Not as a bruise to its blow

Not as a bruise to its blow, as Ryle says, are our imaginings related to our experience. Yet Hume sometimes supposes that imagination works like madness. If it can give to fiction all the appearance of reality, how is one to know what to believe when an author’s words, stirring in us like life, managing our minds with the efficiency of reality, throw Anna Karenina under the train’s wheels before our eyes?

William H. Gass, Fiction and the Figures of Life, Alfred Knopf, 1970.

até não sobrar de Lisboa senão o grito dos pavões nas colinas desertas

um desses broches baratos, de cercadura cromada, que representam um perfil de mulher de vaso grego, e eu a pensar, Iolanda, que detesto o Aquário, que detesto aquelas salas de peixes beiçudos, que preferia ir ver o mar a Caxias ou a Algés onde os esgotos vomitam a cidade no rio, becos inteiros, casinhas, esplanadas, senhoras à janela, carvoarias e tabernas, até não sobrar de Lisboa senão o grito dos pavões nas colinas desertas.

António Lobo Antunes, A ordem natural das coisas

Entire books

There is a painting by Picasso which depicts a pitcher, a candle, blue enamel pot. They are sitting, unadorned, upon the barest table. Would we wonder what was cooking on that pot? Is it beans, perhaps, or carrots, a marmite? The orange of the carrot is a perfect complement for the blue of the pot, and the genius of Picasso, neglecting nothing, has surely placed, behind that blue, invisible disks of dusky orange, which, in addition, subtly enriched the table's velvet brown. Doesn't that seem reasonable? Now I see that it must be beans, for above the pot - you can barely see them - are quaking lines of steam, just the lines we associate with boiling beans... or is it blanching pods? Scholarly research, supported by a great foundation, will discover that exactly such a pot was used to cook cassoulet in the kitchens of Charles the Fat... or was it Charles the Bald? There's a dissertation in that. And this explains the dripping candle standing by the pot. (Is it dripping?no? a pity. Let's go on). For isn't Charles the Fat himself that candle? Oh no, some day, he's not! Blows are struck. Reputations made and ruined. Someone will see eventually that the pot is standing on table, not a stove. But the pot has just come from the stove, it will be pointed out. Has not Picasso caught that vital moment of transition? The pot is too hot. The brown is burning. Oh, not this table, which has been coated with resistant plastic. Singular genius - blessed man - he thinks of everything.

Here you have half the history of our criticism in the novel. Entire books have been written about the characters in Dickens, Trollope, Tolstoi, Faulkner. But why not? Entire books have been written about God, his cohorts and the fallen angels.

William H. Gass, Fiction and the Figures of Life, Alfred A. Knopf, Londres, 1970. 

"Seven Psychopaths" de Martin McDonagh, 2012

Ah, medo tenho não é de ver morte, mas de ver nascimento.

Mirre veja: um casal, no Rio do Borá, daqui longe, só porque marido e mulher eram primos carnais, os quatro meninos deles vieram nascendo com a pior transformação que há: sem braços e sem pernas, só os tocos... Arre, nem posso figurar minha idéia nisso! Refiro ao senhor: um outro doutor, doutor rapaz, que explorava as pedras turmalinas no vale do Arassuaí, discorreu me dizendo que a vida da gente encarna e reencarna, por progresso próprio, mas que Deus não há. Estremeço. Como não ter Deus?! Com Deus existindo, tudo dá esperança: sempre um milagre é possível, o mundo se resolve. Mas, se não tem Deus, há-de a gente perdidos no vai-vem, e a vida é burra. É o aberto perigo das grandes e pequenas horas, não se podendo facilitar — é todos contra os acasos. Tendo Deus, é menos grave se descuidar um pouquinho, pois, no fim dá certo. Mas, se não tem Deus, então, a gente não tem licença de coisa nenhuma! Porque existe dôr. E a vida do homem está presa encantoada — erra rumo, dá em aleijões como esses, dos meninos sem pernas e braços. Dôr não dói até em criancinhas e bichos, e nos dôidos — não dói sem precisar de se ter razão nem conhecimento? E as pessoas não nascem sempre? Ah, medo tenho não é de ver morte, mas de ver nascimento. Medo mistério. O senhor não vê? O que não é Deus, é estado do demônio. Deus existe mesmo quando não há. Mas o demônio não precisa de existir para haver — a gente sabendo que ele não existe, aí é que ele toma conta de tudo. O inferno é um sem-fim que nem não se pode ver. Mas a gente quer Céu é porque quer um fim: mas um fim com depois dele a gente tudo vendo. Se eu estou falando às flautas, o senhor me corte.

