Shelly Manne & His Men at the Black Hawk - Summertime

Théodore Monod

Benny Golson - Staccato Swing & Yesterdays

por sugestão de: "o grande mestre Benny Golson"

Shelly Manne, Hava Nagila (Come let's be happy) & Bokrei Lachish

Shelly Manne - Speak Low

: para o Alfredo :

Caetano Veloso - Come As You Are

The longest Day

O Eu

Society was subordinate to the state which was controlled by party which in practice was ruled by a few people.

"When the cataclysm of war finally ended in eastern Europe in 1921, Lenin and his revolutionaries had to regroup and think. Deprived by the Poles of their European triumph, the Bolsheviks had no choice but to douse the revolutionary conflagration and build some sort of socialist state. Lenin and his followers took for granted that they should hold power; indeed, the failure of the European revolution became their justification for extraordinary aspirations to political control. Power had to be centralized so that the revolution could be completed, and so that it could be defended from its capitalist enemies. They quickly banned other political parties and terrorized political rivals, dismissing them as reactionary. They lost the only competitive elections that they held, and so held no others. The Red Army, though defeated in Poland, was more than sufficient to defeat all armed rivals on the territory of the old empire. The Bolsheviks’ secret service, known as the Cheka, killed thousands of people in the service of the consolidation of the new Soviet state.

 (...)

Lenin’s state was a political holding action for an economic revolution still to come. His Soviet polity recognized nations, although Marxism promised a world without them; and his Soviet economy permitted a market, although communism promised collective ownership. When Lenin died in January 1924, debates were already underway about when and how these transitional compromises should yield to a second revolution. And it was precisely discussion, in the new Soviet order, that determined the fate of the Soviet population. From Lenin the Bolsheviks had inherited the principle of “democratic centralism,” a translation of Marxist historiosophy into bureaucratic reality. Workers represented the forward flow of history; the disciplined communist party represented the workers; the central committee represented the party; the politburo, a group of a few men, represented the central committee. Society was subordinate to the state which was controlled by party which in practice was ruled by a few people. Disputes among members of this small group were taken to represent not politics but rather history, and their outcomes were presented as its verdict."

Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, Basic Books, 2012,  pp. 10-11.

La Jetée (D: Chris Marker)

Timothy Snyder Discusses "Bloodlands" at The Ukrainian Museum of Modern Art

Timothy Snyder, The Origins of the Final Solution: Eastern Europe and the Holocaust

BLOODLANDS

"The Second World War was the most lethal conflict in history, and about half of the

soldiers who perished on all of its battlefields all the world over died here, in this same region, in the bloodlands. Yet not a single one of the fourteen million murdered was a soldier on active duty. Most were women, children, and the aged; none were bearing weapons; many had been stripped of their possessions, including their clothes. 

Auschwitz is the most familiar killing site of the bloodlands. Today Auschwitz stands for the Holocaust, and the Holocaust for the evil of a century. Yet the people registered as laborers at Auschwitz had a chance of surviving: thanks to the memoirs and novels written by survivors, its name is known. Far more Jews, most of them Polish Jews, were gassed in other German death factories where almost everyone died, and whose names are less often recalled: Treblinka, Chełmno, Sobibór, Bełżec. Still more Jews, Polish or Soviet or Baltic Jews, were shot over ditches and pits. Most of these Jews died near where they had lived, in occupied Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Soviet Ukraine, and Soviet Belarus. The Germans brought Jews from elsewhere to the bloodlands to be killed. Jews arrived by train to Auschwitz from Hungary, Czechoslovakia, France, the Netherlands, Greece, Belgium, Yugoslavia, Italy, and Norway. German Jews were deported to the cities of the bloodlands, to Łódź or Kaunas or Minsk or Warsaw, before being shot or gassed. The people who lived on the block where I am writing now, in the ninth district of Vienna, were deported to Auschwitz, Sobibór, Treblinka, and Riga: all in the bloodlands.

(...)

The bloodlands were where most of Europe’s Jews lived, where Hitler and Stalin’s imperial plans overlapped, where the Wehrmacht and the Red Army fought, and where the Soviet NKVD and the German SS concentrated their forces. Most killing sites were in the bloodlands: in the political geography of the 1930s and early 1940s, this meant Poland, the Baltic States, Soviet Belarus, Soviet Ukraine, and the western fringe of Soviet Russia. Stalin’s crimes are often associated with Russia, and Hitler’s with Germany. But the deadliest part of the Soviet Union was its non-Russian periphery, and Nazis generally killed beyond Germany. The horror of the twentieth century is thought to be located in the camps. But the concentration camps are not where most of the victims of National Socialism and Stalinism died. These misunderstandings regarding the sites and methods of mass killing prevent us from perceiving the horror of the twentieth century.

 (...)

The distinction between concentration camps and killing sites cannot be made perfectly: people were executed and people were starved in camps. Yet there is a difference between a camp sentence and a death sentence, between labor and gas, between slavery and bullets. The tremendous majority of the mortal victims of both the German and the Soviet regimes never saw a concentration camp. Auschwitz was two things at once, a labor camp and a death facility, and the fate of non-Jews seized for labor and Jews selected for labor was very different from the fate of Jews selected for the gas chambers. Auschwitz thus belongs to two histories, related but distinct. Auschwitz-as-labor-camp is more representative of the experience of the large number of people who endured German (or Soviet) policies of concentration, whereas Auschwitz-as-death-facility is more typical of the fates of those who were deliberately killed. Most of the Jews who arrived at Auschwitz were simply gassed; they, like almost all of the fourteen million killed in the bloodlands, never spent time in a concentration camp.

The German and Soviet concentration camps surround the bloodlands, from both east and west, blurring the black with their shades of grey. At the end of the Second World War, American and British forces liberated German concentration camps such as Belsen and Dachau, but the western Allies liberated none of the important death facilities. The Germans carried out all of their major killing policies on lands subsequently occupied by the Soviets. The Red Army liberated Auschwitz, and it liberated the sites of Treblinka, Sobibór, Bełżec, Chełmno, and Majdanek as well. American and British forces reached none of the bloodlands and saw none of the major killing sites. It is not just that American and British forces saw none of the places where the Soviets killed, leaving the crimes of Stalinism to be documented after the end of the Cold War and the opening of the archives. It is that they never saw the places where the Germans killed, meaning that understanding of Hitler’s crimes has taken just as long. The photographs and films of German concentration camps were the closest that most westerners ever came to perceiving the mass killing. Horrible though these images were, they were only hints at the history of the bloodlands. They are not the whole story; sadly, they are not even an introduction."

Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, Basic Books, 2012,  pp. xi-xv.

AS ÁRVORES

"Pois nós somos como troncos de árvores na neve. Temos a impressão de que assentam sobre ela, e que com um pequeno empurrão seríamos capazes de os deslocar. Não, não somos capazes, porque eles estão firmemente presos à terra. Mas - quem diria? - até isso é ilusório."

Franz Kafka, Parábolas e Fragmentos, p. 49.

Rodrigo Amarante, Cavalo

Rites of Love and Math (D: Edward Frenkel, Reine Graves)

Dee Dee Bridgewater, strange fruit

Herberto Helder

Porque é que, nos filmes de cowboys, eles estão sempre a fumar?

por fim não restava ninguém a não seres tu.

"Chegaras tão longe à tua própria custa, e por isso tinhas essa confiança sem limites nas tuas opiniões. Em criança não ficava tão fascinado com isso como quando comecei a entrar na adolescência. Tu governavas o mundo a partir da tua poltrona. A tua opinião era a única correcta, todas as outras eram absurdas, exageradas, bizarras, anormais. E a confiança que tinhas em ti era tão grande quem nem sequer precisavas de ser coerente, mas nunca deixavas de ter razão. Acontecia até não teres opinião sobre um assunto, e consequentemente considerares liminarmente falsas todas as opiniões possíveis sobre ele. Eras capaz de dizer mal dos Checos, depois dos Alemães e depois dos Judeus, não escolhendo este ou aquele aspecto, mas todos, de tal modo que por fim não restava ninguém a não seres tu. Vejo em ti o enigma próprio de todos os tiranos, cuja razão se fundamente na sua pessoa, e não no pensamento. Pelo menos, foi o que me pareceu."

                            Franz Kafka, Carta ao Pai, (tr. João Barrento), Quasi edições, 2008, p.17.              

Frankenstein (D: J. Searle Dawley)

O eu

Improvisation (written, narrated and directed by Norman Granz)

Cannonball Adderley - Somethin' Else

Cannonball Adderley — alto saxophone

Miles Davis — trumpet

Hank Jones — piano

Sam Jones — bass

Art Blakey — drums

lucky to live in an orderly country

 Death to the Jews.

"In Western Europe, anti-Semitism was generally thought to be most virulent in France. For nearly a century, French jews had enjoyed the libertarian legacy of the 1789 revolution. In the mid-1890s, however, republican France was suddenly infected with the racial hatred generated by the trial of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, the only Jew on the general staff of the french army. Dreyfus, a wealthy Alsatian, was accused of spying on behalf of Germany and in 1894 was tried for treason. The eponymous affair institutionalized anti-Semitism in France in a manner thought unlikely in Germany. A cabal od soldiers, clericalists, aristocrats, politicians, frustrated monarchists, and pseudoscientific savants (...) agitated against Dreyfus and the community to which he belonged. Outside the courtroom where he was tried, the mob growled, "Death to the Jews". In the courtyard of the Ecole Militaire, where he was publicly stripped of his rank before being incarcerated on Devil's Island in French Guiana, he continued to proclaim his innocence. Most French Jews were cowed and passive. (...).
The Dreyfus Affair convulsed France for more than a decade. The growing evidence that Dreyfus had been convicted on trumped-up charges seemed to poison the atmosphere even more: Jews were accused of being a pro-German fifth column, responsible for France's defeat in the war of 1870. (...) Public disorder reached such a pitch that for a while it looked as if the army would rise up against the government to prevent a retrial and put an end to the republic. The violent upheavel reconfirmed German Jews, in their patriotic fervor. They considered themselves lucky to live in an orderly country under a relatively benign regime."

                                    Amos Elon, The Pity Of It All - A portrait of the German-Jewish Epoch 1743 -1933, Picador, 2002, pp. 249-250.                              

Yip Harburg - Over The Rainbow

to be cured or uplifted through communion, hearfelt prayer, song, and dance.

 The young Martin Buber, in 1902

"At the turn of the century,  a young philosopher, a graduate of the University of Vienna equally at home in German letters and traditional Eastern European Jewish folk culture, suggested an alternative response to the "Jewish question", neither conversion nor traditional separatism but rather a conscious embrace of Jewish history as part of one's German culture. The young man, Martin Buber, postulated nothing less than a "renaissance" of Jewish secular and literary identity through folktale amd myth. Buber introduced Hasidism - a conterculture of pietistic and ecstatic mysticism outside "official" Judaism, widespread since the eighteenth century in Poland, Hungary, and the Ukraine - to enlightened Jewish and non-Jewish germans, popularizing it as no one in the West had done before.  Hasidism resembled other Eastern European traditions of ecstasy and worship of charismatic, miracle-working saints. Although Hasidism's "wonder rabbis" were often not learned Talmudic scholars, they were widely regarded to be men of great wisdom and experience, linked to the divine through mystic contemplation: some were also healers, working with magic formulas, amulets, and spells. Their concern for the poor and downtrodden attracted thousands to their "courts" to be cured or uplifted through communion, hearfelt prayer, song, and dance. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Hasidism was still alive in Eastern Europe but, like cabala, was overlooked or derogated in the West as mere superstition and primitive belief. A story was told of the great German Jewish bibliphile Moritz Steinschneider, the father of modern Jewish bibliography. One day as he was proudly showing a young scholar through his vast library, the visitor pointed to a room full of obscure Hebrew texts on Hasidism and remarked, awestruck: "And you Herr Professor, have studied them all!" "Certainly not, young man," Steinschneider responded. "You don't expect me to read that nonsense."

It was just such emphatic insistence on dry rationalism that Buber opposed, hailing instead the creative "lefe-giving" force of Hasidism. (...)

In trying to bridge the old gulf between German and East European Jews, Buber hoped to expand and enrich the possibilities of German Jewish identity. His vivid and colorful interpretation of Hasidic tales and homilies appealed all the more young Germans - Jews and Gentilles - as it coincided with an upsurge in Germany of interest in spirituality and the "exotic" cultures of Asia and Africa. Buber called on secular young German Jews to seek, as he put it, a genuine Erlebnis - an "inner experience" - of the popular "soul" of Judaism, a Judaism beyond the restrictions and injunctions of Talmudic law, which most German Jews, including Buber, no longer observed. Though ridiculed by some as a pretentious neo-Romantic affectation, his message was taken up by a new generation.

