Pulo do Lobo

Um blog para os apreciadores do silêncio ...

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Localização: Neta, Alentejo, Portugal

quinta-feira, outubro 20, 2005

Lolita


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IN THE SPRING OF 1940, on the last crossing of a French ocean liner that would be sunk by German U-boats on its return voyage, Vladimir Nabokov, his wife, and his young son arrived in New York. The family's first, precarious years in America brought many changes, but one element remained constant. Every summer, Nabokov and his wife would drive cross country to the Rocky Mountains, which offered the country's best butterfly hunting.

On those trips, during sudden rainstorms, bouts of insomnia, long drives, and flashes of impromptu inspiration in this or that alpine meadow, the Russian emigre Nabokov began to jot down on three-by-five-inch cards a singular story. This story was to become the greatest and most controversial American novel of the 20th century: ''Lolita."

The summer over, Nabokov continued work on the scandalous tale of the middle-aged Humbert Humbert's love for 12-year-old Dolores Haze. He spent long hours in the libraries of Cornell University--where he had become a professor of Russian literature--reading psychological case studies so as to more effectively impersonate the tones and torments of a madman. He rode around in schoolbuses in order to get the feel of American children's slang. Despite his efforts, the diabolically difficult task he had set himself frustrated Nabokov so much that one day in 1950 he decided to put an end to his suffering and took the unfinished manuscript and note cards to the incinerator behind his house. His wife caught him just in time.

When the 54-year-old Nabokov at last finished ''Lolita" in 1953, it was his 12th novel and his third in English. He presented it to a publisher and was told that the book was excellent, but that if he published it they would both go to jail. He remained tight-lipped on the subject of his new work, and decided to publish it under a pseudonym. With time, however, it became clear to him that nothing was more likely to attract the attention of the censors than anonymous publication, and agreed to publish the work under his own name.

''Lolita" appeared in two pale green volumes from the Paris-based Olympia Press in September 1955. Few readers took notice of the foreign publication until December, when Graham Greene, writing in the London Sunday Times, included the book by the virtually unknown Nabokov in his list of the three best he had read that year. John Gordon, a conservative Scottish editor, examined the unexpected entry in Graham's list and shortly thereafter denounced it in the Sunday Express as ''the filthiest book I have ever read," adding that it was ''sheer unrestrained pornography." Sales soared, interest increased, and when, after much fearful hesitation on the part of publishers, the work was published in an American edition in 1958, it spent six months as No. 1 on the bestseller charts.

''Lolita" was a disturbing book--both in its manner and its matter. Its matter is the relationship--sexual and other--of a European professor and his pubescent American stepdaughter, who he calls by the pet-name Lolita. The book's manner is more difficult to describe. Its form is a faux first-person memoir written, in the words of the dubious European in question, ''first in the psychopathic ward for observation, and then in this well-heated, albeit tombal, seclusion." Nabokov's narrator composes the text in 56 days, at a feverishly brilliant pace. He takes personal, narrative, and linguistic liberties (his native language is French) which are as surprising as they are amusing. He shows brilliance in virtually every respect. The name he elects to write under is Humbert Humbert.
. . .
In 1958, ''L'Affaire Lolita," as the French had christened it, was just beginning its long career. The following year, Nabokov wrote a screenplay based on his novel for Stanley Kubrick and James Harris. The 1962 film propelled Kubrick's career and its success allowed the Nabokovs to retire to Switzerland.

But stranger forms of reception were already underway. As Kubrick was beginning to film, an Israeli guard in a Jerusalem prison gave a copy of ''Lolita" to Adolf Eichmann, who was awaiting trial. An indignant Eichmann returned the book two days later, calling it ''a very unwholesome book." The sulphurous halo of Nabokov's novel was still burning brightly in the popular consciousness of 1960 and it seems that Eichmann's guard gave the book to him as an experiment--a sort of litmus test for radical evil: to see whether the real-life villain, he who impassively organized the transport towards certain death of countless innocents, would coldly, or even gleefully, approve the various and vile machinations of Nabokov's creation.
The incident nicely encapsulates the debates which have animated the book's reception in the past 50 years. Many gifted readers have found ''Lolita" a beautiful and rending tale of love and loss. And many gifted readers have found it a shameless apology for sin and style irrespective of moral content.