João Guimarães Rosa. Grande Serão: Veredas. Nova Fronteira (2001).

Dislocations: Seven Scenarios, 6

Not to get up and go back to the drafting table
where failure crouches accusing
like the math test you bluffed and flunked
so early on
not to drag into the window's
cruel and truthful light    your blunder
not to start over

but to turn your back, saying
all anyway is compromise
impotence and collusion
from here on I will be no part of it

is one way you could afford it

Adrienne Rich, The School among the Ruins, Norton, 2004.

Saeta

Até aos 0.37" desta música, as balas podiam estar a voar que Miles Davis nem sequer era mortal.

Dislocations: Seven Scenarios, 5

Faces in the mesh: defiance or disdain
remember Paul Nizan?
You thought you were innocent if you said

'I love this woman and I want to live
in accordance with my love'
but you were beggining the revolution

maybe so, maybe not
look at her now
pale lips papery flesh

at your creased belly  wrinkled sac
look at the scars
reality's autographs

along your ribs across her haunches
look at the collarbone's reverberant line

how in a body can defiance
still embrace its likeness

Adrienne Rich, The School among the Ruins, Norton, 2004.

Rapariga à secretária

Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin.

Or sit and wonder why

Transparencies

That the meek word like the righteous word can bully
that an Israeli soldier interviewed years
after the first Infitifada could mourn on camera
what under orders he did, saw done, did not refuse
that another leaving Beit Jala could scrawl
on a wall: We are truely sorry for the mess we made
is merely routine   word that could cancel deed
That human equals innocent and guilty
That we grasp for innocence whether or no
is elementary   That words can translate into broken bones
That the power to hurl words is a weapon
That the body can be a weapon
any child on playground knows   That asked your favorite word in a game
you always named a thing, a quality, freedom or river
(never a pronoun never God or War)
is taken for granted  That word and body
are all we have to lay on the line
That words are windowpanes in a ransacked hut, smeared
by time's dirty rains, we might argue
likewise that words are clear as glass till the sun strikes it blinding

But that in a dark windowpane you have seen your face
That when you wipe your glasses the text grows clearer
That the sound of crunching glass comes at the height of the wedding

That I can look through glass
into my neighbor's house
but not my neighbor's life
That glass is sometimes broken to save lives
That a word can be crushed like a goblet underfoot
is only what it seems, part question, part answer: how you live it

2002

Adrienne Rich, The School among the Ruins, Norton, 2004.

Bibliografia, de Miguel Manso e João Manso, 2013

De «Epilogos»

(...)

to trust that on its own language will
produce the necessary
feelings thoughts
if necessary new
feelings
thoughts
so we can survive fear
with our fear
intact

(...)

Or erotic attempts
all that unifies us
is what
divides us
in the first place death
is our only continuity
division
forever unified
in the second place life
is our particular discontinuity
unity
temporarily divided
in the third place psychic striving
total eroticism is
independent of sex
inconceivable without it
independent of death
inconceivable without it
concentrated on uniting
what is divided

(...)

Fear of being alone
alone with the past
alone with the great pressure of your imagination
distraction emptiness
alone with your joy your courage
your inadequate effort
alone with your song
your facts
and your freedom
alone with it all
in its discontinous
condition
unique
incomparable
the sun
of an unobserved solar system
Fear of being with others
with others
who suddendly know
what they must not know
about itself
with others
who suddendly say
that what you have said
must not be said
and if you say it again
they will leave
a threat
a shock
or with others
who just don't feel like it
and with others
who feel like it too much
or with
accusation
gossip
anger
with
hope
jealousy
despair
with
demons
reasonable people
and ascetics
with everyone and everything
in its discontinous condition
specific
comparable to
a worn meteor
in a totally illusory solar system
Fear of completion
of habit inertia
monotonous dialogues
of recognition
repetition
conclusion
of the synthesis that is never right
of the rightness that is never honest
of the honesty that is never right
of the practical
ordered
well-organized
civilized
pattern
and of the system
of your own system
to which you cling
of the others' systems
in which you are caught up
of the system as such
magnetic
set
and all-inclusive
Fear of completion
of movement
space
conflict

(...)

