Amadeu Souza Cardoso

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Precursor da arte moderna, morto prematuramente aos 31 anos de idade, Amadeo de Souza-Cardozo não teve oportunidade de ver seu trabalho reconhecido: seguiu a mesma trilha dos vanguardeiros de todos os tempos e de todas atividades, administrando a incompreensão alheia. A humanidade custa a aceitar novos processos ou idéias diferenciadas e assim, para os precursores, a apreciação objetiva e o coroamento de seus esforços se dá, ou no final da vida, ou somente após sua morte.

Nascido em 1887 e falecido em 1918, as primeiras experiências de Souza-Cardozo se deram no desenho, especialmente como caricaturista. Aos 19 anos, mudou-se para Paris, tomando contato primeiro com o Impressionismo e depois com o Expressionismo e o Cubismo.

Valeu-lhe muito sua aproximação com Amadeu Modigliani, de quem se tornou um grande amigo, compartilhando com ele um ateliê e até realizando exposições juntos, em 1911.

Preso ainda ao traço, em 1912 publicou um álbum com 20 desenhos e em seguida, «com paciência de beneditino» copiou o conto de Flaubert La légende de Saint Julien l’Hospitalier, trabalhos ignorados pelo apreciadores de arte. Este último trabalho, depois de ficar por muitos anos nas mãos do editor, acabou sendo adquirido pela própria viúva do pintor, para evitar que fosse destruído.

Depois de participar de uma exposição nos Estados Unidos, em 1913, voltou a Portugal, onde teve a ousadia de realizar duas exposições, respectivamente em Porto e em Lisboa, causando entre seus patrícios, o mesmo escândalo que seria provocado no Brasil, anos mais tarde, por Anita Malfatti: suas obras foram criticadas, ridicularizadas e, em momentos, houve até confronto físico entre críticos e defensores da arte moderna.

Com o término da Primeira Guerra Mundial, em 1918, surgiria a grande oportunidade de desenvolver e encontrar reconhecimento de sua obra, mas Souza-Cardoso não teve tempo para esperar. Morreu nesse mesmo ano e muito tempo se passou até que as opiniões fossem revistas e seu nome ocupasse o devido lugar na história da pintura portuguesa.

Em 1925, a França realizou uma retrospectiva do pintor, com 150 trabalhos, bem aceitos pelo público e pela crítica. Dez anos depois, em Portugal, foi criado um prêmio para distinguir pintores modernistas, que recebeu o nome de «Prêmio Souza-Cardoso». Em 1953, a Biblioteca-Museu de Amarante, sua cidade natal, deu a uma de suas salas o nome do pintor. Em 1958, a Casa de Portugal, em Paris, realizou uma exposição de suas obras.

Lentamente, à medida em que os preconceitos com relação ao modernismo foram sendo afastados, o nome de Souza-Cardoso ganhou a devida importância em Portugal. Ninguém é culpado. Ele era um visionário, vivia fora de seu tempo, tal como outros tantos, pagou um alto preço por isso.

O homem que adorava feijoes

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Era uma vez, um homem que adorava feijão cozido. Só que lhe provocavam gases, criando uma situação bastante embaraçosa. Um dia, ele conheceu uma garota e se apaixonou. Mas próximo ao casamento pensou: - Ela nunca vai se casar comigo se eu continuar deste jeito. Então ele fez um supremo sacrifício e largou os feijões. Pouco depois eles se casaram. Alguns meses depois, no caminho de volta para casa, o carro dele quebrou e, como eles viviam fora da cidade, ele telefonou para sua esposa dizendo que chegaria atrasado porque teria que voltar a pé. No caminho de volta para casa, ele passou por um pequeno restaurante e o aroma maravilhoso de feijões cozidos o atingiu. Como ele ainda tinha que andar alguns quilômetros até sua casa, pensou que qualquer efeito negativo já teria passado antes de chegar. Então ele entrou e pediu três porções grandes de feijão. Durante todo o caminho para casa ele ficou bastante à vontade com seus gases. Quando chegou, já se sentia seguramente melhor. Sua esposa o encontrou na porta e parecia bastante excitada. Ela disse: - Querido, eu tenho a maior surpresa para você no jantar de hoje! Ela colocou uma venda nele e o acompanhou até a cadeira na cabeceira da mesa de jantar, fazendo-o sentar e prometer não olhar. Neste ponto ele sentiu que haviam gases à caminho. Quando sua esposa estava preste a remover a venda, o telefone tocou. Ela o fez prometer de novo que não ia olhar até ela voltar e saiu para atender o telefone. Enquanto ela estava fora, ele aproveitou a oportunidade. Jogou seu peso para apenas uma perna e soltou. Não foi apenas alto, mas parecia também um ovo fritando. Tendo em vista a dificuldade para respirar, ele procurou pelo guardanapo e começou a abanar o ar em volta de si. Ele estava começando a se sentir melhor quando outro começou a surgir. Levantou a perna e: RRRIIIPPPPP! Soou como um motor a diesel pegando, e cheirou ainda pior. Esperando que o cheiro se dissipasse, ele começou a sacudir os braços. As coisas começavam a voltar ao normal quando veio à vontade outra vez... Ele jogou o peso para a outra perna e soltou. Este foi merecedor de uma medalha de ouro: as janelas vibraram, a louça na mesa sacudiu e um minuto depois a rosa sobre a mesa morreu. Enquanto ficava com um ouvido atento à conversa da mulher no telefone e mantendo a sua promessa de não tirar a venda dos olhos, ele continuou a soltar gases por mais 10 minutos. Quando ele ouviu ela se despedir no telefone, colocou suavemente o guardanapo no colo e cruzou suas mãos sobre ele. Sorrindo vitoriosamente, ele tinha a cara da inocência de um anjo quando sua esposa entrou. Pedindo desculpas por ter demorando tanto, ela perguntou se ele tinha olhado a mesa de jantar. Após ter certeza que ele não olhara, ela removeu a venda e gritou: - SURPRESA!!!! Para seu choque e horror, estavam doze convidados sentados na mesa ao seu redor, para sua festa de aniversário SURPRESA.

Nao os mereces ...

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NUM CEMITÉRIO ALENTEJANO AO CAIR DA TARDEUm primeiro vento fresco anuncia levemente o Outono. Só um pouco fresco, tornando o ar tépido, ligeiro. O cemitério é muito pequeno, à volta de uma capela com portas de madeira carcomidas, a pintura já se foi há muito. O muro de trás foi derrubado para ampliar o cemitério para o dobro. Quantas campas? Cinquenta, oitenta? Não mais.Silêncio. O vento. Os muros caiados com aquele branco obsessivo do Alentejo, parecem ter sido feitos uma mão abaixo dos campos em volta, uma planície ondulada, castanha, com as árvores solitárias aqui e ali. Junto às campas o muro não deixa ver mais do que o traço castanho, o verde-escuro das copas. Os mortos não podem ver nada, deitados. Devem ter desejado ser assim, descansarem da terra que os roeu em vida e comeu em mortos. Não querem ver nada. Ficam com o Sol de dia e com aquelas estrelas que brilham com cores nos céus intactos de luz.Nos cemitérios pensam-se coisas estranhas. Nos cemitérios, nos quartos de hotel. Pensamentos de planície, neste caso, diferentes dos pensamentos de montanha, mais agressivos. Pensei: estão aqui enterrados aqueles sobre os quais tanto escrevi. Estavam, com nomes que não enganam ninguém: Cardador, Pisco, Bicho, Salsinha, Piteira, Ganhão. Trabalhadores. Trabalhadores rurais. Trabalhadores rurais alentejanos. Gente dura, fechada, teimosa, perigosa. Bons soldados na guerra colonial, corajosos e cruéis. Gente de quem os patrões desconfia. Gente de navalha. Poucas falas, canto em coro. Compactos pela fome ancestral e pelo trabalho pouco e duro. Gente que anda a pé, pensa poemas, que dita aos outros para escrever. Coisas simples.Pensei: estão aqui enterrados aqueles sobre os quais tanto escrevi. Será que os mereço?

