#portuguese literature

[virgin-martyr]

Of course she was neurotic, that goes without saying. It was a neurosis that kept her going

Clarice Lispector, excerpt from The Hour of the Star trans. Benjamin Moser

[ladyhawke]

– Death with Interruptions, José Saramago

[whilereadingandwalking]

Where to start with José Saramago’s Blindness? First things first: DO NOT READ THE BLURB OF THIS BOOK. The events described start on page 220 of the 320 page book. Trivia: translator Giovanni Pontiero passed away before finishing; Margaret Jull Costa helped to finish.

Now: the review. In this modern classic, a plague of blindness descends on humanity. The first patients to go blind are interned and isolated. In their quarantine, they must face the worst and best of human nature as resources become scarce. We have a central core of characters who must try to survive. And the twist? The doctor’s wife can still see.

I personally didn’t mind the “dirtiness” of the book some reviewers complain about—all the human waste, for example—because I think Saramago is doing it for a reason, as he digs into what makes us human and the privacies and dignities we currently take for granted. Readers should also know that there are very explicit, graphic scenes of sexual assault and death.

After all that, you may be surprised to learn that it is actually a very hopeful book at its core. It tries to strike at what truly makes us human, what our responsibilities are to each other and ourselves. It is also a thought experiment on how deeply our world is built for people who can see, and on what we take for granted that ultimately matters very little.

I had my own dislikes of the novel. His narrator’s digressions, sometimes amusing, often contained back-handed compliments to one female character, a sex worker (ex. surprise that she loved her parents, or said something smart). There are ableist hints that I let go because they’re in the context of a traumatic mass disabling event, but they did sometimes feel unnecessary.

But overall, it was a deeply compelling book to read in my 24 hours in Lisbon. I was mildly obsessed with Saramago’s comma-heavy, steam-of-consciousness style conversations and narrative. I cared about the protagonists and quickly grew to feel I knew them. The twists were genuinely shocking, and the end surprised me and made me cry (on the plane, naturally).

CW graphic sexual assault, gun violence, mass shooting, ableist language, misogyny, body horror.

[the-reading-diaries]

New book added to the list! This absolute beauty arrived today, and I'm starting it rn!! This is a required reading for my Portuguese Lit. II class this semester. Eça de Queirós is probably the most famous naturalist/realist author from Portugal, I've already read Primo Basílio (Cousin Bazilio) and liked it a lot, so I'm very excited for this one (A ilustre Casa de Ramires - The illustrous House of Ramires)

"O Fidalgo da Torre recolheu para o Bragança, impressionado, ruminando a ideia do Patriota. Tudo nela o seduzia - e lhe convinha: a sua colaboração numa revista considerável, de setenta páginas, em companhia de escritores doutos, lentes das Escolas, antigos ministros, até conselheiros de Estado [...] e enfim a seriedade acadêmica do seu espírito, o seu nobre gosto pelas investigações eruditas"

Hope you guys have a good week and a nice reading session :)

[conscienciacoletiva]

(Acima: Porções do Livro do Zohar encontradas na Biblioteca Pessoal de Fernando Pessoa que evidenciam o seu envolvimento na sabedoria da Kabbalah, as porções referidas são Safra de Tzniuta; Idra Rába e Idra Zuta via Biblioteca Privada Fernando Pessoa - The kabbalah unveiled)

Isaac Newton, o renomado cientista e matemático inglês, famoso por suas leis do movimento e da gravidade, também se interessou pela Kabbalah (Cabala). Ele estudou textos cabalísticos e procurou conexões entre a ciência e a espiritualidade. Johann Reuchlin, um humanista e estudioso alemão do Renascimento, foi um dos primeiros a introduzir a Kabbalah na Europa Ocidental. Seu trabalho “De Arte Cabbalistica” contribuiu para popularizar a sabedoria cabalística. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, o poeta, escritor e filósofo alemão, também explorou a Kabbalah em sua busca por conhecimento espiritual. Sua obra “Fausto” contém elementos cabalísticos. Além disso, o poeta português Fernando Pessoa, conhecido por sua multiplicidade de heterônimos, também se envolveu com a Kabbalah  que vem a se tornar mais evidente nos seus escritos de natureza aparentemente poética. Giordano Bruno, o filósofo renascentista italiano, estudou a Kabbalah e a alquimia. Suas ideias sobre a infinitude do universo e a unidade de todas as coisas refletem influências cabalísticas.

📌Gostaria de saber mais informações sobre essa sabedoria?

Inscreva-se ou siga o canal do Youtube

https://www.cursosdecabala.com.br/

[etudiantfantome]

Pessoa's chest

[nofatclips]

💬 TED-Ed on Fernando Pessoa - Lesson by Ilan Stavans 🎥 Directed by Héloïse Dorsan Rachet

[victusinveritas]

Double birthday salutations to W. B. Yeats and Fernando Pessoa — both fascinated by the occult, both with a penchant for heteronyms, and both appearing in Ed Simon's essay "Ghostwriter and Ghost" about the ouija board writings of early 20th-century St Louis resident Pearl Curran (AKA Patience Worth): https://buff.ly/3cF7If3

(Pictured — Left: A spirit photograph of Yeats taken during a seance in Paris around 1914. Right: Pessoa in 1929 taking a drink at Abel Pereira da Fonseca, Lisbon.)

[xushima]

– Tenho vontade de te fazer um gesto absolutamente masculino com a parte do meu corpo que é absolutamente masculina.