Eccentric attempts
when a man
steps out of himself
steps out of
his daily life
his function
his situation
steps out of
his habits
his peaceful
condition
we call the process
ecstasy
when he claims
that the clouds
shoot like pain
that the clouds
originate
in electrical charges
water vapor
flight
inside his weighted head

(...)

how shall we invent
thoughts for the feelings
how shall we find
a technique
for understanding
a technique
for shared consciousness
a knowledge at least
of all that we don't even see
in ourselves
in the others
each other
it could be me
that stepped out of myself
Magical attempts
it could be words
that stepped out of themselves
as realities
it could be words
that like a fever transformed
fear to joy
it could be words
that got to the bottom
of seduction
placed their genes
in the individual
cell
grew
forced themselves through
cancer and virus
and mortalities
to the glorious stature
of antibodies
medication
salvation
it could be words
that brought grace
into the world
formulated fear
so every single fearful person
knew that he was probably
alone in the world
was probably alone
with his fear
but never alone
with his own consciousness

(...)

Inger Christensen, It, Susanna Nied (trad.), Anne Carson (intr.), New Directions Books, 2006 (originalmente publicado em dinamarquês em 1969).

Centaur's requiem

Your hooves drawn together underbelly
shoulders in mud   your mane
of wisp and soil deporting all the horse of you

your longhaired neck
eyes   jaw yes   and ears
unforgivably human on such a creature
unforgivably what you are
deposited in the grit-kicked field of a champion

tender neck and nostrils   teacher   water-lily suction-spot
what you were   marvelous    we could not stand

Night drops   an awaited storm
driving in to wreck your path
Foam on your hide like flowers
where you fell    or fall    desire

2001

Adrienne Rich, The School among the Ruins, Norton, 2004.

Text

universalities

6

I see that I am here by choice

See that I do not vanish

Though I may want to

See that there is no connection between what I want

And what I would choose

See that I must start over

On good and evil

Inger Christensen, It, Susanna Nied (trad.), Anne Carson (intr.), New Directions Books, 2006 (originalmente publicado em dinamarquês em 1969).

Para alcançar um lugar ao sol

Grande poema, aqui, em tradução portuguesa.

o comboio de corda
cruza o sítio de partida
e fecha um dos zeros
do 8 deitado no mapa
celeste
e se leste
até ao fim o seu movimento
viste-o fechar o outro zero
e caíste infinitamente
na terra finita.

Manuel Gusmão, Pequeno Tratado das Figuras, Assírio & Alvim, 2013.

Text

variabilities

1

After the first morning I seek

the lips' crude formulations

Again and again I kiss the memory of

pass me! pass me! The salt and the white

consciousness in endless writing

What you gave my thoughts is words and

excrement, a body with the functions

of a star

What you gave me is pure morning

My passion: to go further

Inger Christensen, It, Susanna Nied (trad.), Anne Carson (intr.), New Directions Books, 2006 (originalmente publicado em dinamarquês em 1969).

8. Cápsula

Tudo se foi embora. Já os sons adormeceram
ou retiraram-se já, como se diz do mar
que abandona a praia:
in-
suportável.
Ficou apenas
o áspero rumor distante da máquina
do mundo. Que funciona mal. Nada
solicita já a tua presença entretanto
inalcançável. A noite solidificou no espaço
entre o sagrado nome das coisas
quietas. Aquele rumor e esta noite são
o que te separa de ti - frágil distância e
contudo demasiada.

Manuel Gusmão, Pequeno Tratado das Figuras, Assírio & Alvim, 2013.

A mãe dele estava nesse instante enrolando os cabelos em frente ao espelho do banheiro, e lembrou-se do que uma cozinheira lhe contara do tempo de orfanato. Não tendo boneca com que brincar, e a maternidade já pulsando terrível no coração das orfãs, as meninas sabidas haviam escondido da freira a morte de uma das garotas. Guardaram o cadáver num armário até a freira sair, e brincaram com a menina morta, deram-lhe banhos e comidinhas, puseram-na de castigo somente para depois poder beijá-la, consolando-a. Disso a mãe se lembrou no banheiro, e abaixou mãos pensas, cheias de grampos. E considerou a cruel necessidade de amar. Considerou a malignidade de nosso desejo de ser feliz. Considerou a ferocidade com que queremos brincar. E o número de vezes em que mataremos por amor.

Clarice Lispector, A menor mulher do mundo in Laços de Família. Edições Cotovia, 2006.

a celebração pânica

Cada vez mais me parece que a literatura deve ser um festival das palavras, uma celebração pânica (no sentido grego), uma festa pagã, e os personagens simples vozes que deslizam cantando ou cochichando páginas fora.

