So let's go, good evening everyone, welcome, hey, I'm announcing a course that I'm going to give next, which is called personality training, when you remember the date May 18th to May 23rd, May 18th to 23rd, uh, but in today's class I would like to announce some themes that will be explored in more depth during this course, they are not exactly the same themes but they are things that have to do with each other and the first of them is the relationship that seems fundamental to me between culture and personality if you study it a little history of the culture of the Nations is European and I say the European nations because they are the ones I know best, you will see that the high culture of these Nations is made entirely by people who have had what we can call radical experiences or abysmal experiences. They are people who know the life in its most extreme aspects means death the confrontation with heaven and hell is the whole problem of human destiny eh PST death aa weakness fragility aa Total impotence of the human being in the face of destiny who have experienced this very deeply and very intensely you you will not find a single great culture that has been made with superficial or imitative experiences, on the contrary, that is to say, it is precisely this originality or originari, right, or authenticity of the experiences that are recorded in works such as, for example, The Divine Comedy, Shakespeare's plays, and the works of get and so on you will see that what the material you have there is experience taken in its most extreme, most radical, most dangerous and most frightening sense, always in a country where literature is not capable of recording these experiences That's right, probably until record of more superficial experiences will be falsified, we have, of course , we have some works, at least until the 1950s, they appeared with a certain regularity where you saw, in an imaginative version, some fundamental experiences of the Brazilian people , right? There is a novel that I really like the Alins, what they call cangaceiros , in which there is a war between one of the colonels from the Sertão and a group of cangaceiros and the poor peasants who are in the middle understand absolutely nothing, they get beaten without knowing where they come from and they live.
in a kind of state of perpetual terror and there is a young couple who are one of them who are the main characters they end up saving themselves because a fair singer appears there who is an old blind man Okay and the old blind man he goes from city to city He asks about people's lives and he makes songs telling the characters' lives, so he has the entire history of the region in his head, he knows everything that's going on, right, and so the old man knows where to take them to where they are safe so it ends in the end that little couple is saved because the old man leads them to a place where they don't run, they don't run any more risk So this is what this is, it's the epic of memory at the beginning of civilization, that is to say, it's the capacity of you store the experience and you can condense it ever more comprehensively which gives precisely to this blind person a greater understanding of the situation than the one who has the victims of the situation and this is the basic function of culture, that is to say, it is the individual who knows what happens that knows what real human experience is and that somehow condenses it as it condenses the first possible condensation is evidently in artistic symbols when you witness a situation any phenomenon any fact that you don't understand intellectually what you do you tell this fact you don't need to understand it to tell it you just need to record it and be able to synthesize it into images Then you get home look I saw this plus this plus ISO plus this plus this without this In this first imaginative synthesis, there is no intellectual work possible, which means that in a country where you don't have a vast literature, the Social Sciences, the political sciences, human science is all nonsense, right? Why are they simply going to use ready-made scientific concepts, stereotyped on the one hand and the raw reality of the other's facts they don't have that intermediate synthesis so they can't think simply So what you'll see are just stereotypes where there is no effective discernment of the situation's reality We all know, I have already pointed out many times in articles in classes, etc. that Bras literature has disappeared, now we see some signs, especially in poetry, I'll tell you, I haven't read the only good novel yet, people sent me the novel, I didn't even I'm going to mention the name, there's none that can help because individuals are not capable, they don't have enough language to record their real experience, not even in its most superficial aspect, which would be purely sociological, the more profound experiences, so what does it do ?
intergalactic Extra planetary characters science fiction etc etc This is a sign of impotence Hum so you that science fiction only works when it is first produced by people for whom science is an everyday experience hum are the great science fiction writers all of them they are people close to a scientific profession so it is what their imagination speaks so it is like saying science fiction without scientific culture it is a totally artificial thing because the individual is talking about experiences that he did not have and could not have if he did not have the experiences Where did he get the material from? It can only be a copy and a poorly made copy made as a result of rectally, he took a little bit from a film, a little bit from a TV program, a little bit from a book, etc. , etc.
, and composed that rubbish. So it's all second-hand. Now, the poetic experience itself is more elementary and it does not depend on such a comprehensive experience, it only depends on a deep inner experience Um, so it does not imply any understanding, let's say more comprehensive, of society, culture, etc.
