tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post9124067716539603406..comments2024-03-27T16:48:21.039-05:00Comments on Wuthering <br>Expectations: Real and metaphysical gibberish in the age of the rubber stamp - Pessoa's great "Maritime Ode"Amateur Reader (Tom)http://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-66318581448268414582012-01-25T13:02:40.505-06:002012-01-25T13:02:40.505-06:00Claudia, what a rich comment! Full of amazing thi...Claudia, what a rich comment! Full of amazing things. That Lobo Antunes dig at Pessoa is wild, and so wrong, but revealing about Lobo Antunes. Just as Pessoa's thoughts on Eça tell us a lot about Pessoa, but not much about Eça.<br /><br /><i>How can you *really* understand Maias at 16?</i><br /><br />Yes, how much would I have gotten from it at 16? 10%? Now I get about 30%, I would guess, which is big progress. When I re-read it, I hope to get 50%.Amateur Reader (Tom)https://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-16750452317348677292012-01-25T04:42:00.314-06:002012-01-25T04:42:00.314-06:00Both Eça and Pessoa were some sort of misfits, I&#...Both Eça and Pessoa were some sort of misfits, I'd say. Intellectually, they owed a lot to the anglo saxon culture which was something rather rare in itself - most influences, artistic and political were rather french oriented until very recently. Well, French influence shows in Eça but his idea of civilizational progress was rather english, I think.<br /><br />It's of marginal interest, obviously, but I find it rather amusing that Pessoa thought Eça was provincial - which is precisely the opposite view of everybody else. In that paradoxical way Pessoa tends to reason, Eça was provincial because he had absorbed and been exposed to foreign culture and values. This meant he wished that Portugal were more like the "modern" countries which is the mark of a true provincial character. Pessoa, according to himself, was not provincial because he lived perfectly well anywhere since cosmopolitanism is a personal quality rather than a result of the surroundings.<br /><br />Once I heard Lobo Antunes saying he had no respect for Pessoa because a man who died a virgin couldn't have much to say about life.<br /><br />I'm sure when Lobo Antunes is dead some other writer will claim that his PTSD colored his world in too many shades of gray and his view of life is to be discarded also.<br /><br />And so the Portuguese writers posthumous quarreling will go on.<br /><br />Anyway, excuse me for the rambling but your blog posts have been a great excuse to rethink some things that have been gathering dust, filed away in some drawer in my brain - many of them since high school. How can you *really* understand Maias at 16?Claudiahttp://claudia.weblog.com.ptnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-49331582768422240892012-01-24T17:24:30.529-06:002012-01-24T17:24:30.529-06:00Good - entirely worth the time. Big, rich poems.
...Good - entirely worth the time. Big, rich poems.<br /><br />I wonder if the "marginal" status of Portuguese culture at the time, its dominance by French and English forces, feeds into that feeling of unstable or multiple identity.<br /><br />Obviously, much of what Pessoa is doing is personal, but I think you are right to see some glimmer of the idea in other, quite different, writers.Amateur Reader (Tom)https://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-73118986142905022592012-01-24T12:46:19.221-06:002012-01-24T12:46:19.221-06:00I guess "Maritime Ode" and "Salutat...I guess "Maritime Ode" and "Salutation to Walt Whitman" will be my reading for this evening if I can pry them out of the library. Fascinating - how Pessoa's obsession with Whitman's "multitudes" meshes with Portuguese melancholy and the "deterior[ation] and decompos[ition]" of the "I" as explicitly suggested at the end of <i>The Maias</i>.seraillonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17654593356535433945noreply@blogger.com