António Lobo Antunes, D'este viver aqui neste papel descripto

Stage

transitivities

7

Because it will end in unbearable scenes

Because the conditions for doing things for others are others

Because the corpses were doused with acid long ago

Because the stench stimulates sociability

Because the void (say, in the stomach), stimulates production

Because nausea creates fertile ground for artificial needs

Because acid triggers the craving for fullness

Because the belch is part of politics

Because the conditions for belching are reserved for the few

Because a place in the wings is reserved for the few

Because things happen in the wings

Because this things must not come to light 

Because words set the stage for the world

Because the world keeps words in their places

Because there exists a loathing for it all

the mirror has a kind of inverted validity

that the truth lacks

Inger Christensen, It, Susanna Nied (trad.), Anne Carson (intr.), New Directions Books, 2006 (originalmente publicado em dinamarquês em 1969).

Stage

integrities

3

in labyrinths of light and light-green leaves

in terror-labyrinths where the sky is clear

and life a matter of course

far too matter-of-course

there is a taste of plaster of stone of crowbar

off-limits   no entry    danger

I am a face that turns its face away

a stone that when it turns over

is a stone

Inger Christensen, It, Susanna Nied (trad.), Anne Carson (intr.), New Directions Books, 2006 (originalmente publicado em dinamarquês em 1969).

Stage

variabilities

5

My world is discontinuous

in relation to the world as a whole

and in relation to you

it has wings

My world is a language through water

with the shining nerves distributed

as when the sun in water randomly generously

anyway it has wings

Wings of water

And I want you to know that there is a certain effect 

it has a certain tingly effect

a rejoicing at the absence of cause

Leap says the word and I fly

That's how I drown my world in the world

Inger Christensen, It, Susanna Nied (trad.), Anne Carson (intr.), New Directions Books, 2006 (originalmente publicado em dinamarquês em 1969).

Action

symmetries

8.

A society can be stone-hard

That it fuses into a block

A people can be so bone-hard

That life goes into shock

And the heart is all in shadow

And the heart has almost stopped

Till some begin to build

A city as soft as a body

Inger Christensen, It, Susanna Nied (trad.), Anne Carson (intr.), New Directions Books, 2006 (originalmente publicado em dinamarquês em 1969).

"Ontem, não, sábado, na consulta, perguntei a idade a um velho muito velho, com um pau a servir de bengala em cada mão. Respondeu o Séneca que nós os brancos é que sabemos escrever, e que eles, os pretos, só sabem nascer! Há-de haver Homeros neste fim do mundo de pantanosas areias... A gente ouve coisas que nos deixam em estátuas de sal!" 

António Lobo Antunes, D'este viver aqui neste papel descripto

Hitchens, spread the word

Beware the irrational, however seductive. Shun the ‘transcendent’ and all who invite you to subordinate or annihilate yourself. Distrust compassion; prefer dignity for yourself and others. Don’t be afraid to be thought arrogant or selfish. Picture all experts as they were mammals. Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will supply plenty of time for silence. Suspect your own motives, and all excuses. Do not live for others any more than you would expect others to live for you.

Stage

connectivities

Avec comme pour langage

rien qu'un battement aux cieux

Stéphane Mallarmé

2

What's written is always something else

And what's described is something else again

Between them lies the undescribed

which as soon as it's described

opens up new undescribed areas

It's undescribable

Even though darkness is described by light

and light by darkness

something's always left out.

And even if this something is "defined"

as razed gardens

behind iron fencing that grows

logic is always left

And even though the logic is not defined

but concealed beneath layers of gardens

painted from garden to garden

there's still a restlessness left

a despair

a pulse with no body

This is a criticism of the body

because it's a criticism of life.

Inger Christensen, It, Susanna Nied (trad.), Anne Carson (intr.), New Directions Books, 2006 (originalmente publicado em dinamarquês em 1969).

Zbigniew Herbert, «Calígula»

Lendo velhas crónicas, poemas e vidas, o Sr. Cogito experimenta por vezes uma sensação de presença física de pessoas há muito falecidas

Diz Calígula:

de entre todos os cidadãos de Roma

amei apenas um

Incitato – o cavalo

quando entrou no senado 

a irrepreensível toga do seu pêlo

brilhava imaculadamente entre covardes assassinos orlados de púrpura

Incitato era só virtudes

nunca discursava

natureza estóica

creio que de noite no estábulo lia os filósofos

ameio-o tanto que um dia resolvi crucificá-lo

mas a sua nobre anatomia não o permitiu

aceitou com indiferença a dignidade de cônsul

exercia a autoridade da melhor forma possível

isto é não a exercia de todo

não se pôde convencê-lo a manter relações amorosas estáveis

com a minha querida esposa Cesónia

e assim tristemente não surgiu uma linhagem de Césares-centauros

por isso Roma caiu

decidi proclamá-lo um deus
mas no nono dia antes das calendas de Fevereiro
Quereia Cornélio Sabino e outros idiotas frustraram as
minhas piedosas intenções