A hint as to how best to read it is offered in a foreword to the novel. Therein ''John Ray Jr., PhD" explains how Humbert Humbert's manuscript, titled ''Lolita, or the Confessions of a White Widowed Male," came into his possession and why he has agreed to see it into print. He warns that in reading one will be ''entranced with the book while abhorring its author." The forward was written by none other than Nabokov himself (over the course of the novel this becomes clear--but not so clear that an English press as late as 1979 was fooled and published an edition with the foreword replaced by one commissioned from Nabokov enthusiast Martin Amis). What has so fascinated and divided readers is how one should react to the novel. Or, in other words, how to be ''entranced with the book while abhorring its author."

The author in question, however, is not Nabokov, but his mesmerizing creation Humbert Humbert. In interviews and essays Nabokov was careful to underline that Humbert was a ''scoundrel" and a ''rogue." But Nabokov was also careful to underline that Humbert was not only a scoundrel and a rogue. ''In his last stage he is a moral man," wrote Nabokov of the turn in Humbert's thinking which takes place at the end of the novel, ''because he realizes that he loves Lolita like any woman should be loved. But it is too late, he has destroyed her childhood."
Lolita is the story of Humbert Humbert's ''nymphelepsy"--and, more particularly, his love for a particular ''nymphet." A nymphet is not just any young girl, and not just any lovely young girl. Discerning one, as Humbert ecstatically explains, requires an artistic sensitivity--and leads one to the heart of his undertaking.
''A normal man given a group photograph of school girls or Girl Scouts and asked to point out the comeliest one," Humbert tells us, ''will not necessarily choose the nymphet among them. You have to be an artist and a madman, a creature of infinite melancholy, with a bubble of hot poison in your loins and a super-voluptuous flame permanently aglow in your subtle spine (oh, how you have to cringe and hide!)..."
Humbert prides himself on this artistic sensibility, and more and more compares his love for Lolita to that of an artist for the elusive image he is trying to realize in a given work of art. With startling refinement and real cunning Humbert begins then to lead his readers down a dangerous path.
. . .
One of Lolita's finest readers and first defenders, Lionel Trilling, wrote as early as 1958 that in reading the book, ''we find ourselves the more shocked when we realize that, in the course of reading the novel, we have come virtually to condone the violation it presents.... we have been seduced into conniving in the violation, because we have permitted our fantasies to accept what we know to be revolting."

Humbert's seductive force comes in large part from his freakish rhetorical gifts--and also in large part for one of the seductive comparisons he repeatedly evokes. Just as an artist is first and foremost responsible to his or her own inspiration, Humbert describes himself as first and foremost responsible to his passion. He is soon so consumed by the kindling of his own senses that despite his powers of perception and despite his sensitivity, he acts with callousness and coldness to the nymphet he claims to so ardently love. The lesson he learns he learns ''too late."
It is this lesson learned too late which spurs him to a special undertaking--the writing of his ''confession." Nabokov has Humbert compose a memoir in which he narrates not from the point of view of the regret and repentance which is his own at the time of writing, but from that of the euphoria and haunted rapture which preceded it. He writes from the perspective through which he had gradually persuaded himself that what he was doing to young Lolita could be explained, could be justified, was not so bad after all.
This device allows for the fine pattern of remorse running along the blade of his ''conspiratorial dagger," as he cryptically calls it, to remain for a time invisible. When it ceases to be so, and when he ceases to recreate and relate his coldness for the sake of what he calls ''retrospective verisimilitude," the reader can at last understand why he had chosen to call that dagger ''conspiratorial" in the first place.

Against whom was it turned? Against whom did he conspire? ''Tum-tee-tum. And once more--TUM!," wrote Nabokov in his 1934 novel ''Despair," told from the perspective of an earlier murderer and madman who thinks himself an artist. ''I have not gone mad. I am merely producing gleeful little sounds. The kind of glee one experiences upon making an April fool of someone. And a damned good fool I have made of someone. Who is he? Gentle reader, look at yourself in the mirror."
Bertrand Russell once noted that there is nothing so useful to a democracy as the immunization against eloquence, and Humbert's memoir should be seen in a similar light. What he ultimately tells his readers is: What I have done is monstrous, let no amount of eloquence ever convince you that such acts are anything but. Look at them for what they are. Look at them for the pain they cause.

Stated somewhat differently, the most brilliant American novel of the 20th century, now a round and ripe 50 years old, tells us that the artist cannot live in the world as he lives in the world of words--and that this is a lesson worthy of expressing in the world of words.

quarta-feira, outubro 19, 2005

We need help !