P. Pereira

Fialho de Almeida

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Porque nao voar ?

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Verónica evitava-o sempre que podia. Algo no seu íntimo a avisava. Ele apenas queria o regato do seu veludo quando a solidao se acercasse impiedosa. Já lhe tinha acontecido anteriormente noutras vidas e até em sonhos que nunca chegavam ao fim . Nao seria propriamente uma novidade. Mas, valeria a pena ?

Estas e outras interrogaçoes apoquentavam-na cada vez mais. Já nao conseguia deitar-se sem que a dúvida se instalasse. E, se ele me ama ?

Entao, com a maré cheia de bons ventos calcorreu o areal virgem , de mao dada com a sua crença. E voou , voou , sem dificuldade, como gaivota no rasto da traineira. O ventre húmido comprimido na esteira domingueira continuava a mantê-la com o pé na terra . E a dúvida persistia. E, se ele me ama ?

Zé da Neta

Haydn

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The son of a wheelwright, he was trained as a choirboy and taken into the choir at St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna, where he sang from circa 1740 to circa 1750. He then worked as a freelance musician, playing the violin and keyboard instruments, accompanying for singing lessons given by the composer Porpora, who helped and encouraged him. At this time he wrote some sacred works, music for theatre comedies and chamber music. In circa 1759 he was appointed music director to Count Morzin; but he soon moved, into service as Vice-Kapellmeister with one of the leading Hungarian families, the Esterházys, becoming full Kapellmeister (on Werner's death) in 1766. He was director of an ensemble of generally some 15-20 musicians, with responsibility for the music and the instruments, and was required to compose as his employer - from 1762, Prince Nikolaus Esterházy - might command. At first he lived at Eisenstadt, circa 30 miles south-east of Vienna; by 1767 the family's chief residence, and Haydn's chief place of work, was at the new palace at Eszterháza. In his early years Haydn chiefly wrote instrumental music, including symphonies and other pieces for the twice-weekly concerts and the prince's Tafelmusik, and works for the instrument played by the prince, the baryton (a kind of viol), for which he composed circa 125 trios in ten years. There were also cantatas and a little church music. Around 1766 church music became more central, and so, after the opening of a new opera house at Eszterháza in 1768, did opera. Some of the symphonies from circa 1770 show Haydn expanding his musical horizons from occasional, entertainment music towards larger and more original pieces, for example nos.26, 39, 49, 44 and 52 (many of them in minor keys, and serious in mood, in line with trends in the contemporary symphony in Germany and Austria). Also from 1768-72 come three sets of string quartets, probably not written for the Esterházy establishment but for another patron or perhaps for publication (Haydn was allowed to write other than for the Esterházys only with permission); op.20 clearly shows the beginnings of a more adventurous and integrated quartet style.
Among the operas from this period are Lo speziale (for the opening of the new house), L'infedeltà delusa (1773) and Il mondo della luna (1777). Operatic activity became increasingly central from the mid-1770s as regular performances came to be given at the new house. It was part of Haydn's job to prepare the music, adapting or arranging it for the voices of the resident singers. In 1779 the opera house burnt down; Haydn composed La fedelta premiata for its reopening in 1781. Until then his operas had largely been in a comic genre; his last two for Eszterháza, Orlando paladino (1782) and Armida (1783), are in mixed or serious genres. Although his operas never attained wider exposure, Haydn's reputation had now grown and was international. Much of his music had been published in all the main European centres; under a revised contract with the Esterháza his employer no longer had exclusive rights to his music.
His works of the 1780s that carried his name further afield include piano sonatas, piano trios, symphonies (nos.76-81 were published in 1784-5, and nos.82-7 were written on commission for a concert organization in Paris in 1785-6) and string quartets. His influential op.33 quartets, issued in 1782, were said to be 'in a quite new, special manner': this is sometimes thought to refer to the use of instruments or the style of thematic development, but could refer to the introduction of scherzos or might simply be an advertising device. More quartets appeared at the end of the decade, op.50 (dedicated to the King of Prussia and often said to be influenced by the quartets Mozart had dedicated to Haydn) and two sets (opp.54-5 and 64) written for a former Esterházy violinist who became a Viennese businessman. All these show an increasing enterprise, originality and freedom of style as well as melodic fluency, command of form, and humour. Other works that carried Haydn's reputation beyond central Europe include concertos and notturnos for a type of hurdy-gurdy, written on commission for the King of Naples, and The Seven Last Words, commissioned for Holy Week from Cadíz (Spain) Cathedral and existing not only in its original orchestral form but also for string quartet, for piano and (later) for chorus and orchestra.
In 1790, Nikolaus Esterházy died; Haydn (unlike most of his musicians) was retained by his son but was free to live in Vienna (which he had many times visited) and to travel. He was invited by the impresario and violinist J.P. Salomon to go to London to write an opera, symphonies and other works. In the event he went to London twice, in 1791-2 and 1794-5. He composed his last 12 symphonies for performance there, where they enjoyed great success; he also wrote a symphonie concertante, choral pieces, piano trios, piano sonatas and songs (some to English words) as well as arranging British folksongs for publishers in London and Edinburgh. But because of intrigues his opera, L'anima del filosofo, on the Orpheus story, remained unperformed. He was honoured (with an Oxford DMus) and feted generously and played, sang and conducted before the royal family. He also heard performances of Handel's music by large choirs in Westminster Abbey.
Back in Vienna, he resumed work for Nikolaus Esterházy's grandson (whose father had now died); his main duty was to produce masses for the princess's nameday. He wrote six works, firmly in the Austrian mass tradition but strengthened and invigorated by his command of symphonic technique. Other works of these late years include further string quartets (opp.71 and 74 between the London visits, op.76 and the op.77 pair after them), showing great diversity of style and seriousness of content yet retaining his vitality and fluency of utterance; some have a more public manner, acknowledging the new use of string quartets at concerts as well as in the home. The most important work, however, is his oratorio The Creation in which his essentially simple-hearted joy in Man, Beast and Nature, and his gratitude to God for his creation of these things to our benefit, are made a part of universal experience by his treatment of them in an oratorio modelled on Handel's, with massive choral writing of a kind he had not essayed before. He followed this with The Seasons, in a similar vein but more a series of attractive episodes than a whole.
Haydn died in 1809, after twice dictating his recollections and preparing a catalogue of his works. He was widely revered, even though by then his music was old-fashioned compared with Beethoven's. He was immensely prolific: some of his music remains unpublished and little known. His operas have never succeeded in holding the stage. But he is regarded, with some justice, as father of the symphony and the string quartet: he saw both genres from their beginnings to a high level of sophistication and artistic expression, even if he did not originate them. He brought to them new intellectual weight, and his closely argued style of development laid the foundations for the larger structures of Beethoven and later composers.
