Misery in Literature
Third volume of a trilogy about artistic creation, Vício [Vice] is
another book by Paulo José Miranda with no concessions to the reader,
but very rewarding for the most persevering.
After six books (three fiction, two poetry books and a theatre play), we
can, without a doubt, classify Paulo José Miranda as the most radical
voice to arise from our literature in the past decade. When I say «radical»,
I’m not referring to formal juggling or transgressing universes; in
Paulo José Miranda the radicalism resides in the uttermost seriousness
off theme and speech, that annuls any remainder of entertainment. In all works,
but particularly in this trilogy made up by Um Prego no Coração [A
Nail to the Heart], Natureza Morta [Still Life] and Vicío [Vice]
we find an inquiring look on certain realities, but mostly on creation itself,
that makes us meditate on literature other than Portuguese, for example the
philosophical German short story, or more specifically, books from the Austrian
Thomas Bernhard, radical amongst radicals. That is one of the models that
presides this trilogy and evokes a very particular understanding of the word «fiction»,
coming close to the meaning of «thought» and «autobiography».
Apparently, the three fictions by Paulo José Miranda compose a trilogy
on Portuguese figures from the nineteenth century: Cesário Verde (Um
Prego no Coração), Domingos Bomtempo (Natureza Morta)
and Antero de Quental (Vício). And if it is true that, in each book,
considerations are woven on the biography of each of these artists, it
is not less true that
the author uses each one to talk about himself, not as much in biographical
terms, but of his understanding on Art (inspired, malefic, destructive)
and on Life (trivial, insufficient, claustrophobic). It is not by fluke
that one
speaks of life and art with capital letters, for we are at hands with an
author of romantic filiations, even when he ostensive affirms to refuse
romanticism. This romanticism that Paulo José Miranda practises we
might add, is in a certain way, «impure», for it is contaminated
by last century’s
philosophical thought, namely by Wittgenstein and Heidegger. So each of
these books is read as a brief philosophical treaty.
Vice is a hypothetical diary of the last living days of Antero de Quental.
As in his previous works, Paulo José Miranda doesn’t limit himself
to the study of the biography of the author or to a critical analysis of his
time; here, once again, he creates the esthetical and philosophical drama
that the character incarnates. In this case, we have the philosopher with
no philosophical work, as Antero only gave a small contribution in this area
and didn’t leave any solid work, ending up to be more well known through
his «one hundred sonnets and a text on the decadence of peninsular
people» (page 80). This drama is lived in anguish and together with his health problems, family
issues and the impossibility of believing in God, eventually leads to the
suicide of Antero.
The Antero in this text also sees in himself the flaws of anxiety and cowardliness,
but above all the lack of self-control, that prevents him from living a
truly moral life and withdraws from him all authority to speak out. The
text works
as a philosophical essay that puts Antero into scene, as Plato put Socrates
(turning him into a character). Paradoxically, philosophy is being made
in it’s own absence, with reflections on the literature of a Vice, a
Vice like game, that doesn’t lead to happiness. In this sense, the character
Antero leads on to comment the romance by Eça's O Primo Basílio,
in which he dismisses the critical component on society as a simple pretext
to compose a tragedy.
Ultimately, this is a book on language, and on its crisis (coming close
to a book by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, The Lord Chandos Letter). For Antero (better
saying, for the voice of this text) literature turns everything into literature,
and so writing in itself is useless for it doesn’t act upon the world.
That «thorn in writing» reveals the masochistic nature of language,
the misery of language, misery that at a certain point is compared to the
misery of the country (a constant in this trilogy). The «gain of
conscience» that
writing brings is in itself pernicious, thus the refusal to write, mistaken
with the refusal to live.
Antero returns home to die and revise his life, leading to a process of
ruin of will and memory that ends in renunciation. Antero, whom Batalha Reis
said to be the best «philosophical mind» but «worst
philosopher» he
ever knew, frustrated the expectations that others set upon him, and after
the failure of the Casino Conferences and the Patriotic League, he truly became
a «vanquished of life». That’s why, that lonely suicide
in the insular solitude of Ponta Delgada in 1891, is one more of the signs
of the big cultural and civic failure of the Generation of the 70’s
(curiously being revisited by many current authors). This suicide stands for
Antero’s incapacity to keep back death, to the point of saying that
he is «in love with death» and talking about «the
vice of being alive» or even in God as «the vice of justification».
But Vice has above all, incredible passages of reflection on writing like «Because
writing a book is wanting to be read by a dead man and not a living one.
We want the past to read us and not the future. If the dead don’t read
us, writing is of no good» (pages 21-22). With the refusal of entertainment
and the dismissal of the process of historic reconstruction, it is difficult
to point out the flaws in this text, although one or two passages may be too
explicative for a person writing a private diary.
By choosing Antero, «man of hope and sorrow», to end this trilogy,
Paulo José Miranda gets dangerously close to the border that once surpassed,
only silence can make sense (...). Art as «inequality», poetry
as «selfishness» and, generically, creation as destruction, aren’t
new themes, but can lead to a nihilism that makes all the sense in a character
like Antero, but can lead writing (not to mention life) into a dead end. If
it is notorious the way that Paulo José Miranda reflects on our culture
in the line of an enlightened pessimism and turns away from any hint of «circumstantial
conversation or Portuguese-like politics», this kind of anguished writing
can lead to an alienation of the readers and tunnel the work into its disappearance.
Whatever may happen, these three books stand as a mark in recent Portuguese
literature and have earned the right to a joint edition.
Text by Pedro Mexia in «DNA» 7.7.2001
Translated by Inês Campilho Chaves