Hasidism came to be hailed (especially be secular Jews) as a vital force, more genuine and robust than fossilized orthodoxy or secularized reform. After watching a troupe of Yiddish actors perform in Prague's café Savoy, Kafka concluded that here was a genuine folk spirit, warmer and more humane than the stiffness and self-denial of Western Jews. "

                           Amos Elon, The Pity Of It All - A portrait of the German-Jewish Epoch 1743 -1933, Picador, 2002, pp. 237-239.                                   

John Searle: Our shared condition -- consciousness

Tintoretto, Galileo Galilei, 1605-1607

 

O começo da física. Por sugestão de Jorge Calado, Haja Luz.

Arnold Schoenberg: A Survivor from Warsaw (cond. Simon Rattle)

her heart's blood was contained in every envelope

Rahel Levin Varnhagen, by William Hensel, July 7, 1822 (185x149 cm).

"The most famous salon and probably the liveliest and most influencial, however, was lauched in 1791 by Rahel Levin, an unmarried twenty-year-old. (...)

The poet Jean Paul wrote that scholars, Jews, officers, Prussian bureaucrats, noblemen, and all others who elsewhere "were at one another's throats" contrived to be "friendly at [Rahel Levin's] tea table." Even Goethe paid a visit. (...)

Rahel - she was widely known by her given name alone - was an early feminist, a willfully independent woman who set out to build her life on her own terms. She had many lovers, some of whom, like Friedrich von gentz, remained enchanted with her into old age. (...)

More than just a renowned socialite, Rahel was also the most important German woman of letters of the nineteenth century; Gentz called her the very first Romantic. Entirely self-taught, she left no conventional oeuvre but was an astonishingly prolific letter writer. Intensely personal and introspective, her correspondence (more than six thousand letters survive of an estimated ten thousand) reveals her impatience with the superficialities and hypocrisies of the elegant world in which she lived. She had a rare ability to portray herself with utmost sincerity; it was said that her heart's blood was contained in every envelope she posted. Since her handwriting was difficult to read, her friends had her letters copied so they could pass them around. the letters touch on all aspects of literature and art; remarkably, politics and the extraordinary historical events of her lifetime (the French Revolution, the Napoleonic wars) are rarely ever mentioned. The cult of Innerlichkeit (intense introspection) so dear to the Romantics predominates.

A thoroughly assimilated Jew, Rahel was credited with having inaugurated the so-called symbiosis between Germans and Jews. (...) Rahel was not interested in Jewish reform; she yearned for integration into the German world. She was revolted - the word is not too strong - by her observant relatives.  Mendelssohn's version of judaism hardly appealed to her more; it was too dry and sterile in its rationality. She worshiped feeling, not reason. Her religiosity was of the heart and, like that of other romantics, couched in the mystical imagery of christianity; Christ's Passion and the Mother of God. (...)

Rahel's rejection went beyond religiosity. She hated her Jewish background and was convinced it had poisoned her life. For much of her adult life she was what would later be called self-hating. (...) And in 1814, after her mother's death, she converted. But her origins continued to haunt her even on her deathbed.

Rahel supreme desire was to live life as though it were "a work of art". Such a life demanded a "great love." And indeed, she gave herself to love unreservedly. (...)"

                                   Amos Elon, The Pity Of It All - A portrait of the German-Jewish Epoch 1743 -1933, Picador, 2002, pp. 77-80.                             

Playing for Time (D: Daniel Mann)

Pat Metheny Unity Group - Rise Up

)

He sabotages me and I sabotage him.

“Yes, it’s all one big chess game. All my life I have been afraid of death, but now that I’m on the threshold of the grave I’ve stopped being afraid. It’s clear, my partner wants to play a slow game. He’ll go on taking my pieces one by one. First he removed my appeal as an actor and turned me into a so-called writer. He’d no sooner done that than he provided me with writer’s cramp. His next move was to deprive me of my potency. Yet I know he’s far from checkmate, and this gives me strength. It’s cold in my room—let it be cold. I have no supper—I won’t die without it. He sabotages me and I sabotage him. Some time ago, I was returning home late at night. The frost burned outside, and suddenly I realized that I had lost my key. I woke up the janitor, but he had no spare key. He stank of vodka, and his dog bit my foot. In former years I would have been desperate, but this time I said to my opponent, ‘If you want me to catch pneumonia, it’s all right with me.’ I left the house and decided to go to the Vienna station. The wind almost carried me away. I would have had to wait at least three-quarters of an hour for the streetcar at that time of night. I passed by the actors’ union and saw a light in a window. I decided to go in. Perhaps I could spend the night there. On the steps I hit something with my shoe and heard a ringing sound. I bent down and picked up a key. It was mine! The chance of finding a key on the dark stairs of this building is one in a billion, but it seems that my opponent was afraid I might give up the ghost before he was ready. Fatalism? Call it fatalism if you like.”

              "A Friend of Kafka", in The Collected Stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer, Loc. 5758-63.           

and Kafka began to speak about the golem

"We came to Prague to make some money and found a genius waiting for us—Homo sapiens in his highest degree of self-torture. Kafka wanted to be a Jew, but he didn’t know how. He wanted to live, but he didn’t know this, either. ‘Franz,’ I said to him once, ‘you are a young man. Do what we all do.’ There was a brother I knew in Prague, and I persuaded him to go there with me. He was still a virgin. I’d rather not speak about the girl he was engaged to. He was sunk to the neck in the bourgeois swamp. The Jews of his circle had one ideal—to become Gentiles, and not Czech Gentiles but German Gentiles. To make it short, I talked him into the adventure. I took him to a dark alley in the former ghetto and there was the brothel. We went up the crooked steps. I opened the door and it looked like a stage set: the whores, the pimps, the guests, the madam. I will never forget that moment. Kafka began to shake, and pulled at my sleeve. Then he turned and ran down the steps so quickly I was afraid he would break a leg. Once on the street, he stopped and vomited like a schoolboy. On the way back, we passed an old synagogue, and Kafka began to speak about the golem. Kafka believed in the golem, and even that the future might well bring another one. There must be magic words that can turn a piece of clay into a living being. Did not God, according to the Cabala, create the world by uttering holy words? In the beginning was the Logos."

              "A Friend of Kafka", in The Collected Stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer,Loc. 5724-35.             

Tord Gustavsen trio - Colours of Mercy

)

In the dark, Kant’s categories no longer apply.