Extracted with permission fromThe Grove Concise Dictionary of Musicedited by Stanley Sadie© Macmillan Press Ltd., London.
Consider the following job offer, made to a little-known violinist/composer in 1761. He was invited to join the staff of a music-loving prince, where it would be his responsibility to lead all rehearsals and performances, whether orchestral or chamber, with no time off allowed other than at the discretion of the prince. He would be obliged to appear each morning before the prince to see what duties would be required of him that day. Moreover, all music that he produced while employed at this court would become the property of the prince, to such an extent that the composer was forbidden to give away copies of his own compositions to any other person. Finally, however frustrated or overworked he might become, he could never resign without the explicit permission of his employer. From a twentieth-century perspective, such an offer is scarcely better than slavery, but Joseph Haydn, the man faced with the choice, accepted with alacrity, for it was highly typical of the era in which he lived, a time in which the royal courts were all-powerful. In becoming the Esterházy's Kapellmeister (music master), Haydn surrendered any dreams of personal freedom, but in return, received thirty years of job security, as well as the resources, musical and financial, to compose as much music as was humanly possible. It was a position that would earn for him an unequalled international reputation.
Nothing in Haydn's early years or in his family history indicated that he might attain such heights of fame. He was born in 1732 in the Austrian village of Rohrau, in a corner of the country far nearer to Hungary than to the Alps. In fact, it was in Hungary that the Haydn's origins lay; the composer's great-grandfather had been the first Haydn to settle in Austria around 1650. For the next two generations, most of the male family members were employed as wheelwrights. Even the composer's father, Mathias, worked in that profession, yet he also harbored a love of music, and developed a small talent for singing and playing the harp. Three of Mathias's seventeen children would inherit that passion. His eleventh child, Johann, would become a professional singer. His sixth child, Michael, would become a noted composer and a colleague of Mozart in Salzburg. But the greatest fame would be reserved for his second child, Franz Joseph Haydn, always known as Joseph or, in his youth, Sepperl (Joey).
Joseph's musical abilities developed early. When he was only six, he was sent away to the nearby town of Hainburg on the Danube to study music, principally singing. There, a few miles upstream from Bratislava, the boy lived and studied with the town schoolmaster, a distant family connection, who, according to Haydn's later recollections, administered "more thrashings than food." Yet poor treatment did not diminish the boy's love for music. By the time he was eight, he had attracted the attention of Georg Reutter the younger, Kapellmeister of St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna. Reutter arranged with Joseph's father to obtain the boy's services as a chorister. In the spring of 1740, young Haydn arrived in the imperial capital, the city which would be his home base off and on for the next seventy years.
Joseph was given extensive training as a singer, and served as one of the Cathedral's principal soloists, yet voice was not his only area of study. He also learned harpsichord, organ, violin, a little music theory, and a great deal of Latin. St. Stephen's was (and is) the principal religious institution in a strongly Catholic city, making it a superb venue in which to launch a musical career, yet a career based upon being a boy soprano is a career without much future. When his voice changed, Haydn was dismissed from the Cathedral and, at age eighteen, was left to fend for himself. He paid the rent by giving keyboard lessons, playing the organ and violin in church services, and performing with various orchestras and chamber ensembles. He also intensified his study of composition, and began to make professional contacts that would reward him in later years. Amongst those contacts were the Italian composer Nicola Porpora, the great librettist and court poet Metastasio, and the dowager Princess Esterházy who, it is presumed, eventually brought the talented young musician to the attention of her sons.
However, the Esterházys were still some years in Haydn's future, and it was in another aristocratic house that he would obtain his first official appointment. In 1758 or '59, the Count Karl Joseph Franz Morzin hired Haydn, by then in his late twenties, as his Kapellmeister. Responsibilities included composing, performing, and conducting music to entertain the court. It was a good position for a young man, but the term of employment would be brief. The Count was fiscally impractical, and soon could no longer afford to maintain an orchestra. Nonetheless, it was for Morzin, not for the Esterházys, that Haydn would write his First Symphony in the fall of 1759. Over one-hundred more symphonies would follow.
With the disbanding of Morzin's orchestra, Haydn was free to seek a new position. He found it with the Esterházys, one of the wealthiest and most influential families in all of Austria. The Esterházys, led by the ruling Prince Paul Anton and his successor Prince Nikolaus, were famed for their love of music and for the excellence of their musical establishment. As Haydn was still young and little known, he would have felt privileged to work there and it must have been with pleasure that he signed the contract May 1, 1761. At first, he was only Vice-Kapellmeister, serving beneath principal Kapellmeister Gregor Joseph Werner. But Werner was elderly and ill. Haydn quickly took on a greater portion of the duties, so that long before Werner's death in 1766, the younger man was already principal Kapellmeister in all but name. By the time the title was his, he had already completed several dozen symphonies, including no. 6, 7, and 8 (known as "Morning," "Noon," and "Night"), no. 22 ("The Philosopher"), no. 30 ("Alleluja"), and no. 31 ("Horn Signal").
In this same year, Prince Nikolaus built his palace of Esterháza in the countryside near Lake Neusiedler about thirty miles south of Vienna. There he installed Haydn and all the musicians. The facilities were luxurious, but the location was remote, and for the first time since early childhood, Haydn found himself isolated from the stimulating atmosphere of Vienna. No longer was he exposed to all the latest musical developments. Now only his own works remained to him, and his ideas would be driven solely by his own imagination. A lesser talent might have stagnated in such an environment, yet Haydn thrived. As he would later recall, "My prince was content with all my works. I received approval. I could, as head of an orchestra, make experiments, observe what created an impression, and what weakened it, thus improving, adding to, cutting away, and running risks. I was set apart from the world. There was nobody in my vicinity to confuse and annoy me in my course, and so I had to become original." Nearly ten years would pass before Haydn would again be in close contact with his Viennese colleagues. In that time, he would develope a unique style audible in his middle symphonies. Astute listeners will perceive in his Symphony no. 43 ("Mercury"), no. 45 ("Farewell"), no. 48 ("Maria Theresa") and no. 55 ("The Schoolmaster") the melodic invention, the rhythmic energy, and the deft handling of instrumentation that would later influence such pivotal figures as Mozart and Beethoven. Another Haydn trademark would also emerge: the boisterous finales that seem to link Haydn's symphonies to the comedic verve of opera buffa.
