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Je Maintiendrai

"... Le refus de la politique militante, le privilège absolu concédé à la littérature, la liberté de l'allure, le style comme une éthique, la continuité d'une recherche". Pol Vandromme

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Location: Portugal

Wednesday, October 31, 2007



... e ascese final



Os percalços de qualquer subida como a do Jansenista...





CONTINUANDO PELO CAMPO DE SANTANA

Prosseguindo o passeio para onde nos levou o confrade da Bic Laranja, vamos agora ao lado oriental do velho Campo de Santana, hoje rebaptizado de "Campo dos Mártires da Pátria", precisamente pela via dos martirizados apaniguados de Gomes Freire. Aliás, a R. Gomes Freire desemboca no Campo de Santana; e quem daqui (foto em baixo) subir pela esquerda em direcção ao largo da Esfânia, lá depara em frente ao portão lateral da Academia Militar o busto brônzeo e horrendo do tal ferrabraz, que o Grande Oriente Lusitano lá fez pôr recentemente, cheio de triângulos e compassos e coisas assim...

Mas o que hoje interessa por aqui, é a casa apalaçada do largo do Mitelo, em destaque na imagem de cima e parcialmente na de baixo. Fê-la construir Alexandre Metelo de Sousa e Menezes, que El-Rei D. João V mandou como embaixador ao Celeste Império no começo do séc. XVIII; daí o curioso nome do largo. A casa pouco parece ter sofrido exteriormente e é curioso o passeio pela ruazinha que se vê em cima à esquerda, junto à casa bicuda. Havia e espero que ainda lá exista um restaurante excelente, A Coutada.


Tuesday, October 30, 2007


DELENDA EST MONARCHIA
Mesmo aqui ao lado, do outro lado da raia
"Ningún miembro relevante de la Casa Real Española acudió a las beatificaciones de 498 mártires de la Guerra Civil. Hasta el Gobierno Zapatero envió al ministro de Asuntos Exteriores, Miguel Ángel Moratinos..."

Monday, October 29, 2007


Lá vai o Jansenista.

Ainda a ver com a Medalha e com o Kremlin

Voyna i Mir (Tolstoi - Bondarchuk)



TÁVORAS E ALORNAS
A propósito de comentário do autor de O Último Távora, remessa para o blog onde os interessados poderão saber mais da obra.
A José Norton a promessa de, noutra digressão sobre Portugueses a marchar na Rússia poder utilizar, se entender, a imagem da medalha que já aqui postei. É minha e é original. Pertenceu a um outro personagem dessas andanças (que, aliás, cita no seu livro) de que há por aqui na parede um retrato e um documento inédito e muito interessante sobre o patriotismo e o sentido de combater sob Napoleão.

Sunday, October 28, 2007

7 de Setembro de 1812, Batalha de Borodino - A Legião Portuguesa às portas de Moscovo

Voyna i Mir (Tolstoi-Bondarchuk)

NOVAS DA FRENTE DA RÚSSIA






A campanha da Rússia e a Grande Armée são, por razões variadas, muito cá de casa. Um texto de J.A. Maltez a tocar de passagem em Gomes Freire de Andrade trouxe-me à memória que continuo à procura da obra (e concomitantemente dos fundos para a comprar) de P. Boppe, La Légion Portugaise. A última voltinha em Paris rendeu obras curiosas de Von Pivka e Gotteri (na montra). Anda por aí também um mui anunciado “rimance” de José Norton, O Último Távora, na verdade um título disparatado para um excurso sobre a biografia do Marquês de Alorna, como se ele fosse o último da desditosa estirpe. Ainda não abri os cordões à bolsa, desconfiado que sou em gastar dinheiro com os modernos romanceiros, mas já vi que tem virtude nos bonecos, isto é, em incluir alguma iconografia que Fernando Mascarenhas tem ali fechada no palácio dos Fronteira e Alorna, a Benfica.


E Alorna que bem merecia uma boa biografia, remexendo no que publicou Ângelo Pereira, no que haverá em Benfica e no que da carreira do comandante da Legião Portuguesa ao serviço de Napoleão ficou. A ver se, nesta questão, se ultrapassa de vez essa coisa dos “traidores” e dos “patriotas” a que nos habituou a historiografia -- em igual medida e com muito que se lhe diga -- do avental e do nacionalismo.


Sobre Gomes Freire de Andrade, J.A. Maltez segue a linha da hagiografia aventaleira; Sardinha, em 36 páginas escoradas com sólido aparato documental preocupa-se em deixar às claras que Freire era um bom patife e um bom soldado, desprovido de carácter e, como outros, encostado e incensado à sombra do grande Arquitecto. Fica o maniqueísmo, que só prejudica o entendimento de personagens como Alorna, o Marquês de Loulé e D. Miguel Forjaz. Entre tudo e nada, entretanto vai-se salvando a história com o romance; antes assim. Pena é que já não escrevam como Henrique Lopes de Mendonça ou Júlio Dantas.