“Didn’t you once ask what makes me go on, or do I imagine that you did? What gives me the strength to bear poverty, sickness, and, worst of all, hopelessness? That’s a good question, my young friend. I asked the same question when I first read the Book of Job. Why did Job continue to live and suffer? So that in the end he would have more daughters, more donkeys, more camels? No. The answer is that it was for the game itself. We all play chess with Fate as partner. He makes a move; we make a move. He tries to checkmate us in three moves; we try to prevent it. We know we can’t win, but we’re driven to give him a good fight. My opponent is a tough angel. He fights Jacques Kohn with every trick in his bag. It’s winter now; it’s cold even with the stove on, but my stove hasn’t worked for months and the landlord refuses to fix it. Besides, I wouldn’t have the money to buy coal. It’s as cold inside my room as it is outdoors. If you haven’t lived in an attic, you don’t know the strength of the wind. My windowpanes rattle even in the summer-time. Sometimes a tomcat climbs up on the roof near my window and wails all night like a woman in labor. I lie there freezing under my blankets and he yowls for a cat, though it may be he’s merely hungry. I might give him a morsel of food to quiet him, or chase him away, but in order not to freeze to death I wrap myself in all the rags I possess, even old newspapers—the slightest move and the whole works comes apart. “Still, if you play chess, my dear friend, it’s better to play with a worthy adversary than with a botcher. I admire my opponent. Sometimes I’m enchanted with his ingenuity. He sits up there in an office in the third or seventh heaven, in that department of Providence that rules our little planet, and has just one job—to trap Jacques Kohn. His orders are ‘Break the keg, but don’t let the wine run out.’ He’s done exactly that. How he manages to keep me alive is a miracle. I’m ashamed to tell you how much medicine I take, how many pills I swallow. I have a friend who is a druggist, or I could never afford it. Before I go to bed, I gulp down one after another—dry. If I drink, I have to urinate. I have prostate trouble, and as it is I must get up several times during the night. In the dark, Kant’s categories no longer apply. Time ceases to be time and space is no space. You hold something in your hand and suddenly it isn’t there. To light my gas lamp is not a simple matter. My matches are always vanishing. My attic teems with demons. Occasionally, I address one of them: ‘Hey, you, Vinegar, son of Wine, how about stopping your nasty tricks!’"

==========

              "A Friend of Kafka", in The Collected Stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer,  Loc. 5670-71.       

Tord Gustavsen trio - Graceful Touch

Salome

Bobo Stenson Trio - El Mayor

God revealed the whole history of mankind to him.

"Like all creatures formed on the six days of creation, Adam came from the hands of the Creator fully and completely developed. He was not like a child, but like a man of twenty years of age. The dimensions of his body were gigantic, reaching from heaven to earth, or, what amounts to the same, from east to west. Among later generations of men, there were but few who in a measure resembled Adam in his extraordinary size and physical perfections. Samson possessed his strength, Saul his neck, Absalom his hair, Asahel his fleetness of foot, Uzziah his forehead, Josiah his nostrils, Zedekiah his eyes, and Zerubbabel his voice. History shows that these physical excellencies were no blessings to many of their possessors; they invited the ruin of almost all. Samson's extraordinary strength caused his death; Saul killed himself by cutting his neck with his own sword; while speeding swiftly, Asahel was pierced by Abner's spear; Absalom was caught up by his hair in an oak, and thus suspended met his death; Uzziah was smitten with leprosy upon his forehead; the darts that killed Josiah entered through his nostrils, and Zedekiah's eyes were blinded. The generality of men inherited as little of the beauty as of the portentous size of their first father. The fairest women compared with Sarah are as apes compared with a human being. Sarah's relation to Eve is the same, and, again, Eve was but as an ape compared with Adam. His person was so handsome that the very sole of his foot obscured the splendor of the sun. His spiritual qualities kept pace with his personal charm, for God had fashioned his soul with particular care. She is the image of God, and as God fills the world, so the soul fills the human body; as God sees all things, and is seen by none, so the soul sees, but cannot be seen; as God guides the world, so the soul guides the body; as God in His holiness is pure, so is the soul; and as God dwells in secret, so doth the soul. When God was about to put a soul into Adam's clod-like body, He said: "At which point shall I breathe the soul into him? Into the mouth? Nay, for he will use it to speak ill of his fellow-man. Into the eyes? With them he will wink lustfully. Into the ears? They will hearken to slander and blasphemy. I will breathe her into his nostrils; as they discern the unclean and reject it, and take in the fragrant, so the pious will shun sin, and will cleave to the words of the Torah" The perfections of Adam's soul showed themselves as soon as he received her, indeed, while he was still without life. In the hour that intervened between breathing a soul into the first man and his becoming alive, God revealed the whole history of mankind to him. He showed him each generation and its leaders; each generation and its prophets; each generation and its teachers; each generation and its scholars; each generation and its statesmen; each generation and its judges; each generation and its pious members; each generation and its average, commonplace members; and each generation and its impious members. The tale of their years, the number of their days, the reckoning of their hours, and the measure of their steps, all were made known unto him."

             "A Friend of Kafka", in The Collected Stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer, Loc. 5608-26.        

Morreu ontem, aos 110 anos, a mais velha sobrevivente do holocausto

"Sofre duma espécie de derramamento da lucidez"

"O que é a educação para Kafka? Em primeiro lugar, é um pacto secreto com o destino; o destino ao qual se oferece toda a espécie de iguarias, como a do talento bem aproveitado.  A inteligência é, para Kafka, uma maneira de ser poupado por essa terrível força que sacode e destrói tudo quanto é vivo. A voz do pai, incluída no tremendo ruído do mundo em acção, é parte dessa força que é preciso adular, convencer, talvez iludir. A educação é uma arte de demorar a morte, de a tornar convencional em vez de fatal.

Kafka é um homem educado; o personagem central  de O Processo é um homem educado. Vejamos como ele procede: «Ainda fatigado dos seus cuidados precedentes e já lasso daqueles que viriam, ele levantou-se para receber o primeiro dos seus visitantes.» Kafka sabe quanto é importante a mesura. Ela aplaca a cólera que se traduz pelo mais fugaz dos gestos humanos. Ele sabe imensamente dessa rede obscura em que se debatem os pensamentos reservados e que não é possível domesticar. Então a inteligência desponta, cresce, cobre o horizonte humano, não como uma luz brilhante, mas com um véu prodigioso. A inteligência desconcerta o destino; não sabemos se, de certa maneira o provoca."