Haydn's growing reputation was acknowledged in a new contract that he signed with the Esterházys January 1, 1779, when at last, after fifteen years of exclusive employment, he was given the right to compose for other potential patrons, if he wished, and not merely for Prince Nikolaus. This alteration in the arrangement allowed Haydn to earn a tidy extra income, and it permitted his works to gain a wider audience. Thus, it was that in 1782, he composed three symphonies (no. 76-78) for a planned English excursion that was eventually cancelled. In 1784, the new highly-regarded composer received another commission from a concert promoter in Paris requesting a set of six symphonies. Haydn put some of his best effort into the project, drawing upon various forms and moods so as to create a diversity of impression. The resulting symphonies, no. 82 through 87 (including the so-called "Bear", "Hen," and "Queen of France" symphonies), premiered the following year.
Haydn's next two symphonies, no. 88 in G and no. 89 in F, were also intended for Paris, though through an Esterházy connection. Johann Tost, an Esterhazy violinist who had relocated to the French capitol, was given by Haydn the scores to several string quartets and two symphonies. The works were not a gift. Haydn had asked that they be delivered to a Parisian publisher. Tost complied, but kept the funds thus obtained. Had it not been for a devoted letter-writing campaign and the intervention of his Viennese publisher, Haydn might never have collected his fee. Perhaps this conflict caused him to be more money-conscious with his next symphonic endeavors. In 1788, a music-loving nobleman, Krafft-Ernst, Prince of Oettingen-Wallerstein, requested of Haydn three new symphonies, and, though the composer at first protested that he was too busy, he finally provided the requested works through the time-saving technique of sending copies of three symphonies he had just written for the French Count d'Ogny. Neither patron seems to have been troubled by this arrangement. The Count happily presented the works in concert in Paris, and the Prince invited Haydn to his castle, where the composer was royally entertained.
Three more Parisian symphonies would be added to Haydn's catalogue: no. 90 in C, no. 91 in E-flat, and no. 92 in G, all dating from 1788 and 1789. The following year, Haydn's life would undergo a sudden change. On September 28, 1790, Prince Nikolaus died, and the musical climate at Esterházy altered abruptly. Nikolaus' successor, Prince Paul Anton, cared little for music and expressed no interest in Haydn's greatest compositional efforts. Of the grand orchestra and opera company, Paul Anton retained only the wind band, and though he retained Haydn as Kapellmeister at full salary, the composer was given no duties whatsoever. Whether or not Haydn was ever to compose another note was a question of no interest to the new Prince. As insulting as this attitude must have seemed, the composer still used it to his advantage, persuading the prince to give him an extended leave of absence. Released at last from Esterháza, Haydn was finally able to visit cities where his music was beloved, where his concerts would be acclaimed, where his income could receive a much appreciated boost.
English audiences were Haydn's principal target. He planned two extended concert tours to London, the first tour lasting from New Year's Day, 1791, to June, '92, the second occurring three years later. Both visits were coordinated by Johann Peter Salomon, a German-born violinist and conductor now working as a concert promoter in London. Well aware of Haydn's popularity in the English capital, Salomon arranged for Haydn to conduct weekly concerts, the highlight of which would be a series of new symphonies and other works written especially for London. His expectations of success were high, and ultimately, those expectations were rewarded. The concerts were a critical and popular success. One critic observed, "It is no wonder that to souls capable of being touched by music, Haydn should be an object of homage, and even of idolatry; for like our own Shakespeare, he moves and governs the passions at his will." Haydn's victory was so complete that even Oxford University participated, awarding him an honorary Doctorate of Music. On that occasion, his Symphony no. 92 was performed, and though the work had been composed for Paris, it would no be known forever as the "Oxford" Symphony.
For each of these two English tours, Haydn composed six symphonies, the final twelve symphonies he would ever write. At the very end of the series stands his Symphony no. 104. Its first performance, at the King's Theatre in the Haymarket on May 4, 1795, was an immense success. "I made 4000 Gulden on this evening," the composer observed to his diary. "Such a thing," he continued, "is possible only in England." But it was more than a fiscal success. Critics, too, were delighted. One review, from The Morning Chronicle, is worth quoting at length: "It is with pleasure we inform the public, that genius is not so totally neglected as some people are too apt to conform. The Benefit of Haydn, was at the Great Concert Room of the King's Theatre, on Monday night; and attended, not only by the best judges and dearest lovers of music, but by a distinguished and crowded Assembly. More than half the pieces performed were of Haydn's composition, and afforded indubitable marks of the extent and variety of his powers¼ He rewarded the good intentions of his friends by writing a new Overture [Symphony] for the occasion, which for fullness, richness, and majesty, in all its parts, is thought by some of the best judges to surpass all his other compositions. A Gentleman, eminent for his musical knowledge, taste, and sound criticism, declared this to be his opinion, that for fifth years to come Musical Composers would be little better than imitators of Haydn."
Haydn's second London visit came to an end August 15, 1795, as he returned to Vienna to resume his duties at the Esterházy court, where changes had occurred in his absence. The unmusical Prince Paul Anton had died. His successor, the latest Esterházy prince to bear the name Nikolaus, wished to restore his court's musical reputation. Haydn was willing, but having reached what he hoped would be his retirement years, worked out a gentle arrangement to suit his preferences. He would live in Vienna for most of the year, spending only the summers in the Esterházy's estate in Eisenstadt, thirty miles outside Vienna. His primary obligation was to provide a new mass every summer on the occasion of the princess' name day. Six of these masses were composed between 1796 and 1802. There would be no more symphonies, though he did produce a magnificent oratorio The Creation, as a reaction to the Handel oratorios he had heard in London, and six more string quartets, four published in 1799, the other two three years later.
Haydn remained productive nearly to the end of his life. Yet the principal role that he played in these last years was neither that of composer nor that of Kapellmeister. He had become, most importantly, Vienna's grand old man of music: an inspiration to younger generations, a man internationally revered even by unmusical souls. In May 1809, when Napoleon's armies captured the city of Vienna after an intense bombardment, Napoleon himself ordered that an honor guard be placed outside the home where the master composer lay on his death bed. Haydn passed away May 31, 1809, at the age of seventy-seven. At his memorial service two weeks later, Mozart's Requiem was sung in Vienna's Schottenkirche. Haydn's remains now lie in the Bergkirche in Eisenstadt, a short distance from the Esterházy palace where he had spent his last working years.