A PÁG.161


Hum! Só por vir daquela Senhora que, vizinha da minha, lá no fundo do café, se senta “numa mesa discreta em tons de açafrão e vozes animadas”.
Ora, o que por aqui está à mão (ou ao pé, porque o simpático canídeo acaba de atirar ao chão a pilha onde aguarda releitura) é Julían Marías, Acerca de Ortega, em bendita reedição na colecção Austral, da Espasa Calpe. E se a contagem vai certa,
“…¿No podía preverse que esta [filosofia de Ortega] tendría poco que ver com aquella otra nacida de un temple para el cual todo lo real ‘está de más’ (‘de trop’) y suscita la náusea?”

Saturday, October 27, 2007

Baryshnikov pour la nuit - I

A versão completa para a Cristina Ribeiro
M.Baryshnikov - G.Kirkland - Don Quixote - Coda 2/2

Baryshnikov pour la nuit - II

Com uns anos de diferença e com um muito melhor par
Baryshnikov e Ludmila Semenyaka

Friday, October 26, 2007

Peço perdão mas eu hoje mereço...

Só Para Hoje: "Tours à la Seconde"

Angel Corella e Paloma Herrera

Thursday, October 25, 2007








Go to the East, young man





Já não sei porque associação de ideias e coincidências -- um post abaixo com breve referência ao primo Archie, o paradeiro longínquo do confrade de Combustões, uns oportunos considerandos que de lá fez sobre Le défi de l’incroyance, um artigo de Paul Johnson -- e veio-me à cabeça trazer aqui a memória de Norman Douglas. Já no outro dia lhe tinha citado um trecho delicioso sobre as Sereias, veio depois o artigo de Paul Johnson no The Spectator (que vai em baixo) e pelas estantes corri a meia dúzia de livros que Archie me ofereceu ainda não há muito tempo com a recomendação que eram raridades de um dos mais brilhantes prosadores ingleses do século XX. Como nota P. Johnson, poucos recordam o escocês Norman Douglas, o exilado de Capri, filho do Laird of Tilquhillie e da Baronesa von Poellnitz e uma obra deliciosa a pedir reedição; de personagem, bem o diz o brilhante cronista do The Spectator, “you can admire a roguish old pagan without approving of him”.
Com guia de remessa ao cuidado de Combustões in partibus, aqui vai um pedaço:

“...Go to the East, young man; leave behind you the frowsy and fidgetty little hole called Europe. Savour the remedial effects of that other conti­nent before you are caught in our humiliating machinery; before you are ticketed and labelled as to your monetary worth to a worthless "com­munity"; before you are taxed, and overtaxed, for the purpose of keeping alive thousands of people who ought to be dead.
Get out of Europe! Rectify your values while there is still some flexibility in your mind, and learn to laugh at the flabby gibberings of our cultured classes and the comical bestiality of their inferiors, our nauseating politics and child­ish social ideals, our moral hypocrisy that breeds liars, the inquisitorial tyranny of our laws that breeds cowards, and certain absurd newspapers whose function consists in persuading us to at­tach importance to what is not worth thinking about. Get out of it!
Oriental life engenders self-respect and ease of soul. This is what makes sensible people home-sick for the East. This is what we Euro­peans lack and what we need more than any­thing else; they are qualities so rare nowadays that most of us have forgotten what they mean. Over-government is killing self-respect, and hustle is killing ease of soul”.

Norman Douglas, Good-bye to Western Culture (1930).

























