                                        Agustina Bessa-Luís, Kafkiana, Babel, 2012, p. 50-51                           

Ron Carter - Saguaro

a Wandervolk driven from place to place

"By far the worst off were the Betteljuden (beggar Jews). Since they had no money to buy any kind of "protection", they were homeless or vagrant. Religious strictures did not permit them to become  mercenaries, as did the poorest runaways serfs. As one observer noted in 1783, these Jews had no alternatives but to "roam through life as beggars or be rogues."  Many were lifelong nomads, descended apparently from several generations of beggars. Born on the road, they depended on theft or charity. Accompanied by their ragged families, they traveled the contryside in swarms, a Wandervolk driven from place to place and, like the Gypsies, regarded as outlaws, or Gauner, that is, scamps, parasites, rogues, and thieves. in 1712, a traveler reported: "The begging hordes at times make the highways disgusting, particularly when one reaches their encampments where they are sunning themselves in a wood or behind a fence." A rare document from 1773 concerns a fifteen-year-old Jewish girl named Frommet who had been sold by her vagrant parents as a housemaid. She was standing trial in Frankfurt for murdering her employer with a hatchet. The plea submitted in her "defense" stated: "Who does not remember seeing such a horde of wretched creatures, vagrant Landjuden [country Jews] with their children, carrying their entire possessions on their humps? And seeing them pass by, who has not promptly noticed the scant difference between them and cattle?"

The cities usually denied the vagrants access; some were admitted for one night only but required to stay in poorhouses maintained by a local Jewish community. Jewish almsgiving afforded some material help. Hospitality was occasionally made available to the needy, especially on the Sabbath. The tradition of solidarity was deeply ingrained among Jews, but the huge increase in homelessness and vagrancy during the eighteenth century was bringing about its collapse."

   

                               Amos Elon, The Pity Of It All - A portrait of the German-Jewish Epoch 1743 -1933, Picador, 2002, pp. 29-30.                                    

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi - criatividade, realização e Fluir

klaus barbie - sur les traces d'un criminal nazi

Jacob Glatstein on Yiddish poetry after the Holocaust

Ben Webster meets Oscar Peterson (Hannover, 1972)

dexter gordon - one flight up

Human All Too Human - Martin Heidegger

no more than two Jews were allowed to walk abreast

"In the eighteenth century, the independent Hanseatic port city of Hamburg had the largest number of Jews - eight thousand, or 6 percent of the population as a whole. The ghetto had been abolished in 1671. Jews were free tolive everywhere in the city. West of Hamburg, Bremen the nearest self-governing Hanseatic port city, was completely off-limits to Jews, as was Lübeck in the north. Hanover belonged to the English Crown and allowed a handful of rich Jews with princely clients to live there. The university, said to be the most liberal in Germany, banned Jewish students, as did all other German universities. Medical faculties that admitted a Jew or two were notable exceptions. The large number of German universities (compared with only two in England) reflected the political fragmentation and perhaps a more widespread cult of learning. German jews intent on acquiring a higher education had to go to Holland or farther afield to Italy. Toward the end of the eighteenth century, Kant permitted a few young Jews to attend his philosophy seminars in Königsberg as nonmatriculated students. They could graduate only if they converted.

In the eighteenth century, Frankfurt was perhapes the most oppressive place for Jews in Western Europe. Only Rome and the Papal States treated Jews as harshly. (...)

Frankfurt was one of several free imperial cities, governed by an oligarchy of patrician families. A general fear of Jewish rivalry must have been a contributing factor to the continuing harshness of the city council's restrictive measures. Jews were allowed to enter the Christian quarters only on business, never for leisure. Inside the Christian quarters, no more than two Jews were allowed to walk abreast, and for some reason they were not entitled to carry walking sticks. Nor cold they use the sidewalks. At the cry "Jud, mach mores", roughly, "Jews, pay your dues" - they would have to take off their hats, step aside, and bow. They were banned at all times from the vicinity of the cathedral and could enter the town hall only through a back entrance. Not all these restrictions were enforced and some were observed only sporadically. But until the French Revolution, all public gardens were closed to Jews (as they would be two centuries later under the nazis). An appeal to end this particular restriction, unparalleled in Germany, was dismisses in 1770 by the city council as one more proof of the "boundless arrogance of this nation.""

                              Amos Elon, The Pity Of It All - A portrait of the German-Jewish Epoch 1743 -1933, Picador, 2002, pp. 25-27.                                     

Joan Miro - "Daybreak"

Por sugestão da "realidade concreta".

Todesfuge - Paul Celan

Rahsaan Roland Kirk and John Cage - Sound??

Rahsaan Roland Kirk - Ain't No Sunshine

Eddie Vedder - Hard Sun

The notorious Judensau

"In Prussian and other German records Jews were often referred to as a nation, a term that had as yet no political connotation. Derived from the Latin natio, it was originally a genealogical-historical term loosely used by Saint Jerome in his Latin translation of the New Testament to denote non-Christians - that is "others." Its politicization (as in the French "la nation") came only during the French Revolution. In Berlin "nation" and "colony" were used interchangeably in speaking of the local Jewish or Huguenot community.

There were never a total expulsion of the Jewish "nation" from Germany, as there was from England and Spain, perhaps because there was no unified state and no central power or perhaps because German Jews were so few and impecunious. Local expulsions and massacres occurred every now and again. Jews were occasionally accused of poisoning wells, using Christian blood for sacramental purposes, and stealing Christian babies to circumcise them. The notorious Judensau (Jews sow) was a common subject of Christian religious art and propaganda. Bas-relief and cartoons of the Judensau - always shown with bearded rabbis who suck and lick its excrement, the scene watched over approvingly by Satan - were dispalayed in the great cathedrals and domes of Magdeburg, Regensburg, Freising, outside the Schlosskirche in Wittenberg (where Luther posted his ninety-five theses), and in churches and public places elsewhere. Renditions of the Judensau legitimized atavistic fears and deadly superstitions and helped perpetuate them from generation to generation. A famous Judensau was displayed on the main bridge leading into the city of Frankfurt, affixed there not by some bigoted individual but by "the city government". The city was still paying for its upkeep when Goethe was a child, and he remembered being traumatized by it."