Como Baudelaire via a Mme. Bovary

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En matière de critique, la situation de l'écrivain qui vient après tout le monde, de l'écrivain retardataire, comporte des avantages que n'avait pas l'écrivain prophète, celui qui annonce le succès, qui le commande, pour ainsi dire, avec l'autorité de l'audace et du dévouement.
M. Gustave Flaubert n'a plus besoin du dévouement, s'il est vrai qu'il en eut jamais besoin. Des artistes nombreux, et quelques-uns des plus fins et des plus accrédités, ont illustré et enguirlandé son excellent livre. Il ne reste donc plus à la critique qu'à indiquer quelques points de vue oubliés, et qu'à insister un peu plus vivement sur des traits et des lumières qui n'ont pas été, selon moi, suffisamment vantés et commentés. D'ailleurs, cette position de l'écrivain en retard, distancé par l'opinion, a, comme j'essayais de l'insinuer, un charme paradoxal. Plus libre, parce qu'il est seul comme un traînard, il a l'air de celui qui résume les débats, et, contraint d'éviter les véhémences de l'accusation et de la défense, il a ordre de se frayer une voie nouvelle, sans autre excitation que celle de l'amour du Beau et de la Justice.
II
Puisque j'ai prononcé ce mot splendide et terrible, la Justice, qu'il me soit permis, - comme aussi bien cela m'est agréable, - de remercier la magistrature française de l'éclatant exemple d'impartialité et de bon goût qu'elle a donné dans cette circonstance. Sollicitée par un zèle aveugle et trop véhément pour la morale, par un esprit qui se trompait de terrain, - placée en face d'un roman, oeuvre d'un écrivain inconnu la veille, - un roman, et quel roman ! le plus impartial, le plus loyal, - un champ, banal comme tous les champs, flagellé, trempé, comme la nature elle-même, par tous les vents et tous les orages, - la magistrature, dis-je, s'est montrée loyale et impartiale comme le livre qui était poussé devant elle en holocauste. Et mieux encore, disons, s'il est permis de conjecturer d'après les considérations qui accompagnèrent le jugement, que si les magistrats avaient découvert quelque chose de vraiment reprochable dans le livre, ils l'auraient néanmoins amnistié, en faveur et en reconnaissance de la BEAUTÉ dont il est revêtu. Ce souci remarquable de la Beauté, en des hommes dont les facultés ne sont mises en réquisition que pour le Juste et le Vrai, est un symptôme des plus touchants, comparé avec les convoitises ardentes de cette société qui a définitivement abjuré tout amour spirituel, et qui, négligeant ses anciennes entrailles, n'a plus cure que de ses viscères. En somme, on peut dire que cet arrêt, par sa haute tendance poétique, fut définitif ; que gain de cause a été donné à la Muse, et que tous les écrivains, tous ceux du moins dignes de ce nom, ont été acquittés dans la personne de M. Gustave Flaubert.
Ne disons donc pas, comme tant d'autres l'affirment avec une légère et inconsciente mauvaise humeur, que le livre a dû son immense faveur au procès et à l'acquittement. Le livre, non tourmenté, aurait obtenu la même curiosité, il aurait créé le même étonnement, la même agitation. D'ailleurs les approbations de tous les lettrés lui appartenaient depuis longtemps. Déjà sous sa première forme, dans la Revue de Paris, où des coupures imprudentes en avaient détruit l'harmonie, il avait excité un ardent intérêt. La situation de Gustave Flaubert, brusquement illustre, était à la fois excellente et mauvaise ; et de cette situation équivoque, dont son loyal et merveilleux talent a su triompher, je vais donner, tant bien que mal, les raisons diverses.
III
Excellente ; - car depuis la disparition de Balzac, ce prodigieux météore qui couvrira notre pays d'un nuage de gloire, comme un orient bizarre et exceptionnel, comme une aurore polaire inondant le désert glacé de ses lumières féériques, - toute curiosité, relativement au roman, s'était apaisée et endormie. D'étonnantes tentatives avaient été faites, il faut l'avouer. Depuis longtemps déjà, M. de Custine, célèbre, dans un monde de plus en plus raréfié, par Aloys, Le Monde comme il est et Ethel, - M. de Custine, le créateur de la jeune fille laide, ce type tant jalousé par Balzac (voir le vrai Mercadet), avait livré au public Romuald ou la Vocation, oeuvre d'une maladresse sublime, où des pages inimitables font à la fois condamner et absoudre des langueurs et des gaucheries. Mais M. de Custine est un sous-genre du génie, un génie dont le dandysme monte jusqu'à l'idéal de la négligence. Cette bonne foi de gentilhomme, cette ardeur romanesque, cette raillerie loyale, cette absolue et nonchalante personnalité, ne sont pas accessibles aux sens du grand troupeau, et ce précieux écrivain avait contre lui toute la mauvaise fortune que méritait son talent.
M. d'Aurevilly avait violemment attiré les yeux par Une vieille maîtresse et par L'Ensorcelée. Ce culte de la vérité, exprimé avec une effroyable ardeur, ne pouvait que déplaire à la foule. D'Aurevilly, vrai catholique, évoquant la passion pour la vaincre, chantant, pleurant et criant au milieu de l'orage, planté comme Ajax sur un rocher de désolation, et ayant toujours l'air de dire à son rival, - homme, foudre, dieu ou matière - : «Enlève-moi, ou je t'enlève !» ne pouvait pas non plus mordre sur une espèce assoupie dont les yeux sont fermés aux miracles de l'exception.
Champfleury, avec un esprit enfantin et charmant, s'était joué très heureusement dans le pittoresque, avait braqué un binocle poétique (plus poétique qu'il ne le croit lui-même) sur les accidents et les hasards burlesques ou touchants de la famille ou de la rue ; mais, par originalité ou par faiblesse de vue, volontairement ou fatalement, il négligeait le lieu commun, le lieu de rencontre de la foule, le rendez-vous public de l'éloquence.
Plus récemment encore, M. Charles Barbara, âme rigoureuse et logique, âpre à la curée intellectuelle, a fait quelques efforts incontestablement distingués ; il a cherché (tentation toujours irrésistible) à décrire, à élucider des situations de l'âme exceptionnelles, et à déduire les conséquences directes des positions fausses. Si je ne dis pas ici toute la sympathie que m'inspire l'auteur d'Héloïse et de L'Assassinat du Pont-Rouge, c'est parce qu'il n'entre qu'occasionnellement dans mon thème, à l'état de note historique.
Paul Féval, placé de l'autre côté de la sphère, esprit amoureux d'aventures, admirablement doué pour le grotesque et le terrible, a emboîté le pas, comme un héros tardif, derrière Frédéric Soulié et Eugène Sue. Mais les facultés si riches de l'auteur des Mystères de Londres et du Bossu, non plus que celles de tant d'esprits hors ligne, n'ont pas pu accomplir le léger et soudain miracle de cette pauvre petite provinciale adultère, dont toute l'histoire, sans imbroglio, se compose de tristesses, de dégoûts, de soupirs et de quelques pâmoisons fébriles arrachés à la vie barrée par le suicide.