RETRATOS DE TRABALHO -XIII
Norman Douglas

"You can admire a roguish old pagan without approving of him

"Recently I managed to get hold of a copy of Alone by Norman Douglas. This series of essays about Italian towns at the time of the first world war was the author’s favourite book. But it is not easily found. Indeed several of Douglas’s works are rarities. Most people know his novel South Wind, about wicked goings-on in pre-1914 Capri. And Old Calabria, my own favourite, which deals with the toe and instep of Italy, is one of the finest books of travel ever written. It has been republished, notably in a 1955 edition, with an introduction by John Davenport. So has Siren Land, another fine travel discourse on the Sorrentino peninsula, and there is a modern edition of a third, Fountains in the Sand, about the hinterland of Tunisia. But what we need is a collected edition of all Douglas’s books, which would include his learned monographs about Italian history, geology, flora and fauna, published as pamphlets. Perhaps that enterprising firm, Pickering & Chatto, would consider undertaking this arduous, expensive and valuable work.
Who was Norman Douglas? A good question for, though he was a celebrity in his day, wrote various pieces of autobiography and has been the subject of several books, mysteries remain. When I first went to Italy there were three famous men one hoped to meet, if the right introductions could be arranged: Bernard Berenson at I Tatti, Harold Acton at his superb villa outside Florence, and Douglas, spending his declining years in an apartment in the villa of a rich friend in Capri. He could be called on there, or if one was bold enough, spoken to while taking his aperitif at his favourite café.
He was a striking figure: tall, powerfully built and formidable even at 80, with a fine beaky face and brilliant white hair parted in the middle. He came of an old Scottish family but had been born in Germany, where his father managed cotton mills. His first language had been German, and he had been to the Karlsruhe Gymnasium as well as Uppingham. He spoke fluent French and wonderfully idiomatic Italian, understanding its most obscure dialects. In addition to the usual classical knowledge he possessed all kinds of scientific lore, and contributed to learned journals such as the Zoologist. It was his ability to introduce his expertise gracefully which give his books their special delight: there is scarcely a page which does not tell you something you did not know, and which is worth knowing. He was an outstanding example of the ability of the pre-1914 leisure class to produce gentlemen-scholars who wore their learning lightly but firmly and were capable of communicating it delightfully in faultless prose.
Douglas did a spell in the diplomatic corps, serving in St Petersburg. He married and begot two sons. Then came misfortunes: first a divorce, then in 1907 he lost all his money — how, I know not. But thereafter he had to live by his pen. He had a voracious appetite for fine food, and there were times, he said, when he nearly starved. Food was not his only passion. A bisexual, he had a taste for boys which he could not always control. His interest was partly altruistic. The monograph on The Pumice Stone Industry of the Lipari Islands, which he published in 1895, led to the abolition of child labour there. He also collected material for London Street Games, published in 1916, which was a pioneering work in child sociology, based on much field research. Alas, it got him into trouble. In 1916 he was arrested by the plain-clothes police outside a Kensington museum, in the company of a boy who had secretly supplied information against him. I was told all about this by old Martin Secker, his publisher, whom I knew when we lived in Iver, Bucks. Douglas was charged and bailed. During the dark days that followed, when many of his friends, such as Joseph Conrad, turned their backs on him, Secker gave him refuge in his beautiful Iver house, Bridgefoot. Eventually, however, Douglas decided to jump bail and leave the country. He did not return for a quarter of a century.
In essence he was a pagan. He believed that Christianity was a myth, and the Judaeo-Christian system of morals a Puritan straitjacket, to be repudiated by all sensible, sensitive and cultured gentlemen. His principles were those of Cicero, or of the elder Pliny. In his later dealings with handsome adolescents, who sometimes accompanied him on his travels, he was careful to secure the approval of their mothers. But he did not consider himself bound by conventional rules, and his books reflect this freedom. It gives them a certain dangerous charm, and certainly at the time they were published an undoubted freshness. Not that Douglas was in any sense a harbinger of the sexual revolution. He would have considered such a role unspeakably vulgar. He was a man of reticence, who dealt in understatement, irony, elegant nuances and other subtleties. There is nothing in his books that would bring a blush to the cheeks of a young Etonian and Wykehamist reading Literae humaniores at the House or New College.
What there is, rather, is a robust worldly wisdom, based upon capacious historical knowledge, wide acquaintance with men and places, acute observation of nature, and much serious thought about our role in the universe. He was, you might say, agora-wise rather than street-wise. John Davenport, with whom I discussed Douglas in John’s favourite Saturday morning caravanserai, the old Commercial in the King’s Road, always regarded him as a great man, as well as a fine writer. ‘The last of the Romans’ was his name for the old hedonist. His death was Roman. In 1952, in his early eighties, he decided his physical decline was making him a burden to himself and his friends, and he took a quiet, carefully prepared exit. Not a man to be approved of. But admired, perhaps? Anyway, relished.


Paul Johnson, The Spectator, Wednesday, 17th October 2007

Wednesday, October 24, 2007




EU NÃO sei se amanhã acordo Richard Greene ou Alan Wheatley

Robin Hood, Robin Hood,
Riding through the glen,
Robin Hood, Robin Hood,
With his band of men,
Feared by the bad, loved by the good,
Robin Hood! Robin Hood! Robin Hood!
He called the greatest archers
To a tavern on the green,
They vowed to help the people of the king,
They handled all the trouble
On the English country scene,
And still found plenty of time to sing.
Robin Hood, Robin Hood,
Riding through the glen,
Robin Hood, Robin Hood,
With his band of men,
Feared by the bad, loved by the good,
Robin Hood! Robin Hood! Robin Hood!
The Adventures of Robin Hood (1955)


Esplendor e Miséria dos Cortesãos


E por falar em livros, de como se passa em duas gerações da encadernação em Florença ao paperback do El Corte Inglés.