                               Amos Elon, The Pity Of It All - A portrait of the German-Jewish Epoch 1743 -1933, Picador, 2002, pp. 22-23                                   

Theresienstadt Ghetto

Primo Levi, "shema"

daqui

Primo Levi, Se Isto é um Homem

"27 de Janeiro. Madrugada. No chão, a infame confusão de membros ressequidos, a coisa Sómogyi.
Há trabalhos mais urgentes; não podemos lavar-nos, por isso, só podemos mexer nele depois de termos cozinhado e comido. E, além disso «rien de si degoûtant que les débordements», diz justamente Charles; é preciso esvaziar o balde. Os vivos são mais exigentes; os mortos podem esperar. Começamos a trabalhar como todos os dias.
Os russos chegaram enquanto Charles e eu levávamos Sómogyi para um lugar um pouco afastado. Estava muito leve. Virámos a maca na neve cinzenta.
Charles tirou o boné. Tive pena de não ter boné.
Dos onze da Infektionsabteilung, apenas Sómogyi morreu durante os dez dias. Sertelet, Cagnolati, Tomarowski, Lakmaker e Dorget (...) morreram algums semanas mais tarde na enfermaria russa provisória de Auschwitz. Encontrei em Katowice, em Abril, Schenk e Alcalai de boa saúde. Arthur regressou felizmente à sua família, e Charles retomou a sua profissão de professor primário: trocámos longas cartas e espero poder reencontrá-lo um dia."

            Últimos parágrafos do livro de Primo Levi, Se Isto é um Homem, Público, 2002, p.190           

Claude Lanzmann on Shoah

Gustave Doré, Satan descends upon Earth

 

Por sugestão de Jorge Calado, Haja Luz.

Lester Young - You're Getting to Be a Habit With Me

charlie haden & the liberation music orchestra - spiritual

Oscar Petiford: Cello

Hans Koller: Tenor Sax

Jimmy Pratt: Drums

Attila Zoller: Bass

Clarence H. White, Landscape - winter

Jorge Semprún y los campos de concentración nazis

Yehuda Bauer - Standing Up Against Genocide. Jewish Resistance During the Holocaust

jenny saville 'Propped'

Sonny Rollins - Saxophone Colossus

Sonny Rollins — tenor saxophone

Tommy Flanagan — piano

Doug Watkins — bass

Max Roach — drums

Ahmad Jamal - At the Pershing: But Not for Me

Man Ray - Le Retour A La Raison

Heinrich Himmler's Speech at Poznan (Posen)

daqui

Until the great massacres during the Crusades, they constituted a middle class of merchants, physicians, and other profissionals

"Germany was neither a geographic nor even a clear-cut linguistic entity. There were large, cohesive German-speaking communities in distant Russia, on the banks of the Volga and on the shores of the Black Sea in what are today Ukraine, Moldavia, and Romania. There was as yet no hint of a national consciousness anywhere to unite the speakers of more than a dozen dialects (...)

Jews were by no means newcomers to these regions. No one knows exactly when they first arrived. They seem to have reached the Rhineland and the Danube valley in the wake of Roman legions, long before the establishment of Christianity. In some parts they may have settled earlier than the (later Germanized) Celts, Balts, and Slavs. Long before there were Saxons, Bavarians, or Prussians, Jews lived in what was later known as the Germans lands. A literate community of ancient renown, in the early Middle Ages they constituted an early urban middle class of traders, surgeons, apothecaries, and crafsmen in gold, silver, and precious stones. The earliest written record testifying to their presence in the Rhineland is the text of a decree of A.D. 321 by the emperor Constantine (...). It instructs the Roman magistrate of Cologne on relations with the local rabbi.

During the Christianization of Western Europe, they were the only people who retained their religious faith, sometimes at a high price. The first centuries of Christian rule were, by and large, relatively tolerant. For long periods Jews and Germans coexisted peacefully. Prior to the Crusades, Jews were free to own property and practice all trades and professions. Later, their lives were made miserable by the brutality and superstition of the mob, the greed of princes, and the growing intolerance of the Church. By the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries they had become mostly rag dealers, pawnbrokers, money changers, peddlers, and vagrants. The remarkable thing about them was that the poorest men (and some of the women) were often literate, though in Hebrew only."

                           Amos Elon, The Pity Of It All - A portrait of the German-Jewish Epoch 1743 -1933, Picador, 2002, pp. 20-21                                          

'I learnt it in Auschwitz.'

"The first days were terrible - for everyone. There is a 'shock', a trauma connected with entrance into a concentration camp which can last five, ten, twenty days. Nearly all the people who died, died during this first phase. Our way of life had changed totally in the space of a few days, especially in the case of us western Jews. Polish and Russian Jews had done some hard training for the auschwitz experience in the ghettos beforehand, and the shock for them was less severe. For us, the Italian, French and Dutch Jews, it was as if we had been plucked straight from our houses to a concentration camp.

But I could feel, along with fear and hunger and exhaustion, an extremely intense need to understand the world around me. To begin with, the language. I know a little German, but I felt I had to know a lot more. I went so far as to take private lessons, paid for with part of my bread ration. I didn´t know that I was learning a really vulgar kind of German. I found that out on a business trip to a chemical factory in Leverküsen. The people I was dealing with, very polite German types, said 'How strange. Italians don't usually know any German, and those who do know a different kind of German. Where did you learn it?' So I told them. 'I learnt it in Auschwitz.' They were upset, for lots of reasons. We were being friendly together and at least some of them, perhaps all of them, had been Nazis."

 Germaine Greer Talks to Primo Levi (1985) in, Belpoliti & Gordon (ed.) Primo Levi: The Voice of Memory - Interviews 1961-1987, (tr.)The New Press, 2001, p.4.                                                 

Peggy Lee - Black Coffee

Ahmad Jamal Trio - Darn That Dream

the idea of symbiosis was always suspect.

"Before Hitler rose to power, other Europeans often feared, admired, envied, and ridiculed Germans; only Jews seemed actually to have loved them. The links - and tensions - between Jews and Germans were sometimes described as stemming from an alleged family resemblance. Heine was one of the first to emphasize the similarities. He hailed Jews and Germans as Europe's two "ethical peoples"; together they would yet give birth to a new messianic age. Heine went so far as to claim that ancient Hebrews had been "the Germans of the Orient"! Goethe expressed a wish that Germans be dispersed throughout  the world as the Jews had been and strive like them for the improvement of mankind. (...) Walter Benjamin said in 1917: "The German and the Jew are like two related extremes that confront each other". Kafka maintained that Jews and Germans "have a lot in common. They are ambitious, able, diligent, and thouroughly hated by others. Both are pariahs"

(...) Less positively, Jews and Germans stand accused of a similar combination of arrogance and self-loathing, tactlessness and hypersensivity. Even when such generalizations contain a grain of truth, they do ot explain the one-sided love or the one-sided hatred or what happened in the end.

