#25

#67

“Success is counted sweetest
By those who ne'er succeed.
To comprehend a nectar
Requires sorest need.

Not one of all the purple Host
Who took the Flag today
Can tell the definition
So clear of Victory

As he defeated – dying –
On those forbidden ear
The distant strains of triumph
Burst agonized and clear!” (Dickinson, 1997: 3).

DICKINSON, Emily (1997). Everyman's Poetry. London: Orion Publishing Group.

#23

“The ruthless recording eye made Updike unpopular with some women readers, especially back in the salad days of Theory, when talk of the “male gaze” was the fashion. Piet notes in Foxy's nakedness “the goosebumped roughness of her buttocks, the gray unpleasentness of her armpits....” But in Updike as in life, bodies are rarely perfect, unlike in the movies; this is fictional realism and goosebumps do not stand in the way of the lover's transcendent pleasure. While she fellates him “lazily,” he combs her lovely hair and reflects on her “coral cunt, coral into burgundy, with its pansy-shaped M, or W, of fur”; then it comes to him that mouths are noble. “They move in the brain's court. We set our genitals mating down below like peasants, but when the mouth condescends, mind and body marry”” (McEwan, 2009: 4).

MCEWAN, Ian (2009). “On John Updike” in The New York Review Of Books, March 12 – 25, Volume LVI, Number 4. New York: The New York Review Of Books.

#22

“Sebastian speaking of his very first novel (unpublished and destroyed) explained that it was about a fat young student who travels home to find his mother married to his uncle; this uncle, an ear-specialist, had murdered the father's student
(...)
Sebastian in the summer of 1922 had overworked himself and, suffering from hallucinations, used to see a kind of optical ghost – a black-robed monk moving swiftly towards him from the sky” (id: 55).

#21

“... Many a time have I said to him: Sebastian, be careful, women will adore you. And he would reply with a laugh: Well, I'll adore women too...” (Nabokov, 1995: 19).

NABOKOV, Vladimir (1995). The Real Life Of Sebastian Knight. London: Penguin Books.

#18

“«Se bem a compreendo, explica que a ordem da cidade é incompatível com o prazer insaciável das mulheres.» – «Eu diria antes: o prazer desmesurado das mulheres. Mas o que propões é uma moral de homem. Quanto a mim, penso que todas essas ideias, a medida, a moral, foram inventadas pelos homens para compensarem a limitação do seu prazer. Porque os homens sabem de há muito que o seu prazer nunca poderá ser comparado com o prazer que nós experimentamos, que se trata de um prazer de outra ordem»” (id: 797).

#17

"E compreendi então, mas talvez tenha sido mais tarde, ao sair deste sonho, que batia certo assim, que é a lei de todo o ser vivo, cada organismo procura apenas viver e reproduzir-se, sem malícias, os bacilos de Koch que tinham corroído os pulmões de Pergolesi e de Purcell, de Kafka e de Tchekov não alimentavam contra eles qualquer animosidade, não queriam mal aos seus hospedeiros, mas tratava-se da lei da sua sobrevivência e do seu desenvolvimento, do mesmo modo que nós combatemos esses bacilos com medicamentos que inventamos todos os dias, sem ódio, em vista da nossa sobrevivência, e a nossa vida vida inteira sobre o assassínio de outras criaturas que também quereriam viver" (id: 734).

#16

“Somewhere over in Germany, in a town beside a lake, every evening a blazing swan would fly upon into the air, and after it had finished burning, it would fall down into the surface of the lake, the locals were horrified, so they organised some patrols and caught a young man, who had just lured another swan with a bread roll, he poured a bottle of petrol over it, and lit it, delighting himself with the sight of this blazing swan soaring up into the night... and when thay caught him, he was a young man, who said in his defence, that he was inspired by Salvador Dali, a painting of a burning giraffe had disturbed him so much at night that it made the room hurt, where he dreamt about this blazing giraffe and Salvador Dali's paranoiac-critical method, he'd wanted to pour petrol over a giraffe at the zoo to see its mane catch fire, but he couldn't reach up that high, so he'd lured over a trusting swan, and when it soared up blazing into the sky, he saw it rise to the zenith before it fell, he saw Salvador Dali's burning giraffe... and the world stopped hurting, and he didn't know how that image would strike me, like the surface of the pond which the once lovely swan hit in its cooling descent...” (Hrabal, 1998: 12-13)

HRABAL, Bohumil (1998). Total Fears Letters To Dubenka. Translation by James Naughton. Prague: Twisted Spoon Press.

#11

“Man lebt in seiner Sprache, escrevia Hanns Johst, um dos nossos melhores poetas nacionais-socialistas: «O homem vive na sua língua»” (id: 575).