Para aguar o Confrade das Afinidades













LIVRO NOVO

Vient de paraître: Os Despojos da Aliança, da autoria de Pedro Aires Oliveira, um dos mais brilhantes historiadores da nova geração. A quem se interesse pela questão colonial e pela intervenção inglesa, a pôr ao lado das obras de António José Telo. Do que tem saído recentemente, o resto é para rir ou deitar fora.

Saturday, October 20, 2007


ON THE LIST

"What does it mean to say that we live in a secular age? Almost everyone would agree that we--in the West, at least--largely do. And clearly the place of religion in our societies has changed profoundly in the last few centuries. In what will be a defining book for our time, Charles Taylor takes up the question of what these changes mean--of what, precisely, happens when a society in which it is virtually impossible not to believe in God becomes one in which faith, even for the staunchest believer, is only one human possibility among others.
Taylor, long one of our most insightful thinkers on such questions, offers a historical perspective. He examines the development in "Western Christendom" of those aspects of modernity which we call secular. What he describes is in fact not a single, continuous transformation, but a series of new departures, in which earlier forms of religious life have been dissolved or destabilized and new ones have been created. As we see here, today's secular world is characterized not by an absence of religion--although in some societies religious belief and practice have markedly declined--but rather by the continuing multiplication of new options, religious, spiritual, and anti-religious, which individuals and groups seize on in order to make sense of their lives and give shape to their spiritual aspirations.
What this means for the world--including the new forms of collective religious life it encourages, with their tendency to a mass mobilization that breeds violence--is what Charles Taylor grapples with, in a book as timely as it is timeless"

"The Shooting Party"
James Mason - John Gielgud

The countryside should be a place of life, not of death
Paul Johnson
Wednesday, 3rd October 2007

This is the time of year when I am irritated by the pop-pop of shotguns near my house in Over Stowey. Not that West Somerset is a great county for shooting. It is a place for hunting. I have counted up to 13 packs of hounds in the neighbourhood. Most of them are foxhounds, and there are staghounds too, of course, but also beagles and harriers not so far away. I favour hunting as the best way of solving difficult problems — keeping down foxes which kill chickens for fun, and dispersing the red deer, which otherwise congregate in scores and can kick to pieces a big field of turnips in 24 hours. So I am glad that the legal ban on hunting has not worked.
Shooting birds for sport is a different matter. There seems to me something odious about raising pheasants just so well-fed City types can play the country gent by killing them. There is no danger, as in hunting, and not much skill required either. Just money. And whereas there is something quaint, even poetical, about the famous huntsmen of yore, like John Peel and Squire Osbaldeston, or even the late Duke of Beaufort, celebrated ‘guns’ as they like to be called, they inspire little sympathy. Indeed how can one love a man who likes to see himself as a living embodiment of a lethal weapon — a very dangerous and inefficient one too, which hasn’t really changed since the 16th century — that is liable to overheat and blow your hand off. The very smell of a shotgun makes me feel sick, which my old army Lee-Enfield, Bren and Sten gun never did.
Take the case of Lord Ripon, said to have been the most successful ‘gun’ of all time. The family name was Robinson, but they were always changing it. One called himself Goderich and was the only prime minister who funked meeting parliament. Disraeli called him ‘a transient and embarrassed phantom’. He was liable to burst into tears in the middle of a Cabinet meeting. (Well: we shall see that again before long.) Thinking of all those dead birds, was he? Another was the Earl and Marquess of Ripon. Over the years 1867–1900, it is related, he killed 142,343 pheasants, 29,858 rabbits, 27,686 hares, 56,460 grouse, 97,759 partridges, 6,738 other game birds, 568 deer, two rhinos, 11 tigers, 12 buffaloes, 97 wild pigs, 19 samburs and 9,175 other wild creatures. At the same time he was Indian viceroy, held many Cabinet posts; he was a liberal, naturally, and called himself a radical. He was the son, or possibly the grandson (the Robinsons are confusing) of the blubbering PM. At one time he was a fanatical Christian Socialist. Then he became a Catholic convert. I often wonder what Almighty God does with such a person when he reaches the Other Side.
Much of Ripon’s slaughterings were carried out at Studley Royal, his own sporting estate. This was in due course a favourite Golgotha of King George V, another mass-killer of defenceless birds. I must admit I have a certain soft spot for this weird king, an exemplar of the ideal constitutional monarch, who once burst an abscess by laughing at the jokes of a Labour Cabinet minister, J.H. Thomas. There can’t be many people in history who referred to his sanctum as ‘the library’, though it contained no books, just glass cases full of shotguns and his stamp collection. He had it lined with bright red cloth of the type then used to make the baggy pantaloons of French infantrymen. Every morning, at eight o’clock sharp, a pipe-major of the Scots Guards reported there to wake up the royal household with a tremendous blast of Highland music.
King George was not an eccentric. On the contrary he was the essence of normalcy for his time and class. His eldest son, the Duke of Windsor, gives a powerful description in his memoirs of the King’s habits and certitudes. He still had his trouser-creases pressed at the sides, not in the middle, and never wore turn-ups. If his eldest son did so, he asked, ‘Is it raining in here?’ The months of his year revolved with planetary precision, dedicated to the destruction of living creatures, chiefly enormous numbers of pheasants and partridges at Sandringham, and deer at Balmoral, but also grouse at the Duke of Devonshire’s estate at Bolton Abbey in Yorkshire, where half a century later Harold Macmillan, as Prime Minister, used to make celebrated appearances wearing shooting-gaiters of which King George would have approved.
The Duke of Windsor describes an apocalyptic day before the first world war at Hall Barn, the estate near Beaconsfield belonging to Lord Burnham, owner of the Daily Telegraph. There a special show was put on to delight the King and his heir and five other expert ‘guns’. Each used three weapons, thrust at them in turn by their ‘handlers’. The King shot in a peculiar way, his left arm extended straight along the barrel, with both eyes open. The shooting started at 10 a.m., and continued for six solid hours, with a break for a sumptuous lunch in a big tent set up near the killing grounds. Up to 100 beaters drove the pheasants into the gun-stands, many of the birds having been specially imported so that the day could go down as the greatest shoot in history. The King, said his son, was ‘deadly that day’, and was seen to bring down 39 pheasants in succession, without wasting ‘a single shot’. Altogether, he killed over 1,000 birds himself, out of a total of nearly 4,000 slain in those fatal six hours. The beautiful dead birds were laid out in rows of 100 each, the shooters bruised with the recoils, deafened by the noise. Even King George admitted at the end, ‘Perhaps we went a little too far today.’ What did he mean by this cryptic confession?
Now I know that such monstrous holocausts are uncommon today. But it may be that, with the huge expansion of the financial sector in London, and the continuing popularity of shooting, let alone ‘owning a shoot’, as a mark of City success, more birds are raised and shot than ever before. And what for, other than snobbery? Pheasant is not worth eating. I admit that I enjoy a partridge from time to time, and even a slice of grouse. But most game birds make miserable food even when buried in the promiscuous anonymity of a noisome game pie. I don’t purpose to campaign against shooting. We already have far too many laws forbidding us to do things. But I wish we could all enjoy the countryside as a place of life, not of death.