At various times there has also been speculation - much of it rather tedious - as to whether there ever was a real "dialogue" between the two peoples or even, as some put it, a "symbiosis" - borrowed from, of all things biology - is even more dubious. In a symbiosis, one life-form is unable to exist without the other! Not surprisingly, symbiosis between humans was first preached by the Romantics as part of their organic notions of friendship, "race", biohistory, and civilization. Before the Holocaust, it was mostly Jews who spoke, hopefully, of symbiosis. Martin Buber rhapsodized about a German-Jewish symbiosis as late as 1939: it had been abruptly interrupted by the Nazis, he claimed, but it might be resumed again it the future. After the Holocaust, only penitent Germans evoked it, guilt-stricken and rueful over "their" loss. Altogether, the idea of symbiosis was always suspect. Why does nobody ever speak of an American-Jewish, french-Jewish, or Dutch-Jewish symbiosis?"

                            Amos Elon, The Pity Of It All - A portrait of the German-Jewish Epoch 1743 -1933, Picador, 2002, pp.10-11                                         

Bill Callahan - Small Plane

"Multiplicar, enfim, as possibilidades de se continuar a pensar" (p.67)

"Vistas como indiscutíveis, a verdade e a explicação única destroem a amizade, que deveremos definir como o espaço onde podemos discordar sem matar.
Sou teu amigo, posso discordar de ti. Ou seja: posso explicar de uma outra maneira; sei que não corro perigo se o fizer à tua frente.
Inimigo será, neste sentido, aquele que não aceita discordar. Inimigo é aquele que exige concordância, sempre; amigo, pelo contrário, é aquele que aceita e, por vezes, até exige, discordância."

        Gonçalo M. Tavares, Atlas do Corpo e da Imaginação - Teoria, Fragmentos e Imagens, Caminho, 2013, p. 68.    

sair da cibernética e entrar num mundo

Estados de espírito

"De certa maneira, a investigação que investiga conceitos é um pensamento que está perdido - há tanta coisa à nossa volta, tantos acontecimentos, livros, autores: porquê seleccionar uns e não outros?, porquê mais atenção a esta obra e não à outra do mesmo autor?, a este conceito, a esta frase e não a outra?, qual a razão, enfim, para se avançar por este e não por aquele lado? 

Todo o investigador investiga porque está perdido e  será sensato não ter a ilusão de que deixará de o estar. Deve, sim, no final da sua investigação, estar mais forte. Continua perdido, mas está perdido com mais armas, com mais argumentos. Como alguém que continua náufrago, mas que tem agora, contra as intempéries e os perigos, um refúgio mais eficaz.

Llansol: "tentar dizer o que uma coisa é, é viver""

                       Gonçalo M. Tavares, Atlas do Corpo e da Imaginação - Teoria, Fragmentos e Imagens, Caminho, 2013, p. 38.           

THX 1138 (D: George Lucas)

Alfred Stieglitz - A Dirigible

Os filósofos e a Shoah

"Foi primeiro em termos de consolação que Jonas redigiu o seu opúsculo [Le concept de Dieu après Auschwitz], na tentativa de reconfortar a título póstumo aqueles «cujo grito não teve eco face a um Deus mudo». A questão fundamental que ele coloca é a seguinte: a Shoah impõe-nos uma visão dilacerante das nossas ideias sobre Deus, a sua omnipotência, a sua vontade e a sua teodicidade? Numa palavra, devemos mudar de teologia? Mais cruamente: Será que as nossas origens judias antigas (Talmude e Midrash) não estarão um bocado ultrapassadas por aquilo que a Shoah implica?

Segundo Jonas, o espírito moderno exige uma imanência divina total, sem que isso desemboque num panteísmo qualquer, posto que o criador e a criatura são perfeitamente distintos. Segundo, não existe outra pré-ciência divina além da das condições do ser cósmico. Ora, foi precisamente nestas que Deus confiou para se ocupar do seu universo. Terceiro, se Deus pode padecer e sofrer, e isso desde a origem da criação e por consequência da História: os primeiros versículos do Génesis falam de um Deus «contrariado no seu coração» e o salmo 91 diz immo anokhi be-stara (Eu sofro com ele/ o homem/ quando ele sofre). Este Deus é também um Deus que evoluiu pois o que se passa no universo lhe diz respeito. Daí a pergunta lancinante: que fazia Deus enquanto se assassinava em Auschwitz?"

                        Maurice-Ruben Hayoun, O Judaísmo, Teorema, 2007, p.117.                                   

El Greco - Sueño de Felipe II

 

Por Sugestão de Henry Miller, "Um être Étoilique", in, O Mundo do sexo e outros textos (Dom quixote, 1987), onde se pode ler:

"No diário de Anaïs Nin, há uma espécie de desepero quase semelhante ao de um marinheiro naufragado, que é lançado para uma ilha deserta. Com os destroços da sua vida desfeita, a autora esforça-se por criar algo de novo. É um esforço dilacerante que visa recuperar um mundo perdido. Não é como alguns poderão imaginar um afastamento deliberado do mundo; é uma separação involuntária do mundo! Todos nós conhecemos este sentimento, em maior ou menor grau. Todos tentamos, consciente ou inconscientemente, recuperar a voluptuosa e fácil sensação de segurança que experimentámos no ventre materno. Os que conseguem conhecer-se alcançam efectivamente esse estado; não através de um anseio cego e inconsciente pela situação intra-uterina, mas através da transformação do mundo em que vivem num verdadeiro ventre. Parece ter sido isto que assustou, por exemplo, Aldous Huxley diante do quadro de El Greco, «O Sonho de Filipe II». A perspectiva de um mundo que se transforma no interior de um peixe apavorou Huxley. Mas El Grego  deve ter sido extremamente feliz, no seu mundo dentro do ventre do peixe, e a prova do seu contentamento, do seu à-vontade e da sua satisfação está na impressão de mundo que as suas telas suscitam no espírito do espectador. Diante dos seus quadros percebemos que aquilo é um mundo! Percebemos também que se trata de um mundo dominado pela visão. Já não temos um homem a olhar para o mundo, mas um homem dentro do seu próprio mundo, reconstruindo-o incessantemente de acordo com a sua luz interior. O facto de se tratar de um mundo englobado, o facto de El Greco parecer a Huxley muito semelhante a Jonas no ventre da baleia, é precisamente o que torna a visão de El Greco reconfortante. A falta de um infinito sem limites, que tanto parece incomodar Aldous Huxley, é, pelo contrário, um estado de coisas extremamente benéfico. Quem quer que tenha assistido à criação de um mundo, quem quer que tenha criado o seu próprio mundo, perceberá que o que há de bom nesse mundo é o facto de ele ter limites bem definidos. Precisamos de começar por nos perder antes de podermos descobrir o nosso próprio mundo, um mundo que, por ser rigidamente limitado, nos permite a única liberdade autêntica." (136)