recebeu com tranquilidade a nova da minha morte

expulsaram-no do palácio e condenaram-no ao exílio

suportou este golpe com dignidade

morreu sem descendência
abatido por um rude açougueiro do lugarejo de Âncio

sobre o destino póstumo da sua carne
Tácito cala-se

Zbigniew Herbert

tradução de Izabela Stapor, José Pedro Moreira e Tatiana Faia

ítaca 3, Lisboa, 2012

Ver e descarregar os poemas de Herbert traduzidos na ítaca 3 aqui.

I Companhia, 1

Um homem tão frágil quanto uma flor. Profissão: tudo o que convier no momento, quando precisa de conversar. Coxeia de mesa em mesa, aproxima-se dos outros com cuidado, chupa cego pedacinhos de nada que lhe atiram, vai pedinchando a esmola da atenção, com o olhar fere o sorriso ainda plano das crianças.

a correria ruidosa em volta do seu lugar – amarra-lhe o corpo, o disparo na respiração limpa de uma das crianças, marca-a com o dedo, a sedução em silêncio –

retomam o riso, a respiração ofegante, a correria. Procura nos bolsos. Uma sede que lhe torce a língua, come-lhe o estômago, fede à distância, dá-lhe náuseas.

Regresso ao escuro.

*

Tão frágil quanto uma flor. Como pegar nela, espremer o seu nervo escanzelado de vida, golpe azul que se deita espesso até ao fundo pela palma da mão –

dedos caridosos salpicam o derrame lento sobre o focinho do artista, dão-lhe a provar o cúmulo negro das unhas – dá voltas sobre a sua sombra, não consegue lamber – nenhuma palavra, nenhum fôlego, gane alto sem vergonha – de nada lhe servirá a vontade de falar

*

Frágil como uma flor. Mudá-la de sítio –

passa inclinado, despercebido, vaidoso nas suas pétalas rasgadas, a boca espera numa vontade de chuva, não se ouve – entra o sol, extingue o seu círculo branco de pétalas, desce certeiro até às raízes.

– vê, estão podres.

Frederico Pedreira

O Artista Está Sozinho

Lisboa, 2013, Edição de Autor

À venda nas livrarias Letra Livre, Paralelo W e FNAC.

"A casa, agora. Eu gostava de a ver forrada de prateleiras para os livros por todos os lados, com algum - pouco - espaço livre para os quadros, e para o retrato fundamental do JOYCE!"

António Lobo Antunes, D'este viver aqui neste papel descripto
(aerograma de 6 de Maio de 1971)

Disintegration Loop

Dois poemas do 'miniatura' do nosso Simão Valente

Aqui.

A Portuguese Goodbye

by Alexandre O’Neill*

Translated by Tatiana Faia

In your highly dangerous eyes
the most rigorous love is still in vigour
the pure light of the shoulders and the shadow
of an already purified anguish

No you could not have stayed with me tied
to the wheel in which I am rotting
in which we are rotting
tied to this paw tainted with blood this paw that falters
that almost meditates
and moves forth bellowing through the tunnel
of an ancient pain

You could not have stayed in this chair
where I spend my bureaucratic day
in company of that day-by-day misery
that ascends to the eyes gets to the hands
to the smiles
to the wrongly spelled love
to stupidity to the mouthless despair
to fear in profile
to the sleepwalking joy to the maniac comma
of this functionary way of living

You could not have stayed with me in this house
in mortal transit till that sordid
canine
policing day
until that day that does not spring from the most pure
promise of dawn
but from the misery of a night engendered
by an all-alike day

You could not have stayed with me tied
to this small pain that each one of us
carries gently by the hand
this small pain Portuguese style
so meek almost vegetal

Why you do not deserve this city you do not deserve
this wheel of nausea in which we spin
till idiocy
this small death
and its thorough and dirty ritual
this absurd reason of our own for being

No you belong to the adventurous city
to the city where love finds its streets
and the burning graveyard
of its death
you belong to the city where you live by a tread
of pure chance
where you die or live not of asphyxiation
but by the hands of an adventure of a pure trade
free from the false coin of good and evil

In this curve so tender and so piercing
which is going to be which already is your disappearing
I say goodbye
and like an adolescent
I stumble out of tenderness
for you

*From the book No Reino da Dinamarca [In the Kingdom of Denmark] (1958).

O original aparece clickando na etiqueta.