JAPONICA - I Lost in Action

Recensão atrasada das estampas japonesas de Hokusai anunciadas chez Port Royal.

À propos, eu tinha um volumezinho bem interessante sobre estampas japonesas de Toshusai Sharaku, mas, acabadinho de comprar, ficou esquecido num banco do Metro, algures em Londres. Estava ainda sob o efeito de experiência mística incomparavelmente narrada por Paul Johnson num número recente do The Spectator, 5.5.07, "The English: the ‘missing persons’ of Europe":

"... So where does all that leave the English? Where indeed? I am beginning to think the English no longer exist. Westbourne Grove, just off which I live, I call Calcutta West, a throbbing hub of Afro-Asian activity now supervised by beady-eyed Polish overseers. When I looked round the Tube compartment in which I sat the other day, what did I see? Picasso’s younger brother, wearing his Andalusian Moroccan face, not his Catalan one. Gandhi’s charlady. The famous Fakir of Ipi, missing these 60 years. Chopin’s absconding solicitor. Idi Amin’s grandson, Charlie. The head girl of the Ecole Normale Supérieure. Carmen Miranda’s kid sister. The boatman from Sanders of the River. Fu Man Chu and his girlfriend, Gunga Din’s grand daughter. And doesn’t that big bearded man look suspiciously like Genghis Khan, or one of his 12 million descendants? I admit that when I’m in West Somerset, the English still make a furtive appearance. They are recognisably Wessex types indeed, but give the impression that Ethelred the Unready is still on the throne, the next Viking invasion imminent and Danegeld not yet collected. But they don’t seem to care much. They have given up. If there is still such an entity as the English, their salient characteristic is apathy."