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The edges of the Antarctic ice sheets are slipping into the ocean at an unprecedented rate, raising fears of a global surge in sea levels, glaciologists warned.
The findings confound predictions made just four years ago, by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), that Antarctica would not contribute significantly to sea level rise in the 21st century.
In one area, around the Amundsen Sea in West Antarctica, glaciers are dumping more than 110 cubic kilometres of ice into the ocean each year, Eric Rignot of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, US, told a meeting at the Royal Society in London, UK. This loss, which is increasing each year, is many times faster than the ice can be replaced by snowfall inland, he says.
The impending ice disaster centres on Pine Island Bay on the shores of the Amundsen Sea, where the Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers enter the sea. These glaciers, like many in West Antarctica, are perched on underwater mountains. The meeting heard that warmer ocean waters are circulating beneath the ice and melting their bases at a rate of 50 metres a year.
As this happens, the glaciers float clear of the submarine mountains and slide into the ocean. According to Andy Shepherd at the University of Cambridge, UK, they are discharging ice three times faster than a decade ago.

Beleza


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A beleza é a luz que se projecta quando se opera um contacto orgânico, vivo, entre o eu e o outro, entre o homem e o mundo, entre o mundo e o divino. Quando se descobre a organização profunda, a união harmoniosa e equilibrada das diferenças, a união entre o sensível e o meta-sensível, o diálogo entre o certo e o errado, entre o amor e o ódio, entre o tudo e o nada: mostrando o sentido que há nisso tudo, o lugar que tudo isso ocupa na ordem geral do ser.

sexta-feira, outubro 14, 2005

Experiência ... ?


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Já fiz cócegas à minha irmã só para que deixasse de chorar, já me queimei a brincar com uma vela, já fiz um balão com a pastilha que se me colou na cara toda, já falei com o espelho, já fingi ser bruxo. Já quis ser astronauta, violinista, mago, caçador e trapezista; já me escondi atrás da cortina e deixei esquecidos os pés de fora; já estive sob o chuveiro até fazer chichi. Já roubei um beijo, confundi os sentimentos, tomei um caminho errado e ainda sigo caminhando pelo desconhecido. Já raspei o fundo da panela onde se cozinhou o creme, já me cortei ao barbear-me muito apressado e chorei ao escutar determinada música no autocarro. Já tentei esquecer algumas pessoas e descobri que são as mais difíceis de esquecer.Já subi às escondidas até ao terraço para agarrar estrelas, já subi a uma árvore para roubar fruta, já caí por uma escada. Já fiz juramentos eternos, escrevi no muro da escola e chorei sozinho na casa de banho por algo que me aconteceu; já fugi de minha casa para sempre e voltei no instante seguinte. Já corri para não deixar alguém a chorar, já fiquei só no meio de mil pessoas sentindo a falta de uma única. Já vi o pôr-do-sol mudar do rosado ao alaranjado, já mergulhei na piscina e não quis sair mais, já bebi whisky até sentir meus lábios dormentes, já olhei a cidade de cima e nem mesmo assim encontrei o meu lugar. Já senti medo da escuridão, já tremi de nervos, já quase morri de amor e renasci novamente para ver o sorriso de alguém especial, já acordei no meio da noite e senti medo de me levantar.Já apostei a correr descalço pela rua, gritei de felicidade, roubei rosas num enorme jardim, já me apaixonei e pensei que era para sempre, mas era um"para sempre" pela metade. Já me deitei na relva até de madrugada e vi o sol substituir a lua; já chorei por ver amigos partir e depois descobri que chegaram outros novos e que a vida é um ir e vir permanente. Foram tantas as coisas que fiz, tantos os momentos fotografados pela lente da emoção e guardados nesse baú chamado coração...
Agora, um questionário pergunta-me, grita-me desde o papel:
" - Qual é a sua experiência?"
Essa pergunta fez eco no meu cérebro.
"Experiência.... "Experiência... "
Será que cultivar sorrisos é experiência?
Agora... agradar-me-ia perguntar a quem redigiu o questionário:
" - Experiência? Quem a tem ?