I AM MAN

“I knew what it was to be a woman. I was one of them. I knew what it meant to wake up before the others, to get breakfast, to listen to the children, who all want to talk at the same time. Ironing at daybreak, mending in the early morning, homework at dawn. Then the empty house and an hour of working frantically to do the bare minimum, sorting dirty laundry, preparing the vegetables for the day's meals, scrubbing toilets. Bathing, doing your hair, putting on your makeup, fixing yourself up, if not you'll have a guilty conscience: “A woman should always be clean and nice to look at.” Taking the youngest to nursery school or kindergarten. Don't forget the shopping basket for doing errands, later. Go to work. The only work that counts, the work you're paid for, without which there would be black misery. Come back for lunch. The older children eat at the cafeteria, the youngest one is home. She has to be given affection, to feel the warm presence of her mother. The older ones will look after her in the evening. Provided they don't get into mischief, play with matches, cross the street without looking. Out again shopping. Orders from superiors received and carried out as fast as possible, as best you can. Errands in the evening. Not a penny in your pocket. It doesn't matter. Use your ingenuity to put together a meal that is appetizing and good: “A good meal drives away unhappiness.” The shopping baskets which are heavy on your arms. The fatigue which begins to gnaw at your head and at your back. It doesn't matter: “A woman must pay for the happiness of bringing children into the world”. Home again. Listen to them all. Prepare the dinner. Hang up the wash. Bathe the children, supervise their homework. Put the soup on the table. Fry the apple fritters while their finishing their noodles. Tired legs. Brain heavy with sleep. The dishes. See as a reproach the fingerprints on the walls and doors, the windows which need to be cleaned, the knitting isn't getting anywhere: “You've made your bed, now you can lie in it, my daughter. A dirty woman, a dirty house.” I'll do it on Sunday, I'll do it on Sunday. The following day it begins again: move the furniture, down on your knees, scrub the floor, carry the baskets to the market, pick up the kids, keep counting the small change without which you can't buy anything. Look at the beautiful dress in the shop window, costing more than you earn in a month... And keep up giving kisses when all you want is to sleep, to rest. Have a guilty conscience because of it, play the game, regret not getting anything out of it, fear another pregnancy. Fight off bad, selfish thoughts: “You should be as much a wife as a mother if you want a good husband.” How many days to the end of the month? Am I going to manage? My God, a child crying! It's the baby. Just so she isn't sick. I've taken too many sick days this year, what with the oldest getting measles and the others getting the flu. I'm going to wind up in trouble. Start up from sleep, get up in the night. Night in the apartment made of concrete, crying in the distance from other people's children having nightmares, flushing toilets of neighbors coming back late, the drunk on the thrid floor yelling at his wife. To sleep. To Sleep” (id: 262-263).

#09

“I could not be loved, I could not please (...) I could only be rejected. In this way, I experienced every departure, every misunderstanding, every separation as abandonment. A streetcar I failed to catch stirred up the thing. I was a failure and as a consequence I failed at everything” (Cardinal, 1993: 144).

CARDINAL, Marie (1993). The Words To Say It. Translation by Pat Goodheart. London: The Women's Press.

#07

“Se o homem não é com certeza, ao contrário do que pretenderam certos poetas e filósofos, naturalmente bom, não é também naturalmente mau: o bem e o mal são categorias que podem servir para qualificar o efeito das acções de um homem sobre outro; mas são (...) fundamentalmente inadequadas, senão inutilizáveis, para ajuizarmos do que se passa no coração desse homem” (Littel, 2006: 537-538).

LITTEL, Jonathan (2006). As Benevolentes. Tradução de Miguel Serras Pereira. Lisboa: Publicações Dom Quixote.

#06

“Os espíritos altamente analíticos vêem (quase que) só defeitos: quanto mais forte a lente, mais imperfeita se mostra a coisa observada. O detalhe é sempre mau” (Pessoa, 2008: 174).

PESSOA, Fernando (2008). Livro Do Desassossego. Lisboa: Relógio D'Água Editores.

The Fox, The Cock And The Dog

(Cunning in often caught in its own coils)
“A hungry Fox unable to believe his eyes,
Saw one night etched against the stars
A magnificent Cock – almost within his reach.
“Wake up, fine bird!” he called, “the world is rich:
I have such news for you it cannot wait.”
The Cock, high up, blinked and answered, “What?”
“Ah”, said the Fox, his mouth already wet,
“King Lion has made an universal truce:
No beast may hurt a bird at any price.
From this time on we shall live in peace.”
“Remarkable!” the Cock replied. “You mean
That I'll be safe from you, and you from men?”
“Exactly that. Come, take my paw, come down.
Let all the past be healed in one embrace.”
“Wait,” said the Cock craning his neck, “I see
Someone who'll want to join our jubilee.
Yes, look, he leaps towards us eagerly.”
“Hm!” said the Fox. “Can you tell me who?”
“Only the farmer's Dog. I think you know
Him... Yes?... Ah, must you really go?
I thought the three of us were all about to kiss.”
And he added just as Fox displayed his back:
“Surely you and he would love to speak
Of brotherly love and universal peace?”
“Be glad to, yes – but have no guarantee,”
(Shouted the Fox already far away)
“That Master Dog has heard King Lion's Decree”” (Aesop, 1982: 19).

AESOP (1982). New Tales From Aesop. Translation by Paul Roche. London: Honeyglen Publishing.

#04

““Happiness” had an element of inanity, verified by Greene in life and in his fiction: “Point me out the happy man and I will point you out either egotism, selfishness, evil – or else an absolute ignorance.”
(Flaubert, in a letter of 1846, also felt that “to be stupid, selfish, and have a good health are the three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.” Acknowledging the possibility of a higher form of happiness, achieved incidentally in the exercise of deeper capacities, Flaubert felt that, in his own case, that, too, would remain phantasmal)” (Hazzard, 2001: 12).


HAZZARD, Shirley (2001). Greene In Capri. London: Virago Press.

#03

"I was taught that it was only knaves or fools who had ready answers for every question", (id: 170).

#02

“If someone asked how anyone was, we invariably replied: “Oh, he's fat enough” – which meant he was well, or, as they say in Denmark, that he was happy. If someone was not well, one said: “Oh, you can see it on him”; and if the person under discussion was more dead than alive, one said: “Oh, he's a bit low.” If someone was dying of old age, one said: “Yes, he's off he's food these days.” About someone who was on he's deathbed, it was said: “Yes, he's packing his bags no, poor fellow.” Of a mortally ill youngster it was said that it did not look as if he would ever have grey hairs to comb”, (Laxness, 2001: 48).

LAXNESS, Halldór (2001). The Fish Can Sing. Translation by Magnus Magnusson. London: The Harvill Press.