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).