quinta-feira, setembro 30, 2010

...

"O que não consigo construir não consigo compreender."
(Richard Feynman)

terça-feira, setembro 28, 2010

...

"Whatever satisfies the soul is truth."
(Walt Whitman)

segunda-feira, setembro 27, 2010

O fantástico inefável...

"Um filósofo contemporâneo de Lovecraft, o desconcertante Wittgenstein, disse que "o que não pode ser dito, melhor será calá-lo". Esta frase podia ser de certa forma o lema do truque estilístico mais peculiar do próprio Lovecraft. Para este, a fantasia desemboca sempre no inefável; as palavras esgotam-se muito antes de a imaginação pura ter concluído a sua fulgurante viagem. Mais ainda: as palavras são obstáculos, tropeços que dificultam ou estagnam a criação do realmente fantástico [...]" (Fernando Savater, Sobre Viver)

quinta-feira, setembro 09, 2010

Íntimo pessoal

"Cada um tem o destino universal de fazer consigo mesmo o modelo de mais uma estátua humana. E esta fabrica-se apenas com íntimo pessoal.
O nosso íntimo pessoal é inatingível por outrem. É este o fundamento de toda a humanidade, de toda a Arte e de toda a Religião. O nosso íntimo pessoal é de ordem humana, estética e sagrada. Serve apenas o próprio. É o seu único caminho. O melhor que se pode fazer em favor de qualquer é ajudá-lo a entregar-se a si mesmo. Com o seu íntimo pessoal cada um poderá estar em toda a parte, sejam quais forem as condições sociais, as mais favoráveis e as mais adversas. Sem ele, nem para fazer número se aproveita ninguém." (José de Almada Negreiros, Nome de Guerra)

To walk with lions...

"I stood next to Batian facing the rising sun. Then, for the first time in my presence, Batian began roaring to the dawn. My right hand was on his flank as his calls reverberated across the land. Time stopped and through his calls I felt part of everything... I was the Earth and the Earth was me. I belonged, and I was free." (Gareth Patterson, To Walk With Lions)

Wholeness...

"We live in a world that prides itself on its modernity, yet is hungry for wholeness, hungry for meaning. At the same time it is a world that marginalizes the very impulses that might fill the void. The pilgrimage to the divine, the openness that transcends ordinary experience, the very idea of feeling at one with the Universe, these are impulses which we tolerate at the fringes, where they are held at bay by our indifference. The irony is that, after excluding the mystical tradition from our cultural mainstream and claiming to find it irrelevant to our concerns, so many of us feel empy without it." (David Maybury-Lewis, Millenium: Tribal Wisdom and the Modern Work)

sexta-feira, setembro 03, 2010

Expostulation and Reply

"Why, William, on that old grey stone,
Thus for the length of half a day,
Why, William, sit you thus alone,
And dream your time away?

"Where are your books? - that light bequeathed
To Beings else forlorn and blind!
Up! up! and drink the spirit breathed
From dead men to their kind.

"You look round on your Mother Earth,
As if she for no purpose bore you;
As if you were her first-born birth,
And none had lived before you!"

One morning thus, by Esthwaite lake,
When life was sweet, I knew not why,
To me my good friend Matthew spake,
And thus I made reply:

"The eye--it cannot choose but see;
We cannot bid the ear be still;
Our bodies feel, where'er they be,
Against or with our will.

"Nor less I deem that there are Powers
Which of themselves our minds impress;
That we can feed this mind of ours
In a wise passiveness.

"Think you, 'mid all this mighty sum
Of things for ever speaking,
That nothing of itself will come,
But we must still be seeking?

"- Then ask not wherefore, here, alone,
Conversing as I may,
I sit upon this old grey stone,
And dream my time away,"

(William Wordsworth, 1798)