, etc. , the individual goes in his inner experience works on the language of that and expresses it is through ISO that we see this and yet modest reinvigoration of literature appear in the form of poetry and not in works of fiction, no this is in works of fiction the only notable thing that I have read but that I I read many years ago, they are Yuri Vieira's short stories, which are humorous stories, absolutely half-humorous, half-fantastic, but always centered on the real Brazilian experience, that's right, so let's say Yuri, he's not even a man from the great phase of Brazilian literature. and not a promising debut he is an intermediary he is someone who in a way he is a survivor he managed to continue writing very interesting things at the extreme of the decadence around he was still in his corner producing the little things maybe there are others writers like that have also survived, that's right, but we don't know them, they don't.
In fact, Yuri, I don't even know if he has any published books, I know his Stories because he sent them to me. That's right, and I always have an absolutely wonderful story that I think the man with the big guy is a guerrilla fighter who hides under the big guy for 30 years thinking that he is still being persecuted by the dictatorship . comical, but there's one of mine that was hidden for a long time after the end of the dictatorship, it wasn't in Minhocão, but that really happened, right, and it's not a laughing matter at all.
It's another wonderful story, there's a lot of good stuff, but it's an isolated and completely atypical case. In general, fiction literature is over and the novels you've been sending me are very presumptuous and silly, after all, if you know any of it is from you, I'm saying there's not one that 's good, right? But in poetry we have, for example, Érico Nogueira and Adril Jorge, they have produced things of very high quality, even if they are real poets, they're not kidding, right?
And in the case of Érico Nogueira he has a book, a study on Greek poetry, that shows, let's say, the depth of work that is necessary to make a great poet, a great poet doesn't come out just like that, you have to work a lot, you have to know the language deeply and you have I have to know the poetic tradition and he knows it perfectly, right? Adriles, I don't know what the measure of literary culture is. his, but through his production we see that he has to know what he's doing, he knows what he's talking about, but that means how to make a great poet, how to make Bruno Tolentino, Bruno knew poetry by heart from about four or five countries, right, you spoke about bodeler to him, you recited five sonnets B, he spoke about John butle AES, he William butle, AES, he also recited, and so on, right, so it was by absorbing the poetic culture that he became what he was then doing.
a great poet is a huge job Okay then and but we have already started to see these fruits for a renaissance like this to emerge in fiction literature it takes something more it takes someone who has all this training In other words who knows what there is there novel, short story by 1 author, I don't know, who absorbs each person's technique, each person's vocabulary, who knows the Portuguese language in its functionality, when I know the language, it means the following: a writer, he has to pay attention to each word, pay attention to it in its meanings It's semantic in the psychological sense and in the sense of communication He doesn't know how to weigh each word, what is its semantic value, how will it reach your listener or reader? In other words, what impression will it give in this environment? sociological in the other in the other in the other in the other in the other all of this has to be calculated every word but you I I highly recommend the study of the da of Flobert's works of the works of Flobert's life who was the individual who perhaps most developed this art in the 19th century of weighing each word before writing it, so for a renaissance to emerge in fiction you first need this technical mastery historical and technical mastery of literature And mastery of language in this personal sense Think mastery of language just study grammar speech but what to study Grammar is something you have to do at the age of 10 10 12 years old, that is, when you reach 13 you have to master grammar.
Understood. In other words, you have to write without error. Writing without error will not make you a writer.
About you a guy a correspondent from a company to do business correspondence talks about you maybe even a Journalist but he doesn't talk about you a writer the writer is the individual for whom in language each word has a specific function that goes beyond its meaning dictionaryized, right, the writer plays with nuances that are not and could not be dictionaryized because there is no time because let's say these nuances vary according to the medium, according to the time, etc. , etc. , and in addition to these two conditions, he has to have another one, he has to know the people he is going to write about, that is, he has to know the society where he is and know it in its deepest sense, I'm not saying that the individual has and that he personally goes through certain radical experiences, right?
For example, let's say the experience of a deep depression the experience of having participated in a Guerrilla the experience of being part of a gang of thieves Okay, the experience of let's say da da da eh of perdition of the sexual anarchy of drugs etc etc sometimes some people have to delve deeply into this and also having the opposite experience, that is to say, the experience of devotion to the asesis of sanctity, etc. , etc. , that is, you have to stretch from hell to heaven, right?