Chet Baker - Early Morning Mood

Fritz Lang - O Testamento do dr. Mabuse

"Fomos apanhados na armadilha de um texto, resume Fritz Lang no seu Testamento do Dr Mabuse (1933), transparente alusão à escalada do nazismo ao mesmo tempo que a interrogação sobre o texto verdadeiro que a Alemanha da época começa a aplicar à letra. O nazismo encontrou a sua eficácia conjugando a ideologia (como se diz) nacional e a ideologia revolucionária, mas ele não é o primeiro, todos os pensadores alemães do século XIX aí se exercitaram, nem é tão-pouco o último. Por outras palavras, se a «personalidade» de Hitler se enquadra num texto de que se imagina autor, este texto extravasa-a por todos os lados.  E mesmo se a reverência de Hitler pelo passado se preocupa pouco com a autenticidade das referências - ele deformará sem vergonha Nietzsche e Wagner - não é menos certo que o passado antes de pretexto, é um pretexto: todo o século XIX alemão premeditou uma revolução nacional e socialista" (p.35)

E numa nota: 

"O filme de Fritz Lang, O testamento do Dr. Mabuse (1993) foi proibido pelos nazis. A única actividade de Mabuse, internado como louco, consistiu em escrever: ele estabelece os fundamentos do «império do crime» concebido segundo o princípio geral de A ordem pelo caos." (p. 250)

André Glucksmann,Os Mestres Pensadores, D. Quixote, 1978.

Sempé, Roger Balaffroy

Einsatzgruppen - German Death Squads Part I: Mass Graves (1941-1942) (D: Michaël Prazan)

Einsatzgruppen - German Death Squads Part II: Funeral Pyres (1942-1945) (D: Michaël Prazan)

fazer da vida um poema

"Da cintura para baixo, todos os homens são irmãos. O homem nunca conheceu a solidão senão nas regiões superiores, onde se é poeta ou louco - ou criminoso. (...) continuo a preferir a vida anárquica; ao contrário de Paul Éluard, não posso dizer que a palavra «fraternidade» me entusiasme. Nem me parece que a ideia de fraternidade tenha origem numa concepção poética da vida. Não era a ela que, de maneira alguma, Lautréament se referia, ao escrever que a poesia deve ser feita por todos. A fraternidade humana é uma ilusão permanentemente compartilhada pelos idealistas de todas as épocas e lugares: é a redução do princípio da individuação ao mínimo denominador comum de inteligibilidade. é o que leva as massas a identificarem-se com as estrelas de cinema ou com os megalómanos como Hitler ou Mussolini. é o que as impede de lerem e apreciarem , de receberem a influência e de criarem por seu turno poesia (...)

Em todas as épocas, bem como em todas as vidas dignas desse nome, verifica-se um esforço por restabelecer esse equilíbrio que é perturbado pelo poder e pela tirania que algumas grandes figuras exercem sobre nós. Esta luta é essencialmente pessoal e religiosa. Nada tem a ver com a liberdade e a justiça, que são palavras ociosas, querendo dizer ninguém sabe ao certo o quê. Tem a ver com a poesia ou, se quiserem com fazer da vida um poema. Tem a ver com a adopção de um atitude criadora perante a vida. Uma das formas mais eficazes de manifestação desta luta consiste em liquidar as influências tirânicas sobre nós exercidas pelos que já morreram. Consiste não em negar os seus exemplos, mas em absorvê-los, assimilá-los e, se for esse o caso, em ultrapassá-los. Cada homem terá que fazer isto apenas por si próprio. Não há nenhum plano praticável para a libertação universal. A tragédia que cerca a vida de quase todas as grandes figuras é esquecida na admiração que consagramos ao trabalho de tais homens. Esquecemos que os gloriosos gregos, que não paramos de admirar, trataram os seus homens de génio de um modo talvez mais vergonhoso e mais cruel do que qualquer outro povo conhecido. Esquecemos que o mistério que rodeia a vida de Shakespeare só é mistério porque os Ingleses não querem admitir que a estupidez, a incompreensão e a intolerância dos seus contemporâneos levaram Shakespeare à loucura e que este acabou os seus dias num manicómio.

A vida é banquete ou fome, como diz o velho provérbio chinês. Hoje é mais fome do que qualquer outra coisa. Sem precisarmos de recorrer aos ensinamentos de um sábio como Freud, é evidente que, em épocas de fome, os homens se comportam de maneira diferente do que na abundância. Em tempos de fome, andamos a vaguear pelas ruas com um olhar voraz. Olhamos para o nosso irmão, vemos nele um suculento naco e prontamente lhe armamos uma cilada e o devoramos. Fazemo-lo em nome da revolução. A verdade é que não tem muita importância aquilo em nome de que o fazemos. Quando os homens se tornam irmãos tornam-se também ligeiramente canibais. Na China, onde as fomes são mais frequentes e mais devastadoras, já tem acontecido as pessoas ficarem tão histéricas (por trás da famosa máscara oriental) que, quando vêem ser executado um homem, se descontrolam e riem.

A fome em que vivemos tem a peculiaridade de se verificar no meio da abundância. Trata-se mais de uma fome espiritual, poderíamos dizê-lo, do que de uma fome física. Desta feita, as pessoas não lutam pelo pão, mas pelo direito ao seu pedaço de pão, distinção que se reveste de alguma importância. O pão, em sentido figurado, está em toda a parte, mas a maior parte de nós tem fome. especialmente os poetas - poderei dizê-lo? Pergunto, porque é tradição os poetas passarem fome. É, portanto, um pouco estranho vê-los identificarem a sua fome física habitual com a fome espiritual das massas. Ou será o contrário? Seja como for, estamos hoje todos esfomeados, excepto, sem dúvida, os ricos e a burguesia presunçosa, que nunca souberam o que é passar fome, nem espiritual nem fisicamente.

Inicialmente, os homens matavam-se uns aos outros na mira imediata da pilhagem - alimentação, armas, utensílios, mulheres, etc. Tinha sentido, embora nem caridade nem compaixão. Hoje somos compassivos, caridosos e fraternos, mas continuamos a matar da mesma maneira, e matamos sem a mínima esperança de atingirmos os nossos objectivos. Matamo-nos uns aos outros em benefício dos vindouros, para que estes possam gozar de uma vida com mais abundância (Grande treta!) "

 Henry Miller, "carta aberta aos surrealistas de todo o mundo" (1959) in, O Mundo do sexo e outros textos, Dom quixote, 1987, pp. 149-151.