Maria Bloom fez um gesto que não lhe pareceu seu, um gesto estrangeiro. – Como é que este gesto entrou dentro do meu organismo? Não há gestos femininos e gestos masculinos, pelo menos feitos com as mãos. Já que as mãos são partes do corpo comuns ao homem e à mulher. Quando muito existirão gestos femininos feitos com os seios, a vagina ou as ancas largas, e existirão gestos masculinos feitos com o órgão sexual masculino. Abrir a porta e deixar, delicadamente, a outra pessoa entrar primeiro, não é um gesto masculino porque não depende diretamente de nenhum órgão anatomicamente estrangeiro à mulher. Eis uma teoria. Bloom disse: – Tenho vontade de te fazer um gesto absolutamente masculino com a parte do meu corpo que é absolutamente masculina. Maria Bloom disse que não, estava a ler um livro de filosofia. Estava a acabar. Faltavam três páginas. – Deixa-me acabar de ler estas três páginas. A seguir, fornicamos. Bloom concordou; ficou à espera. O problema que se colocou aqui é que o livro que Maria estava a ler exigia idas constantes ao dicionário. Para além disso, Maria Bloom ficava, no final de cada frase, a reflectir longamente sobre o que acabara de ler. Tinha então passado já uma hora e, das três páginas, Maria Bloom só havia lido uma. Bloom começava a ficar irritado. Começava, pois, a perder o desejo e a ganhar irritação (sendo que a irritação expulsa fluidos distintos). Maria, disse Bloom, acabas de ler esse livro ou não? (não sabem fazer livros mais simples, murmurava, irritado, Bloom). Maria, sem tirar os olhos do dicionário que novamente consultava, disse: – Podes ir despindo-te. Bloom assim fez. Despiu-se.

Quando finalmente Maria Bloom terminou de ler o seu livro de filosofia, Bloom tinha perdido o desejo e ganho uma constipação. Espirrava abundantemente. – Esse maldito livro! Nenhum livro causa constipações, disse Maria. O desejo não se perde como se perde um objeto sólido. Maria Bloom não procurou o desejo perdido de Bloom pela casa toda. Foi logo procurar no próprio corpo de Bloom. Há, assim, claramente, uma vantagem, quando se perde o desejo: ele não pode estar em sítios exóticos, a não ser que o próprio corpo do animal tenha sítios exóticos. E tem. O teu corpo tem mais sítios exóticos que o hemisfério sul do planeta, disse Maria a Bloom.

Bloom Books, 3 [fragmento], in

A Perna Esquerda de Paris Gonçalo M. Tavares

Voz/read by: Elsa Pires Cabral

[dark-longings]

"I lost my ancient castle before I was born. The tapestries of my ancestral palace were sold before I existed. My manor house from before I had life fell into ruins, and only in certain moments, when the moon shines in me over the river’s reeds, do I shiver with nostalgia for the place where the toothless remains of the walls blackly stand out against the dark-blue sky made less dark by a milky yellow tinge.

I sphinxly discern myself. And from the lap of the queen I’m missing falls the forgotten ball of thread that’s my soul – a little mishap of her useless embroidery. It rolls under the inlaid chest of drawers, where part of me follows it like a pair of eyes, until it vanishes in a nameless, mortuary horror." (Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet).

[ssuzii]

Which part of woman’s nature is demonic and which divine and what kind of humanity they have… I was talking about women, who generate beings such as ourselves and who may be responsible, perhaps unknowingly, for this duality in our nature, which is base and yet so noble, virtuous and yet so wicked, tranquil and yet so troubled, meek and yet so rebellious.

(José Saramago, The Gospel According to Jesus Christ)

[virgin-martyr]

Most of the time she had without realizing it the void that fills the souls of the saints. Was she a saint?

Clarice Lispector, excerpt from The Hour of the Star trans. Benjamin Moser

[beljar]

She was pretty, possibly not the prettiest woman in the audience, but pretty in a very particular, indefinable way that couldn't be put into words, like a line of poetry whose ultimate meaning, if such a thing exists in a line of poetry, continually escapes the translator.

José Saramago, from Death with Interruptions

[bibliomars]

'I Have More Souls Than One' by Fernando Pessoa

After having the ordinary experience of every person who went to secondary school in Portugal, and being exposed to Pessoa as a teenager, revisiting his work as an adult feels invigorating. Most of his poems do require a certain level of maturity that most 16-year-olds just don't have to be able to fully enjoy. Reading some of his most classic poems in English, also gave the words a new meaning, and made me look at the poems in a different light, and it was nice to see I still recognised some poems even in a different language. It's not the most complete selection of Pessoa's and his alter egos' poetry, but it never claims to be one. It is exactly what it promises: an introduction to Pessoa's more infamous poems, that have shaped contemporary Portuguese poetry until today. A nice book to read in one sitting, it shows just how well Pessoa's ideas and words stand up the test of time while efficiently introducing the reader to his writing style.

[lovelyteuvo]

A really simple literature note in portuguese about Troubadourism - I have no idea if this is the right term in english so I'm so sorry if it's wrong :’)

I think I finally found my way with Goodnotes, yay!! <3 But I'm still not sure if I will be sticking with this title style even if it's easy and quick

[disgustingposer]

"[...] I have no really intimate friends, and even were there one intimate, in world's way, yet he were not intimate in the way I understand intimacy. I am shy and unwilling to make known my woes. An intimate friend is one of my ideal things, one of my day-dreams yet an intimate friend is a thing I never shall have. No temperament fits me; there is no character in this world which shows a chance of approaching to that I dream in an intimate friend. No more of this. - Mistress or sweetheart I have none; it is another of my ideals and one fraught, into the soul of it, with a real nothingness. It cannot be, as I dream. [...]" - Fernando Pessoa