In the end, every real writer makes the entire journey of the Divine Comedy and reads The Divine Comedy is doing exactly that, you go from the bottom of hell to the last heaven, so many writers go through experiences and radicals in the degrading, destructive sense and sometimes they can't get out of them but they can at least express verbally what is already a victory either if the individual managed to condense his experience into a verbal symbol he is no longer a slave to it in some way if he lives a little longer he ends up freeing himself personally but you and I was not able to free him personally at least he frees himself literarily what already is eh um um step , right, if he can come down imaginatively, yes, yes, there is also the case of the individual who, because he has an extraordinary imagination, does not need to personally go through any experience Like Dante himself, right, Dante, he points out that he is there in hell as an observer, right, he doesn't he is suffering the pains of hell he is taken by his master Virgílio to look, right look, what is happening there or or or that is to say, Dante's experience is purely visual, which means that it was lived entirely in imagination without the counterpart, right, epidermal muscle etc. etc. , in other words, without the suffering, it is an intellectual suffering, an immense cognitive suffering, um.
In fact, if he had to go through this experience physically, he obviously wouldn't be able to bear it. So let's say about Dante's power of imagination and his openness to the extremes of human experience allows him to experience all this immensity of Suffering as a cognitive suffering as an intellectual suffering without having to go through it personally but not all of us are Dante that's not it so Eh in most cases I experience the circle of experience of the individual when it goes a little beyond the sphere of everyday banality it goes downwards not upwards that's not it and that means that this elaboration, this creation of one of one by a narrative artist, it has a structure similar to that of initiations where you have a preliminary descent to hell as you had and then you go up Um so from the descent to hell you never escape Okay if you are a strict Saint Then you will experience the descent to hell through other people's sin which you will endure in monstrous amounts, isn't it ISO So you see for example, my friend's case, right, I'm not going to give a name other than D, a name that has been involved in an anti-abortion struggle for 40 years, right, the number of abortion cases he's seen the number of children killed for nothing he's ever seen the number of desperate mothers is I don't know how he can handle all this so he's not having any abortions he's not to blame for that but He carries this weight and that's why he knows this dimension of existence you can know this dimension The most hellish thing in existence is remaining innocent and simply suffering the impact of it you can be a victim Okay then you can suffer Persecution suffer violence suffer humiliation through no fault of your own but you are experiencing evil up close, right Eh now There are several ways to If you participate in the experience, if you consider yourself a victim, if you cognitively isolate yourself from those who are doing you harm, you will learn absolutely nothing, that is why the church recommends that you pray for whoever does you whatever harm you want. good to those who do you harm, otherwise you won't learn anything from it, isn't that what it means when they do you harm, the first thing you have to understand is that you could do the same thing and that it is by luck that you he's not doing what you are, instead you're suffering innocently, that 's not it, but without this identification with whoever does evil you won't learn anything.
a way for you to delve deeper into the experience without you personally getting dirty This is very difficult to happen in general let's say the dive into the deeper experience is accompanied by It takes the form of a dive into evil into sin into perdition etc etc ET how it happened with innumerable writers you read the life of Rambo bodler and Dostoyevsky himself with his addiction to gambling and all that and then the individual works on it imaginatively and if he manages to give it a literary verbal form he is, in a certain way, already free from that evil, um, he got rid of, at least imaginatively, which is a condition for him to get rid of himself in the real Sphere. But sometimes there isn't time, right? That means the individual, for example, in the case of this Hilbert Hilbert, who is a wonderful writer who he wrote the Demon book that I have recommended so many times here Celbi was a drug addict Marginal a guy completely lost when you look at his photo the guy looks like he weighs 20 kg he is practically destroyed but and he however he managed to get the strength to get out of that and write these absolutely incredible novels, right?
So, it's clear that the majority of people who went into that hole didn't come out of there to write anything, they didn't write anything, their girlfriend died there, right, but it's the lived experience. physically or imaginatively without this dive into the most radical and terrible aspects of the human experience there is no knowledge of the human being of the human soul That's right then Eh, this let's say is perhaps the biggest deficiency of Brazilian literature at the time when it was good either say that in general the experience portrayed in Brazilian literature is a banal experience, right, my friend Gerônimo Oscar, who was minister of culture at Itamar, he said that, right, the themes of Brazilian literature are like that, oh, he used my toothbrush, he stole my underwear, but this were the subjects so if you will see in general it is the banal experience lived by banal people but this banality has a weight this banality has a depressing force and the one who suffers the impact of this banality can transcend it transforming it into a work of art like This is the case with Machado de Assis Machado de Assis his entire life he only saw people in this limited Mediocre environment etc etc and let's say that that mediocrity that banality weighed heavily on him, I mean he suffered that and he absorbed the impact of the surrounding banality and I saw that this banality had a moral and metaphysical aspect that transcended the very understanding of the people involved. That's it, so sometimes he caricatures that, but caricature is banality with such immensely cruel traits where you see behind the banality there is presence of the devil, I mean the devil is a great trivialized desensitizer, right, the story of the guy who is there doing an experiment burning the mouse's paws on the candle just so he can observe says oops, he's a banal guy Mediocre but there's a devilish streak there in the no no deep inside him, right?