Que ces écrivains, les uns tournés à la Dickens, les autres moulés à la Byron ou à la Bulwer, trop bien doués peut-être, trop méprisants, n'aient pas su, comme un simple Paul de Kock, forcer le seuil branlant de la Popularité, la seule des impudiques qui demande à être violée, ce n'est pas moi qui leur en ferai un crime, - non plus d'ailleurs qu'un éloge ; de même je ne sais aucun gré à M. Gustave Flaubert d'avoir obtenu du premier coup ce que d'autres cherchent toute leur vie. Tout au plus y verrai-je un symptôme surérogatoire de puissance, et chercherai-je à définir les raisons qui ont fait mouvoir l'esprit de l'auteur dans un sens plutôt que dans un autre.
Mais j'ai dit aussi que cette situation du nouveau venu était mauvaise ; hélas ! pour une raison lugubrement simple. Depuis plusieurs années, la part d'intérêt que le public accorde aux choses spirituelles était singulièrement diminuée ; son budget d'enthousiasme allait se rétrécissant toujours. Les dernières années de Louis-Philippe avaient vu les dernières explosions d'un esprit encore excitable par les jeux de l'imagination ; mais le nouveau romancier se trouvait en face d'une société absolument usée, - pire qu'usée, - abrutie et goulue, n'ayant horreur que de la fiction, et d'amour que pour la possession.
Dans des conditions semblables, un esprit bien nourri, enthousiaste du beau, mais façonné à une forte escrime, jugeant à la fois le bon et le mauvais des circonstances, à dû se dire : «Quel est le moyen le plus sûr de remuer toutes ces vieilles âmes ? Elles ignorent en réalité ce qu'elles aimeraient ; elles n'ont un dégoût positif que du grand ; la passion naïve, ardente, l'abandon poétique les fait rougir et les blesse. - Soyons donc vulgaire dans le choix du sujet, puisque le choix d'un sujet trop grand est une impertinence pour le lecteur du XIXe siècle. Et aussi prenons bien garde à nous abandonner et à parler pour notre propre compte. Nous serons de glace en racontant des passions et des aventures où le commun du monde met ses chaleurs ; nous serons, comme dit l'école, objectif et impersonnel.
«Et aussi, comme nos oreilles ont été harassées dans ces derniers temps par des bavardages d'école puérils, comme nous avons entendu parler d'un certain procédé littéraire appelé réalisme, - injure dégoûtante jetée à la face de tous les analystes, mot vague et élastique qui signifie pour le vulgaire, non pas une méthode nouvelle de création, mais une description minutieuse des accessoires, - nous profiterons de la confusion des esprits et de l'ignorance universelle. Nous étendrons un style nerveux, pittoresque, subtil, exact, sur un canevas banal. Nous enfermerons les sentiments les plus chauds et les plus bouillants dans l'aventure la plus triviale. Les paroles les plus solennelles, les plus décisives, s'échapperont des bouches les plus sottes.
«Quel est le terrain de sottise, le milieu le plus stupide, le plus productif en absurdités, le plus abondant en imbéciles intolérants ? «La province. «Quels y sont les acteurs les plus insupportables ? «Les petites gens qui s'agitent dans de petites fonctions dont l'exercice fausse leurs idées. «Quelle est la donnée la plus usée, la plus prostituée, l'orgue de Barbarie le plus éreinté ? «L'Adultère. «Je n'ai pas besoin, s'est dit le poète, que mon héroïne soit une héroïne. Pourvu qu'elle soit suffisamment jolie, qu'elle ait des nerfs, de l'ambition, une aspiration irréfrénable vers un monde supérieur, elle sera intéressante. Le tour de force, d'ailleurs, sera plus noble, et notre pécheresse aura au moins ce mérite, - comparativement fort rare, - de se distinguer des fastueuses bavardes de l'époque qui nous a précédés. «Je n'ai pas besoin de me préoccuper du style, de l'arrangement pittoresque, de la description des milieux ; je possède toutes ces qualités à une puissance surabondante ; je marcherai appuyé sur l'analyse et la logique, et je prouverai ainsi que tous les sujets sont indifféremment bons ou mauvais, selon la manière dont ils sont traités, et que les plus vulgaires peuvent devenir les meilleurs».
Dès lors, Madame Bovary - une gageure, une vraie gageure, un pari, comme toutes les oeuvres d'art - était créée.
Il ne restait plus à l'auteur, pour accomplir le tour de force dans son entier, que de se dépouiller (autant que possible) de son sexe et de se faire femme. Il en est résulté une merveille ; c'est que, malgré tout son zèle de comédien, il n'a pas pu ne pas infuser un sang viril dans les veines de sa créature, et que madame Bovary, pour ce qu'il y a en elle de plus énergique et de plus ambitieux, et aussi de plus rêveur, madame Bovary est restée un homme. Comme la Pallas armée, sortie du cerveau de Zeus, ce bizarre androgyne a gardé toutes les séductions d'une âme virile dans un charmant corps féminin.
IV
Plusieurs critiques avaient dit : cette oeuvre, vraiment belle par la minutie et la vivacité des descriptions, ne contient pas un seul personnage qui représente la morale, qui parle la conscience de l'auteur. Où est-il, le personnage proverbial et légendaire, chargé d'expliquer la fable et de diriger l'intelligence du lecteur ? En d'autres termes, où est le réquisitoire ?
Absurdité ! Éternelle et incorrigible confusion des fonctions et des genres ! - Une véritable oeuvre d'art n'a pas besoin de réquisitoire. La logique de l'oeuvre suffit à toutes les postulations de la morale, et c'est au lecteur à tirer les conclusions de la conclusion.
Quant au personnage intime, profond, de la fable, incontestablement c'est la femme adultère ; elle seule, la victime déshonorée, possède toutes les grâces du héros. - Je disais tout à l'heure qu'elle était presque mâle, et que l'auteur l'avait ornée (inconsciencieusement peut-être) de toutes les qualités viriles.
Qu'on examine attentivement : 1° L'imagination, faculté suprême et tyrannique, substituée au coeur, ou à ce qu'on appelle le coeur, d'où le raisonnement est d'ordinaire exclu, et qui domine généralement dans la femme comme dans l'animal ; 2° Énergie soudaine d'action, rapidité de décision, fusion mystique du raisonnement et de la passion, qui caractérise les hommes créés pour agir ; 3° Goût immodéré de la séduction, de la domination et même de tous les moyens vulgaires de séduction, descendant jusqu'au charlatanisme du costume, des parfums et de la pommade, - le tout se résumant en deux mots : dandysme, amour exclusif de la domination.
Et pourtant madame Bovary se donne ; emportée par les sophismes de son imagination, elle se donne magnifiquement, généreusement, d'une manière toute masculine, à des drôles qui ne sont pas ses égaux, exactement comme les poètes se livrent à des drôlesses.
Une nouvelle preuve de la qualité toute virile qui nourrit son sang artériel, c'est qu'en somme cette infortunée a moins souci des défectuosités extérieures visibles, des provincialismes aveuglants de son mari, que de cette absence totale de génie, de cette infériorité spirituelle bien constatée par la stupide opération du pied bot.
