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Are they shadows that we see?

And can shadows pleasure give?

Pleasures only shadows be

Cast by bodies we conceive

And are made the things we deem

In those figures which they seem.

But these pleasures vanish fast

Which by shadows are expressed;

Pleasures are not, if they last;

In their passing is their best.

Glory is most bright and gay

In a flash, and so away.

Feed apace then, greedy eyes,

On the wonder you behold;

Take it sudden as it flies,

Though you take it not to hold.

When your eyes have done their part,

Thought must length it in the heart.

By Samuel Daniel

 

Nada, na história, serve para ensinar aos homens a possibilidade de viverem em paz. É o ensino oposto que dela se destaca – e se faz acreditar.

Paul Valéry

 

 

Talvez a maior lição da história seja que ninguém aprendeu as lições da história.

Aldous Huxley

 

 

 

 

 

When You Are Ol

By William Butler Yeats

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,

And nodding by the fire, take down this book,

And slowly read, and dream of the soft look

Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,

And loved your beauty with love false or true,

But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,

And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,

Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled

And paced upon the mountains overhead

And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

 

 

Na Idade Média, a unidade europeia repousava na religião comum. Nos Tempos Modernos, ela cedeu o lugar à cultura (à criação cultural) que se tornou na realização dos valores supremos pelos quais os Europeus se reconhecem, se definem, se identificam. Ora, hoje, a cultura cede, por sua vez, o lugar.
Mas, a quê e a quem? Qual é o domínio onde se realizaram valores supremos susceptíveis de unir a Europa? As conquistas técnicas? O mercado? A política com o ideal de democracia, com o princípio da tolerância? Mas, essa tolerância, que já não protege nenhuma criação rica nem nenhum pensamento forte, não se tornará oca e inútil? Ou então, será que podemos entender a demissão da cultura como uma espécie de libertação à qual nos devemos abandonar com euforia? Não sei. A única coisa que julgo saber é que a cultura já cedeu o seu lugar. Assim, a imagem da identidade europeia afasta-se do passado. Europeu: aquele que tem a nostalgia da Europa.

Milan Kundera, in “A Arte do Romance”

 

 

 

Foi quando aprendi que as palavras não servem para nada; que as palavras nunca se adaptam nem mesmo ao que elas querem dizer. Quando ele nasceu compreendi que a maternidade foi inventada por alguém que tinha de arranjar uma palavra para isso, porque as que tinham os filhos não queriam saber se havia ou não uma palavra para isso. Compreendi que o medo foi inventado por alguém que nunca tinha tido medo; o orgulho, por quem nunca tinha sentido orgulho.

William Faulkner, in ‘Na Minha Morte’

 

 

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

By Wendel Berry

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nós estamos a assistir ao que eu chamaria a morte do cidadão e, no seu lugar, o que temos e, cada vez mais, é o cliente. Agora já ninguém nos pergunta o que é que pensamos, agora perguntam-nos qual a marca do carro, de fato, de gravata que temos, quanto ganhamos…

José Saramago

 

 

 

 

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After dark, stars glisten like ice, and the distance they span

Hides something elemental. Not God, exactly. More like

Some thin-hipped glittering Bowie-being—a Starman

Or cosmic ace hovering, swaying, aching to make us see.

And what would we do, you and I, if we could know for sure

That someone was there squinting through the dust,

Saying nothing is lost, that everything lives on waiting only

To be wanted back badly enough? Would you go then,

Even for a few nights, into that other life where you

And that first she loved, blind to the future once, and happy?

Would I put on my coat and return to the kitchen where my

Mother and father sit waiting, dinner keeping warm on the stove?

Bowie will never die. Nothing will come for him in his sleep

Or charging through his veins. And he’ll never grow old,

Just like the woman you lost, who will always be dark-haired

And flush-faced, running toward an electronic screen

That clocks the minutes, the miles left to go. Just like the life

In which I’m forever a child looking out my window at the night sky

Thinking one day I’ll touch the world with bare hands

Even if it burns.

Time never stops, but does it end? And how many lives

Before take-off, before we find ourselves

Beyond ourselves, all glam-glow, all twinkle and gold?…….

 

The future isn’t what it used to be. Even Bowie thirsts

For something good and cold. Jets blink across the sky

Like migratory souls……..