Tratado

Porreiro? Réplica do meu quartinho na Piazza Navona

Friday, October 19, 2007

PRESENTE DE ANIVERSÁRIO
É o que se arranja nas arcas da confraria...

Thursday, October 18, 2007

Estou contentíssimo!

"Apesar de reconhecer que “ainda há problemas” por resolver, José Sócrates afirmou ao início da tarde que os 27 estão "muito, muito perto" de ter um novo tratado europeu e que ele se chamará "Tratado de Lisboa".


IMPAGÁVEL!!


De Mefistófeles, com elevada estima e consideração...


Quid nunc te, asine, litteras doceam?

"O conselho consultivo da Procuradoria-Geral da República (PGR) considera que o código deontológico dos médicos viola a lei, no que diz respeito à prática de aborto e à sua sanção disciplinar, e deve ser alterado"

Tínhamos de chegar a este ponto? Por favor, ponham os cintos, seguem-se a ética, a moral, os princípios estruturantes do carácter, sobretudo na sua expressão positiva e mais nobre que é a objecção de consciência. PGR tem a direito a prémio pelo alcance rápido do nível comatoso das sociedades organizadas: a assimilação da Lei à Justiça. S.f.f. onde é a saída?

Ortega Y gasset, Centro de Estudios Históricos de Madrid, 1931

"CHEZ VOUS, SANS VOUS, SUR VOUS"

No dia em que Portugal serve de banqueta inerte aos escribas e notários de uma das maiores ofensas ao nome e à ideia de Europa, no dia em que o europeu é arredado para as valetas, tal como o lisboeta foi arredado para as bermas pelo cortejo luminoso e sirenante dessa canalha refastelada a que está entregue a coisa pública, meia dúzia de palavras de Mestre Ortega. Sempre presente.
“...El nuevo hecho social que aqui se analiza es este: la historia europea parece, por vez primera, entregada a la decisión del hombre vulgar como tal. O dicho en voz activa: el hombre vulgar, antes dirigido, ha resuelto gobernar el mundo. Esta resolución de adelantarse al primer plano social se ha producido en el, automaticamente, apenas llegò a madurar el nuevo tipo de hombre que el representa. Si atendiendo a los efectos de vida publica, se estudia la estructura psicologica de este nuevo tipo de hombre-masa, se encuentra lo siguiente: 1.°, una impresión nativa y radical de que la vida es fácil, sobrada, sin limitaciones trágicas; por tanto, cada individuo medio encuentra en si una sensacion de domínio y triunfo que, 2.°, le invita a afirmarse a si mismo tal cual es, a dar por bueno y completo su haber moral e intelectual. Este contentamiento consigo le lleva a cerrarse para toda instancia exterior, a no escuchar, a no poner en tela de juicio sus opiniones y a no contar con los demas. Su sensación íntima de dominio le incita constantemente a ejercer predominio. Actuará, pues, como si solo el y sus congeneres existieran en el mundo; por tanto, 3.°, intervendra en todo imponiendo su vulgar opinion, sin miramientos, contemplaciones, tramites, ni reservas, es decir, segun un regimen de «accion directa». Este repertorio de facciones nos hizo pensar en ciertos modos deficientes de ser hombre, como el niño mimado y el primitivo rebelde, es decir, el barbaro…”.