Et à ce sujet, relisez les pages qui contiennent cet épisode, si injustement traité de parasitique, tandis qu'il sert à mettre en vive lumière tout le caractère de la personne. - Une colère noire, depuis longtemps concentrée, éclate dans toute l'épouse Bovary ; les portes claquent ; le mari stupéfié, qui n'a su donner à sa romanesque femme aucune jouissance spirituelle, est relégué dans sa chambre ; il est en pénitence, le coupable ignorant ! et madame Bovary, la désespérée, s'écrie, comme une petite lady Macbeth accouplée à un capitaine insuffisant : «Ah !que ne suis-je au moins la femme d'un de ces vieux savants chauves et voûtés, dont les yeux abrités de lunettes vertes sont toujours braqués sur les archives de la science ! je pourrais fièrement me balancer à son bras ; je serais au moins la compagne d'un roi spirituel ; mais la compagne de chaîne de cet imbécile qui ne sait pas redresser le pied d'un infirme ! oh !» Cette femme, en réalité, est très sublime dans son espèce, dans son petit milieu et en face de son petit horizon ; 4° Même dans son éducation de couvent, je trouve la preuve du tempérament équivoque de madame Bovary.
Les bonnes soeurs ont remarqué dans cette jeune fille une aptitude étonnante à la vie, à profiter de la vie, à en conjecturer les jouissances ; - voilà l'homme d'action !
Cependant la jeune fille s'enivrait délicieusement de la couleur des vitraux, des teintes orientales que les longues fenêtres ouvragées jetaient sur son paroissien de pensionnaire ; elle se gorgeait de la musique solennelle des vêpres, et, par un paradoxe dont tout l'honneur appartient aux nerfs, elle substituait dans son âme au Dieu véritable le Dieu de sa fantaisie, le Dieu de l'avenir et du hasard, un Dieu de vignette, avec éperons et moustaches ; - voilà le poète hystérique.
L'hystérie ! Pourquoi ce mystère physiologique ne ferait-il pas le fond et le tuf d'une oeuvre littéraire, ce mystère que l'Académie de médecine n'a pas encore résolu, et qui, s'exprimant dans les femmes par la sensation d'une boule ascendante et asphyxiante (je ne parle que du symptôme principal), se traduit chez les hommes nerveux par toutes les impuissances et aussi par l'aptitude à tous les excès ?
V
En somme, cette femme est vraiment grande, elle est surtout pitoyable, et malgré la dureté systématique de l'auteur, qui a fait tous ses efforts pour être absent de son oeuvre et pour jouer la fonction d'un montreur de marionnettes, toutes les femmes intellectuelles lui sauront gré d'avoir élevé la femelle à une si haute puissance, si loin de l'animal pur et si près de l'homme idéal, et de l'avoir fait participer à ce double caractère de calcul et de rêverie qui constitue l'être parfait.
On dit que madame Bovary est ridicule. En effet, la voilà, tantôt prenant pour un héros de Walter Scott une espèce de monsieur, - dirai-je même un gentilhomme campagnard ? - vêtu de gilets de chasse et de toilettes contrastées ! et maintenant, la voici amoureuse d'un petit clerc de notaire ( qui ne sait même pas commettre une action dangereuse pour sa maîtresse), et finalement la pauvre épuisée, la bizarre Pasiphaé, reléguée dans l'étroite enceinte d'un village, poursuit l'idéal à travers les bastringues et les estaminets de la préfecture : - qu'importe ? disons-le, avouons-le, c'est un César à Carpentras : elle poursuit l'Idéal !
Je ne dirai certainement pas comme le Lycanthrope d'insurrectionnelle mémoire, ce révolté qui a abdiqué : «En face de toutes les platitudes et de toutes les sottises du temps présent, ne nous reste-t-il pas le papier à cigarettes et l'adultère ?» mais j'affirmerai qu'après tout, tout compte fait, même avec des balances de précision, notre monde est bien dur pour avoir été engendré par le Christ, qu'il n'a guère qualité pour jeter la pierre à l'adultère ; et que quelques minotaurisés de plus ou de moins n'accéléreront pas la vitesse rotatoire des sphères et n'avanceront pas d'une seconde la destruction finale des univers. - Il est temps qu'un terme soit mis à l'hypocrisie de plus en plus contagieuse, et qu'il soit réputé ridicule pour des hommes et des femmes, pervertis jusqu'à la trivialité, de crier : haro ! sur un malheureux auteur qui a daigné, avec une chasteté de rhéteur, jeter un voile de gloire sur des aventures de tables de nuit, toujours répugnantes et grotesques, quand la Poésie ne les caresse pas de sa clarté de veilleuse opaline.
Si je m'abandonnais sur cette pente analytique, je n'en finirais jamais avec Madame Bovary ; ce livre, essentiellement suggestif, pourrait souffler un volume d'observations. Je me bornerai, pour le moment, à remarquer que plusieurs des épisodes les plus importants ont été primitivement ou négligés ou vitupérés par les critiques. Exemples : l'épisode de l'opération manquée du pied bot, et celui, si remarquable, si plein de désolation, si véritablement moderne, où la future adultère, - car elle n'est encore qu'au commencement du plan incliné, la malheureuse ! - va demander secours à l'Église, à la divine Mère, à celle qui n'a pas d'excuses pour n'être pas toujours prête, à cette Pharmacie où nul n'a le droit de sommeiller ! Le bon curé Bournisien, uniquement préoccupé des polissons du catéchisme qui font de la gymnastique à travers les stalles et les chaises de l'église, répond avec candeur : «Puisque vous êtes malade, madame, et puisque M. Bovary est médecin, pourquoi n'allez-vous pas trouver votre mari ?»
Quelle est la femme qui, devant cette insuffisance du curé, n'irait pas, folle amnistiée, plonger sa tête dans les eaux tourbillonnantes de l'adultère, - et quel est celui de nous qui, dans un âge plus naïf et dans des circonstances troublées, n'a pas fait forcément connaissance avec le prêtre incompétent ?
VI
J'avais primitivement le projet, ayant deux livres du même auteur sous la main (Madame Bovary et La Tentation de saint Antoine, dont les fragments n'ont pas encore été rassemblés par la librairie), d'installer une sorte de parallèle entre les deux. Je voulais établir des équations et des correspondances. Il m'eût été facile de retrouver sous le tissu minutieux de Madame Bovary, les hautes facultés d'ironie et de lyrisme qui illuminent à outrance La Tentation de saint Antoine. Ici le poète ne s'était pas déguisé, et sa Bovary, tentée par tous les démons de l'illusion, de l'hérésie, par toutes les lubricités de la matière environnante, - son saint Antoine enfin, harassé par toutes les folies qui nous circonviennent, aurait apologisé mieux que sa toute petite fiction bourgeoise. - Dans cet ouvrage, dont malheureusement l'auteur ne nous a livré que des fragments, il y a des morceaux éblouissants ; je ne parle pas seulement du festin prodigieux de Nabuchodonosor, de la merveilleuse apparition de cette petite folle de reine de Saba, miniature dansant sur la rétine d'un ascète, de la charlatanesque et emphatique mise en scène d'Apollonius de Tyane suivi de son cornac, ou plutôt de son entreteneur, le millionnaire imbécile qu'il entraîne à travers le monde ; - je voudrais surtout attirer l'attention du lecteur sur cette faculté souffrante, souterraine et révoltée, qui traverse toute l'oeuvre, ce filon ténébreux qui illumine, - ce que les Anglais appellent le subcurrent, - et qui sert de guide à travers ce capharnaüm pandémoniaque de la solitude.
Il m'eût été facile de montrer, comme je l'ai déjà dit, que M. Gustave Flaubert a volontairement voilé dans Madame Bovary les hautes facultés lyriques et ironiques manifestées sans réserve dans La Tentation, et que cette dernière oeuvre, chambre secrète de son esprit, reste évidemment la plus intéressante pour les poètes et les philosophes.
Peut-être aurai-je un autre jour le plaisir d'accomplir cette besogne.