By Tracy Smith

 

 

 

Mandar é respirar, não é desta opinião? E até os mais deserdados chegam a respirar. O último na escala social tem ainda o cônjuge ou o filho. Se é celibatário, um cão. O essencial, em resumo, é uma pessoa poder zangar-se sem que outrem tenha o direito de responder. «Ao pai não se responde», conhece a fórmula? Em certo sentido, ela é singular. A quem se responderia neste mundo senão a quem se ama? Por outro lado, ela é convincente. É preciso que alguém tenha a última palavra. Senão, a toda a razão pode opor-se outra: nunca mais se acabava. A força, pelo contrário, resolve tudo. Levou tempo, mas conseguimos compreendê-lo. Por exemplo, deve tê-lo notado, a nossa velha Europa filosofa, enfim, da melhor maneira. Já não dizemos, como nos tempos ingénuos: «Eu penso assim. Quais são as suas objecções?» Tornámo-nos lúcidos. Substituímos o diálogo pelo comunicado.

Albert Camus, in “A Queda”

 

 

When I have fears that I may cease to be

   Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain,

Before high-pilèd books, in charactery,

   Hold like rich garners the full ripened grain;

When I behold, upon the night’s starred face,

   Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,

And think that I may never live to trace

   Their shadows with the magic hand of chance;

And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,

   That I shall never look upon thee more,

Never have relish in the faery power

   Of unreflecting love—then on the shore

Of the wide world I stand alone, and think

Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.

 

John Keats

 

 

 

 

 

 

By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

What The Heart Of The Young Man Said To The Psalmist.

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,

   Life is but an empty dream!

For the soul is dead that slumbers,

   And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!

   And the grave is not its goal;

Dust thou art, to dust returnest,

   Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,

   Is our destined end or way;

But to act, that each to-morrow

   Find us farther than to-day.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,

   And our hearts, though stout and brave,

Still, like muffled drums, are beating

   Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world’s broad field of battle,

   In the bivouac of Life,

Be not like dumb, driven cattle!

   Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant!

   Let the dead Past bury its dead!

Act,— act in the living Present!

   Heart within, and God o’erhead!

Lives of great men all remind us

   We can make our lives sublime,

And, departing, leave behind us

   Footprints on the sands of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,

   Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,

A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,

   Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,

   With a heart for any fate;

Still achieving, still pursuing,

   Learn to labor and to wait.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here come real stars to fill the upper skies,

And here on earth come emulating flies,

That though they never equal stars in size,

(And they were never really stars at heart)

Achieve at times a very star-like start.

Only, of course, they can’t sustain the part.

 

By Robert Frost

By Stephen Crane

I saw a man pursuing the horizon;

Round and round they sped.

I was disturbed at this;   

I accosted the man.

“It is futile,” I said,

“You can never —”

“You lie,” he cried,   

And ran on.

 

 

By WILLIAM BLAKE

I heard an Angel singing

When the day was springing 

Mercy Pity Peace

Is the worlds release 

Thus he sung all day

Over the new mown hay 

Till the sun went down

And haycocks looked brown 

I heard a Devil curse

Over the heath & the furze 

Mercy could be no more 

If there was nobody poor 

And pity no more could be 

If all were as happy as we 

At his curse the sun went down 

And the heavens gave a frown 

Down pourd the heavy rain

Over the new reapd grain 

And Miseries increase

Is Mercy Pity Peace 

 

 

Between my finger and my thumb   

The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.

Under my window, a clean rasping sound   

When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:   

My father, digging. I look down

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds   

Bends low, comes up twenty years away   

Stooping in rhythm through potato drills   

Where he was digging.

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft   

Against the inside knee was levered firmly.

He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep

To scatter new potatoes that we picked,

Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

By God, the old man could handle a spade.   

Just like his old man.

My grandfather cut more turf in a day

Than any other man on Toner’s bog.

Once I carried him milk in a bottle

Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up

To drink it, then fell to right away

Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods

Over his shoulder, going down and down

For the good turf. Digging.

The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap

Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge

Through living roots awaken in my head.

But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb

The squat pen rests.

I’ll dig with it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Não olhes.
O mundo está prestes a rebentar.

Não olhes.
O mundo está prestes a despejar a sua luz
E a lançar-nos no abismo das suas trevas,
Aquele lugar negro, gordo e sem ar
Onde nós iremos matar ou morrer ou dançar ou chorar
Ou gritar ou gemer ou chiar que nem ratos
A ver se conseguimos de novo um posto de partida.

Harold Pinter, in “Várias Voz