Ortega Y Gasset La Rebelion de las Masas

What you wanna do?
"the Jungle Book"

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Como o Jansenista, subindo a parada: Elba Ramalho e Gonzagão

Eu quero me casar



Memória fugaz de um miúdo exilado
Nesse S. Paulo de 1976, depois de um copo num dos bares do Bexiga, metíamo-nos no jipe desengonçado do Zequinha e marchávamos para o Som de Cristal, a melhor e a maior gafieira da cidade; uma enorme pista de soalho parafinado a forçar o passo miúdo, orquestras rodando até às 6 da manhã ribombando forrós. Gonzaguinha, Gonzagão, Elba Ramalho, Gal e até os Demônios da Garoa por ali passaram, levando ao delírio multidões numa alegria democrática que só no Brasil tem sentido. As 6 da matina e o “Trem das 11” atacado pela banda eram invariavelmente o sinal da partida; e era saír de perna trôpega e amezandar num barzinho não longe, devorando um baurú, um sanduichezão como só há S.Paulo.
Recordo-me de um mês em que o Primo Archie nos deu um alegrão em casa, a visitar aqueles a quem graciosamente chamava “les eymigrrées”. Era ainda um cinquentão janota, que uma noite a moçada arrastou para o forró paulistano. Archie não tinha qualquer dificuldade em alinhar na rotina desses estouvados. E depois de uma votação apressada nesse grupo luso-tropical onde o mais velho dos pândegos não tinha mais de 20 anos, escalámos para a iniciação de Archie nos arcanos do forró Elsinha, uma mulatona que estudava Antropolgia na USP. Elsinha era de longe a melhor forrózeira, mestra reboluda de todos nós na coreografia complexa do “forró de cabo a rabo”, ou do ainda mais difícil “forró nº1”.
Passaram trinta anos, mas como hoje estou a ver o Primo Archie no seu imaculado terno de linho branco, de olho muito azul, pendurado no braço moreno duma risonha Elsinha que o ultrapassava num palmo bem medido, marchando para a sanzala dançante, confusa e suada que era a pista do “Som de Cristal”; e com aquele fairplay que só os Ingleses sabem ter nas situações mais delicadas como Waterloo ou Balaclava, hesitar por um segundo e atirar-me por cima do ombro “Dear me, should I have painted my face black?”

TREM DAS ONZE
Demônios da Garoa

FORRÓ Nº1

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Hermínia vs. Saura

Tem toda a razão Eurico de Barros no que diz sobre Saura, especialmente no que respeita à patética parvoada de “Fado”, a puxar à multiculturalidade mais imbecil. Fica aqui a velha Hermínia a colocar as coisas nos seus lugares. Quanto às sevilhanas em amostra, insisto que são belíssimas, mas de gustibus...

Monday, October 15, 2007



AS MENINAS GORDAS



Por entre dois passos da coreografia europeia do yeti das Necessidades, lobriguei há bocado um anafado secretário de Estado, versão talhante de Charles Laughton, balbuciar em extâse o que o seu coraçãozito emocionado lhe ditava sobre a sina (nossa e triste) de ter por aqui firmado, em ventriloquia de quem mais manda, esse tratado iníquo a que chamam “da União”. Sôfrego, nervoso, contente, lembrava uma versão revisitada da “Menina Gorda” de Ribeiro Couto.
Oh! Quantas “meninas gordas” tem aquela bendita casa! Oh! Quantas carradas de razão tem Sousa Tavares na diatribe que publicou n' Expresso de dia 15:



"Seja qual for o Governo em funções, as sondagens indicam que o seu elemento mais popular é sempre o ministro dos Negócios Estrangeiros. O resultado é fácil de explicar: internamente, o MNE não incomoda ninguém, não mexe com o dia-a-dia de ninguém; e, externamente também não conta para nada, num país que há muito se desabituou de ter política externa. O grande desígnio de cada MNE é apenas este: não se meter na política interna, não incomodar ninguém, não ter ideia alguma, boa ou má. Depois, nos intervalos, eles adoram dar umas entrevistas em que assumem o papel de 'pensadores' de política internacional, gente que vê muito para lá da mesquinha espuma política dos dias, e de participar em reuniões bilaterais e cimeiras com os seus colegas da 'coisa', encenando, para português ver, a figuração ao lado dos grandes do mundo. Não por acaso, os melhores representantes da profícua arte da deliquescência política - de Jaime Gama a Durão Barroso, de Freitas do Amaral e Martins da Cruz - tiveram todos o seu momento de sublime inutilidade e grandiosa vacuidade enquanto ministros dos Estrangeiros. Mas, se fosse preciso encontrar um único símbolo daquilo a que poderíamos chamar a 'escola portuguesa da diplomacia democrática', esse símbolo só podia ser Durão Barroso. Ele foi e continua a ser o expoente máximo da política vista como manobrismo permanente, adaptação constante, capacidade gélida de nos olhar nos olhos e dizer tranquilamente o contrário do que se está a pensar, e ausência de princípios como único princípio válido.
Como já devem ter percebido, eu não tenho grande consideração pela diplomacia, enquanto arte moderna da política. E, em particular, tenho um profundo desprezo e uma imensa vergonha pela arte portuguesa da diplomacia, em situações mais complicadas. Das relações com Angola às relações com os Estados Unidos, das relações com a China às relações com o Zimbabwe de Mugabe, a nossa diplomacia já deixou há muito de ser apenas inútil e irrelevante, para se transformar, quando analisada de perto e em muitos casos, num motivo de vergonha nacional.
O mais recente episódio com o Dalai Lama - um homem que simboliza tudo aquilo que juramos defender e que representa um povo ocupado pela China em condições exactamente idênticas à ocupação de Timor pela Indonésia - não me espanta, minimamente. Espantar-me-ia era o contrário. Quando o actual MNE, Luís Amado, refere a "total clarividência quanto aos interesses de Portugal" em fingir que não sabe oficialmente que o Dalai Lama está cá, ou quando Marques Mendes, em nome das "razões de Estado", se mostra solidário com o Governo, nós sabemos bem a que interesses e razões se referem: aos das empresas que têm negócios potenciais com a China e que, por coincidência, às vezes também financiam o PS e o PSD. Sempre é mais engraçado ouvir Jerónimo de Sousa a concordar também com o Governo, em nome de "uma perspectiva justa" das relações diplomáticas. Ao menos ele, embora enganado, é coerente: está convencido de que, por ser governada por um partido chamado comunista, a China ainda é um país comunista. Apesar de tudo, é forçoso reconhecer que sempre se fizeram alguns progressos, relativamente à última destas incómodas visitas do Dalai Lama. Pelo menos desta vez, Cavaco Silva não se dispôs à mesma farsa que Jorge Sampaio - encontrando-se, 'por acaso', com o Dalai Lama, numa visita a um museu - naquele que ficará para sempre como um dos mais ridículos episódios da nossa grandiloquente diplomacia 'de Estado'..."

Saturday, October 13, 2007


Espírito limpo - A caminho de um fim de semana diferente

A limpar o espírito

John Williams - Asturias - Isaac Albeniz

Friday, October 12, 2007

PELA NOITE DENTRO - ENCORE LES RUSSES

Coppelia-Baryshnikov


PELA NOITE DENTRO

SEROV
(1865-1911)
















































