Baudelaire

Chega um tempo em que ...

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Chega um tempo em que não se diz mais: meu Deus.
Tempo de absoluta depuração.
Tempo em que não se diz mais: meu amor.
Porque o amor resultou inútil.
E os olhos não choram.
E as mãos tecem apenas o rude trabalho.
E o coração está seco.

Em vão mulheres batem à porta, não abrirás.
Ficaste sozinho, a luz apagou-se,
mas na sombra teus olhos resplandecem enormes.
És todo certeza, já não sabes sofrer.
E nada esperas de teus amigos.

Pouco importa venha a velhice, que é a velhice?
Teus ombros suportam o mundo
e ele não pesa mais que a mão de uma criança.
As guerras, as fomes, as discussões dentro dos edifícios
provam apenas que a vida prossegue
e nem todos se libertaram ainda.
Alguns, achando bárbaro o espetáculo
prefeririam (os delicados) morrer.
Chegou um tempo em que não adianta morrer.
Chegou um tempo que a vida é uma ordem.
A vida apenas, sem mistificação.

(Carlos Drummond de Andrade)

Uma visao de Kierkegaard

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When Søren Kierkegaard lay dying in Copenhagen 150 years ago, it would have been hard to predict the influence his work would later have. European Christendom already appeared to be in terminal decay, and Kierkegaard’s main purpose as a writer was to awaken his readers and to convince them of the necessity, and difficulty, of radical Christian discipleship. At his death he had good reasons to doubt whether his work would have much effect on future readers.
To begin with, he had written entirely in Danish—very much a minor language. His fate, he feared, was to be a forgotten writer from a provincial market town: “I write books which presumably will not be read.” Even in Denmark, none of his dozens of volumes sold more than a thousand copies during his life. His genius wasn’t altogether overlooked by his contemporaries; Danish newspapers eulogized him, predicting he would “assume a prominent place in Danish history.” But he felt himself condemned to be, at most, a big fish in a very small pond.
The larger problem with Kierkegaard’s work was its severity: he offered a stern rebuke and an even sterner challenge to an entire religious establishment. In Denmark, baptism in the state church had become a matter-of-course rite of citizenship. Indeed, for Kierkegaard, “Christendom” had become a mistaken baptizing of nearly everything: Where real Christianity called for a transformation of one’s whole life, Christendom simply “christened” everything—giving it a new name and leaving it otherwise unchanged. “What Christianity wanted was chastity—to do away with the whorehouse. The change is this, that the whorehouse remains exactly what it was in paganism, lewdness in the same proportion, but it has become a ‘Christian’ whorehouse.”
Kierkegaard was only half right to despair of his legacy. The language was a barrier: For almost fifty years after his death, he remained unknown outside Denmark. But once his work began to be translated, his influence spread rapidly, until he is now widely regarded as one of the great philosophical minds of the nineteenth century.
But his efforts to bring Christianity to European Christendom have been largely ineffective, especially in his homeland. Today, almost all Danes are baptized, but less than five percent of them regularly attend church—one of the lowest percentages in Europe. And polls suggest that the country is no more Christian in belief than in practice: half of all Danes say God doesn’t matter in their life at all.
From this modern, post-Christian Denmark now comes Joakim Garff’s massive and provocative new biography, in an elegant and brisk translation by Bruce H. Kirmmse. When Garff’s work first appeared in Danish five years ago, it received much praise for its passionate and novelistic presentation of Kierkegaard’s life and times. In retelling the story of Kierkegaard’s short career, Garff set himself two goals: “to reinstall Kierkegaard in his own time,” and to separate the facts about the man from the myths created by his several self-depictions.
The biography is quite successful at achieving its first goal. Garff gives a vivid description of life in the Copenhagen of the 1830s. He provides a particularly splendid account of the city’s literary elite, who frequently wrote their most lively commentaries under pseudonyms. J.L. Heiberg, for instance, used the underscore symbol “_” to sign his articles while he was the editor of a leading journal. “The merriment took on such proportions that writers who wished to remain incognito eventually used up all the uppercase and lowercase letters in both the Latin and Greek alphabets, and people finally had to resort to using numbers.”
When Kierkegaard was twenty-two years old, he made his first foray into this literary hothouse. Writing as “B” in Heiberg’s journal, Kierkegaard composed a stunning jeu d’esprit. His article was such a hit that some thought Heiberg himself must have written it. Suddenly Kierkegaard found himself on the inside of a group of Hegelian romantic dandies. He was leading the kind of life he would later criticize as a form of empty despair.
The characters and culture of Denmark are not the only things that seem animated in Garff’s writing. The city of Copenhagen itself comes alive. We feel as though we are following the author as he walks through the city’s streets, smelling the odors of the marketplace, and catching sight of Kierkegaard as he strolls through the town’s crowds to take his daily “people bath.”
Garff’s second goal in his biography is less creditable. He tells us that he wanted to find the “cracks in the granite of genius, the madness just below the surface, the intensity, the economic and psychological costs of the frenzies of writing, as well as the profound and mercurial mysteriousness of a figure with whom one is never really finished”—in short, to unearth the “Kierkegaard complex.”
The “Kierkegaard complex,” it turns out, is not so different from the Oedipus complex. The author suggests that Kierkegaard’s overbearing father made it impossible for him to enter into normal human relationships, especially with women. Pent-up libidinal desires resulting from an overactive super-ego inevitably led to revolt and misery, which was soothed but never healed by the therapeutic sublimation of artistic production.
Though Freud is hardly mentioned in the biography, it’s his intellectual framework that provides the outlines of the story—explaining Kierkegaard’s scruples, his broken engagement with Regine Olsen, and his constant literary output. Garff seems to assume that the message of Kierkegaard’s father (to love God and to love your neighbor as yourself) is irrational and impossibly demanding. The effort to obey this teaching, involving as it does the repression of the libido, must result in self-torment and ultimately illness.
At certain points, this way of understanding Kierkegaard’s life seems useful. His father was indeed overbearing, and certainly Garff’s account of Kierkegaard’s attack on Christendom in the final years of his life makes Kierkegaard seem both unhappy and profoundly frustrated.
But as an overall interpretation of Kierkegaard’s life, Garff’s Freudian diagnosis is finally unconvincing. It requires the biographer, for instance, to take too many liberties in reconstructing the relation between father and son. Michael Kierkegaard may have been brooding and domineering, but that doesn’t—or doesn’t have to—explain why he taught his children to practice the virtues of temperance and chastity. Garff seems unable to imagine how any healthy person could consider these things forms of excellence. And so we are told that the father “put a fateful mark upon the son’s desire, reversing what is natural and unnatural, and to this extent had sexually molested his child.”
Here Garff is following Freud, of course, whereas Kierkegaard and his father belonged to the classic Christian tradition of moral reflection. Kierkegaard thought that our desires, emotions, thoughts, and relations could be educated. Following Augustine, he tried to show that a person whose desires are educated comes to see that an infinite desire for the finite is a recipe for despair: our hearts are restless until they rest in God.
Garff operates always with suspicion, never quite trusting Kierkegaard’s account of things—either in his published work or in the many volumes of journals he left for posterity. This distrust motivates Garff to search for other sources; he is interested in everything any of his contemporaries ever wrote about Kierkegaard. He searches out report cards, bank records, diaries, and letters. He has done his homework, and his massive research provides us with a picture of Kierkegaard that is multi-textured. But it also distracts Garff from what is most important, and he loses sight of Kierkegaard’s own self-understanding.
We learn a greatdeal about the mentors against whom Kierkegaard rebelled—particularly Heiberg, the Hegelian litterateur, and Mynster, the Danish bishop—but, strangely, we learn almost nothing about the only mentor to whom Kierkegaard dedicated a book: his philosophy professor Poul Martin Møller. And despite extensive treatment of the political changes of 1848, there is little discussion of the impact of democratization on the Danish Church. Garff does not always do enough to help the reader judge how many of Kierkegaardt's complaints about the local Church were warranted.
In truth, the Kierkegaard we meet reading Garff is not as richly complicated as the Kierkegaard we meet reading Kierkegaard himself. Like any brilliant stylist, Kierkegaard was aware that his first audience was always a fiction: part of his job as a writer was to imagine his reader. He expected that his reader would in turn have enough imagination to conjure up a sense of an implied author, and he did everything he could to help him do so. In this sense, Kierkegaard is like Plato, who almost never puts himself in his own writing, except once to tell us of his presence (at Socrates’ trial) and once to tell us of his absence (at Socrates’ death). Plato is implied throughout his dialogues, yet the flesh-and-blood Plato is always in the background, behind the text.
Were a reader of Plato’s dialogues to become overly concerned with Plato the man—worrying about the details of his financial situation or hypothesizing about possible sexual lapses—it would become impossible to engage the dialogues in a serious way. This is not to say that we must accept Plato’s purposes every step of the way. And we might be legitimately curious about the real man behind the texts. But we can’t do justice to Plato the philosopher if we are constantly sidetracked by speculations about whether Plato the man really lived up to his own teachings. By focusing solely on the historical Plato, we’ll miss other important questions: Where is Plato being ironic? What virtues does Plato want me, as his reader, to develop? Are there good reasons why I should reject his arguments or distrust the story he is telling?
Kierkegaard liked to play with the boundaries that separated him from the authors and narrators of his books. Part of the joy of reading him is the encounter with these various voices. After one has sorted out the pseudonyms, there is still the challenge of discovering how, for Kierkegaard, a difference of voice implies a difference of character—how vice and virtue are embodied in a style. By registering these differences, Kierkegaard becomes, by way of indirection, a moral teacher. By charting the rhetorical strategies of his implied authors and narrators, he awakens us to our own self-deceptions and urges us toward a supernatural integrity—a right relation with God, others, and ourselves. And he hopes to do the same for himself.
Garff’s approach tramples over this complexity. With his boundless interest in the flesh-and-blood Kierkegaard, the biographer seems deaf to the delicate counterpoint between implied author and implied reader. That counterpoint is not a mere fiction; it is a central part of Kierkegaard’s project that here gets lost in the rush of detail. In its historical scope and in the richness of its descriptions, Garff’s Søren Kierkegaard sets a new standard for Kierkegaard scholarship. It has done more to help us understand Kierkegaard’s social milieu than any other biography. But it does not always succeed in helping us to understan Kierkegaard’s work in its own terms. While searching for “cracks in the granite,” Garff too often neglects the real seam of Kierkegaard’s moral and literary genius.
Gregory R. Beabout

Agosto esvai-se

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Este mês, que nos atrofia a racionalidade e testa a nossa capacidade de armazenamento de líquidos, está prestes a terminar. Resta-nos uma mísera semana para balancear as contas e sair dele perfeitamente saciado. Uns, terao que passar a semana a águas e tisanas pois a "isca" já nao aguenta mais , outros, terao ainda que aproveitar o tempo que lhes resta, prevenindo hipotéticas situaçoes de "arrependimento" , nos restantes meses do ano. Pois, que Baco e Dionísio se encontrem com Vénus para , em perfeita harmonia, disfrutarem da habitual lassidao dos tugas neste mês propício ao "amor entre os povos".

a ver se entendo o Adrian Leverkuhn

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