright © 2010 Marco Alexandre de Oliveira

On (Third) World Intellectuals ...

"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

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 ...

Copyright © 2010 Marco Alexandre de Oliveira

Danger Mouth …

"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 ...

"'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 ...

"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 ...

"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

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!

Copyright © 2010 Marco Alexandre de Oliveira

Bon Voyage ...

- 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 ...

"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

era uma vez ...
... nunca mais

Copyright © 2010 Marco Alexandre de Oliveira