I mean, Machado de Assis won't write, for example, describe, for example, a Morino, a scene of torture, a stupefaction, nothing like that, he shows, I mean, the monstrosity with the suffering of a rat, right? So you see the world he's dealing with, it's small but he, behind this small world, he sees the depth of evil, not coincidentally, he himself led a routine and mediocre life, where and no one knew what was going on in his head, but the man was evidently observing these things everyone was impressed, that's right, and it got to the point of depression of seeing what we could even call the banality of evil, to use Anna's expression, right? Well, around the age of 40, he had a crisis and stopped writing those little pink things that he wrote at the beginning and he starts talking about this other world that I'm not saying that he had discovered at that moment but that he was already seeing and that little by little it weighs on his soul until a time comes when he is transmuted so to speak in the new author based on Bros Cubas' great memories and he stands out in such a way from his contemporary writers that there's no comparison, there's no comparison, right?
That's how they are here, media literature is here, the ax is there here, right, let's say our first writer of magnitude of Universal value and of interest is Universal, so this is a case where the experience is lived in a purely interior way and even in a secret or discreet way, right, and all this can happen I mean, you have the imaginative experience. You have the physical experience. You have the bodily experience.
Even the experience of bodily suffering was so important throughout the history of literature. What you can't do is close your imagination in the circle of banality. say if your social environment is banal That's right, you can't or shouldn't run away from perceiving the Demonic aspect behind the banality like Machado de Assis did, so that means instead of running away from this banality you'll have to contemplate it and suffer for her Um, so people who complain about living in Ah, I live in an oppressive environment, etc.
, etc. I say, Look, there's your fortune, there's your material, my son, right, you have to take it in hand, right, accept that ISO exists accept that this is your condition and explore it until its ultimate consequences, right? So as literature disappeared, that means that even the exploration of the banal social events also disappeared and it means that for 50 years or but the Brazilian population has undergone changes it has undergone enormous psychological changes.
It's not just that the growth, let's say insecurity, was already a thing, eh Absolut immeasurable, I mean you have a country that was where everyone felt more or less safe, suddenly no one can leave anymore on the street because they're afraid of a stray bullet from a robbery, something like that, right? That's it, that experience has never been described in our literature, what it's like, I do the following, how is the life of a family, a Mediocre family, right from the 60s, what is it like? that this life is changing as the environment of insecurity begins to frighten them, irritate them, etc.
etc. This has not been documented anywhere, however, you see some documents about the lives of marginal bandits, um, why? Because ISO, this is also a stereotype of Brazilian literature you pay attention to the lumpa and proletariat as if the lumpa proletariat were the people, of course it is easier for you to describe the lumpa and proletariat than the people, right because the conduct of the lumpa and proletariat is the standard conduct, crime is repetitive by its very nature, criminality, crime is all cataloged in the penal code, um, there are no undescribed crimes.
That's right, so as long as you see a writer who is born into the middle class or upper class and who casts his eyes preferably at the lump proletariat, the criminals, etc. etc. are already showing their total impotence to say anything about their real environment, that's not it and those who actually knew the criminal environment up close, most of them don't have the energy to do so.
That's right, in general. the description is made by middle-class people, by students, by pseudo-intellectuals who already come with a stereotypical idea, already come with a ready-made interpretation of history, already equalize everything in terms of and formulate everything in terms of class struggle and create create those stereotypes absolutely eh, imbeciles, when you have, let's say, new ones, eh, social campaigns like gist or feminist, etc. , all you have to do is apply the stereotypes, and a lot of plot comes out, right, if you ask a question, a lot of plot comes out automatically, right, that's what Janine said.
the sensitive boy who is bullied at school because he is a little effeminate, right, effeminate doesn't mean he is gay, a little effeminate is Janine himself who is not gay That's right, and because being effeminate is a sinequanon condition for being a professor at USP, you have to give one you don't have to be gay but a demon Cadinha a falsetto like Fernando then you are absolute that Pinheiro what was that professor called I don't know Pinheiro I forgot his name not some falsettos it's some desmo you have to give it necessarily Because this in this environment is , uh, how do you say, it's an emblem of elegance, right ?