terça-feira, outubro 11, 2005

A aposta de Pascal


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"Todos os argumentos a favor e contra a existência de Deus que examinámos até agora pretendem demonstrar que Deus existe ou que Deus não existe. Todos eles pretendem dar-nos conhecimento da sua existência ou não existência. O argumento do apostador, derivado da obra do filósofo e matemático Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), habitualmente conhecido como aposta de Pascal, é muito diferente dos outros. O seu objectivo não é proporcionar uma demonstração, mas antes mostrar que um apostador sensato deveria «apostar» na existência de Deus.O argumento parte da posição de um agnóstico, isto é, alguém que acredita que não existem dados suficientes para decidir se Deus existe ou não. Um agnóstico acredita que é genuinamente possível que Deus exista, mas que não há dados suficientes para decidir a questão com toda a certeza. Um ateu, pelo contrário, acredita geralmente que existem dados conclusivos a favor da inexistência de Deus.O argumento do jogador é o seguinte. Uma vez que não sabemos se Deus existe ou não, estamos numa posição muito semelhante à de um apostador antes de uma corrida de cavalos se ter realizado ou antes de uma carta ter sido voltada. Precisamos por isso de calcular as hipóteses que temos. Mas ao agnóstico pode parecer que tanto a existência como a inexistência de Deus são igualmente prováveis. A atitude do agnóstico consiste em ficar indeciso, sem tomar nenhuma decisão em nenhuma das direcções. O argumento do apostador, contudo, afirma que a coisa mais racional a fazer é procurar que a hipótese de ganhar seja tão grande quanto possível, ao mesmo tempo que a possibilidade de perder seja tão pequena quanto possível: por outras palavras, devemos maximizar os ganhos possíveis e minimizar as perdas possíveis. De acordo com o argumento do apostador, a melhor forma de alcançar este objectivo é acreditar em Deus.Há quatro resultados possíveis. Se apostarmos na existência de Deus e ganharmos (i. e., se Deus existir), ganhamos a vida eterna — um excelente prémio. O que perdemos se apostarmos nesta opção e verificarmos que Deus não existe não é muito, se compararmos com a possibilidade da vida eterna: podemos perder alguns prazeres mundanos, perder muitas horas a rezar e viver as nossas vidas debaixo de uma ilusão. Contudo, se escolhermos apostar na opção da inexistência de Deus e ganharmos (i. e., se Deus não existir), viveremos uma vida sem ilusão (pelo menos neste aspecto) e teremos a liberdade de gozar os prazeres desta vida sem medo do castigo divino. Mas, se apostarmos nesta opção e perdermos (i. e., se Deus existir), perdemos pelo menos a possibilidade da vida eterna e podemos mesmo correr o risco da condenação eterna.Pascal defendeu que, enquanto apostadores perante estas opções, o curso de acção mais racional será acreditar que Deus existe. Assim, se tivermos razão, estaremos em posição de obter a vida eterna. Se apostarmos na existência de Deus e não tivermos razão, não estaremos em posição de perder tanto quanto estaríamos se escolhêssemos acreditar na inexistência de Deus e não tivéssemos razão. Logo, se queremos maximizar os nossos ganhos possíveis e minimizar as nossas perdas possíveis, devemos acreditar na existência de Deus."

Mudam-se os tempos ...


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Ser racional é ...


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Ela marcou o cinema. Tinham-se conhecido na garagem onde ambos guardam os carros . Certo dia, à entrada da escada da garagem, Gabriel cedeu a passagem a uma senhora baixa e elegante já na casa dos cinquenta. Calças justas nao deixavam muito espaço à imaginaçao. O salto alto e o cabelo comprido loiro bem tratado facilitaram o elogio entre dentes de Gabriel. O agradecimento nao se fez esperar e sobretudo o olhar intenso com que Gabriel se sentiu fulminado deixou no ar um "je sais quoi " de envolvimento. A senhora seria avó certamente, pensou Gabriel. Mas nao seria por isso que desistiria de a tentar conhecer. E assim foi. Várias vezes se cruzaram tendo ambos mantido os cumprimentos de circunstância. Até que um dia, Gabriel, perguntou-lhe se teria tempo para tomar um café no Rose’s ao que recebeu como resposta um sim mas com alguma parcimónia quanto ao tempo reservado para a conversa. É que o seu marido iria partir para a China , em viagem de negócios, e por lá ficaria cerca de 2 semanas. Oh ! Lá Lá ... Como se pode dar tanta e tao útil informaçao em tao pouco tempo. Na posse desta informaçao Gabriel apressou-se a informar do seu estado civil para que ambos ficassem em igualdade de circunstâncias. Nada tao excitante como um jogo de adultério a duas maos. Ainda por cima, Lina tratou de , rapidamente, diga-se de passagem, demarcar o espaço temporal com que a coisa teria que ser feita .

Vao-se os aneis ...


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Mais uns meses e voltam as casas de penhores ...