RETRATOS DE TRABALHO – XII





SEROV
Certain Muscovites were most eccentric, and my father liked to surround himself with these oddities, and found them entertaining. Most of them belonged to various societies of which he was the honorary president: dog clubs, bird fanciers, associations and, in particular, a bee-keeping organization, all the members of which belonged to a widespread sect of castrates, the Skoptzis. One of these, old Mochalkin, who directed the organization, often came to see my father. He had a soprano voice and the face of an old woman, and altogether his appearance rather frightened me. But it was quite another matter when my father took us to visit the beekeeping center. About a hundred Skoptzis gathered to greet us. We were given a delicious lunch followed by a very fine concert. All the performers were men with feminine voices; imagine a hundred old ladies dressed as men, singing popular songs with children's voices. It was at once touching, sad and rather funny. (…) Summer saw us back at Arkhangelskoye; we had many guests, and some of them stayed for the whole season. My liking for them depended entirely on the degree of interest they took in our beloved estate. I had a violent hatred for those who were indifferent to its beauties and merely came to eat, drink and play cards. To me their presence was a desecration. To escape from them I used to take refuge in the park, wandering among the groves and fountains, never tiring of a landscape where art and nature harmonized so perfectly. Its serenity brought me peace and quiet, and in its romantic setting my imagination had free play. I used to pretend I was my great-great-grandfather, Prince Nicholas, absolute monarch of Arkhangelskoye. I would go to our private theater and, seated in a box, would watch an imaginary performance in which the finest artists played, sang and danced for me. Sometimes I myself would go on the stage and sing, and be so carried away by my imagination that the ghosts of past audiences seemed to come to life and applaud me. When I awoke from my dreams, it was as though my personality had been split in two: one part of me jeering at such nonsense, the other grieving that the spell was broken.
Arkhangelskoye had a friend and admirer after my own heart in the person of Serov, the artist who came to paint our portraits in 1904. He was a delightful man. Of all the artists I have ever met in Russia or elsewhere, my memory of him is the most precious and vivid. His admiration for Arkhangelskoye, which revealed his acute sensibility, was the basis of our friendship. In an interval between sittings, we sometimes went into the park, sat down on a bench under the trees, and had long talks, his advanced ideas influenced the development of my mind considerably. I must add that in his opinion there would have been no cause for a Revolution if all rich people had been like my parents. Serov had a great respect for his art and never consented to paint a portrait unless the model interested him. He refused to paint a very fashionable lady of St. Petersburg whose face did not inspire him. However, be finally yielded to the lady's entreaties but, after the last sitting, he added to the portrait an enormous hat, which concealed three-quarters of her face. When the model protested, he replied that the hat was the most interesting part of the portrait. He was too independent and too disinterested to conceal his feelings. He once told me that when he was painting the Tsar's portrait the Tsarina exasperated him by continual criticisms; so much so that one day, losing all patience, he banded her his palette and brushes and suggested that she should finish the work herself. This portrait, the best ever painted of Nicholas II, was ripped to pieces during the 1917 Revolution, when a frenzied mob invaded the Winter Palace. An officer, who was a friend of mine, brought me a few shreds of it which I have reverently kept. Serov was very much pleased with the portrait he painted of me. Diaghilev asked us to allow him to include it in the exhibition of Russian art which he organized in Venice in 1907, but it brought me so much notoriety that my parents were annoyed and requested Diaghilev to withdraw it from the exhibition..."

Thursday, October 11, 2007

Para a Festa da Confraria

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

"A partir de hoje o ensino superior português é regido por um novo regime jurídico que põe fim à lei que vigorou por 20 anos e introduz alterações polémicas, como a possibilidade de unidades orgânicas se autonomizarem das universidades (…) A nova Lei não foi consensual uma vez que, mesmo tendo sido alvo de mais de setenta alterações em relação ao diploma inicial, foi aprovada pelo Parlamento apenas com os votos favoráveis do PS e continua a ser contestada, em alguns dos seus artigos, por sindicatos, reitores e estudantes. As principais novidades deste diploma são a possibilidade de universidades e politécnicos se tornarem fundações públicas de direito privado, a alteração na forma de escolha dos reitores, a hipótese de criação de consórcios entre instituições, o aparecimento de um novo órgão nas instituições - o conselho geral - e a redução da representatividade dos estudantes na gestão das universidades..."

Tuesday, October 09, 2007





















DE IUSTUM IMPERIUM












Isto é uma maçada. Por um lado nós a querermos esquecer ou ignorar a choldra que isto é, e por outro a saltarem-nos à vista a memória do que fomos. E não sei se é mais doloroso ser, sabendo o que se foi, se ser sabendo que em redor se não quer de todo saber o que se foi. E melhor, ou pior, quando são os outros, os de fora, que no-lo lembram.
Da minha gaveta, alguns livros (uns antigos, outros recém-chegados) a bater com a actualidade: na linha do evento que há poucos anos teve lugar no Victoria & Albert (Encounters), o catálogo da magnífica exposição Encompassing the Globe: Portugal and the World in the 16th and 17th centuries na Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, que correu entre Junho e Setembro passados. Calculo que hoje interessem mais os futebóis, a dupla escocesa do Algarve e o Menezes, mas não teria ficado mal que os governantes da cóltura se empenhassem um bocadinho mais na divulgação do evento entre as massas. O Berardo é uma coisa mas o Smithsonian é outra, e o ego precisa de afagos… O homem da penca chata e dos fatinhos Boss ainda foi por lá ao fecho, mas não chega.
E a provar que nem só neste blog se recordam as Índias Orientais, a propósito da Birmânia o confrade d’As Portas do Cerco faz um figurão a relembrar a memória desses nossos primos longínquos, descendentes das hostes do grande Filipe de Brito que foi rei daquela gente e que ainda hoje por lá veneram. A condizer, o belo album fotográfico desse calcorreador crónico das paragens por onde andou Mendes Pinto que é Joaquim de Castro, sobre os luso-descendentes birmaneses, ou a tão interessante monografia de Mariana Marques Guedes sobre a história mirabolante dos Portugueses na Birmânia. Bom proveito.




DE MONARCHIA HISPANICA

Notável, a ler, de Rafael Castela Santos, n'A Casa de Sarto :
"Altar y Trono en imágenes invertidas"

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