φιλεῖσθαι

αὐτόματα τἀγαθὰ τῷ φιλουμένῳ [γίγονται] καὶ παρὰ θεῶν καὶ παρὰ ἀνθρώπων.

Xenofonte. Hierão.II.5. Tradução minha.

Αs bençãos dos homens e dos deuses chegam espontaneamente a quem é amado.

Alusões aos poetas

William Empson formulated a crucial principle when he commented on another kind of allusion, that to classical mythology. In ‘The Nymph complaining for the death of her Faun’, Andrew Marvell writes exquisitely:

The brotherless Heliades

Melt in such Amber Teares as these.

Empson’s elucidation has its own beauty in acknowledging Marvell's:

It is tactful, when making an obscure reference, to arrange that the verse shall be intelligible even when the reference is not understood. Thus many conceits are prepared to be treated as subdued conceits, though in themselves they have been fully worked out. Consider as the simplest kind of example

The brotherless Heliades
Melt in such amber tears as these.
(Marvell, The Nymph complaining)

If you have forgotten, as I had myself, who their brother was, and look it up, the poetry will scarcely seem more beautiful; such of the myth as is wanted is implied. It is for reasons of this sort that poetry has so much equilibrium, and is so much less dependent on notes than one would suppose. But something has happened after you have looked up the Heliades; the couplet has been justified. Marvell has claimed to make a classical reference and it has turned out to be all right; this is of importance, because it was only because you had faith in Marvell’s classical references that you felt as you did, that this mode of admir-ing nature seemed witty, sensitive, and cultured. If you had expected, or if you had discovered, that Marvell had made the myth up, the couplet might still be admired but the situation would be different; for instance, you would want the brother to be more relevant to the matter in hand.

Empson imagines responsibly the responsibility of the poet who alludes, and he is at once speculative and precise when it comes to matters of learning. A poem, without being dependent on our knowing certain things, may yet benefit greatly from our doing so. For to say that poetry ‘is so much less dependent on notes than one would suppose’ is not at all to demean that which can be supplied by notes, those necessary evils.

Christopher Ricks. Allusion to the Poets. OUP (2002)

Génesis, do Geoffrey Hill

Génesis

I
Lançando-me contra o ar emproado
Gritei os milagres de Deus.

E primeiro o peso morto
Do mar contra a terra empurrei.
Orei e as ondas abriram em flor,
Os rios geraram areia.

E lá onde os rios salgados se enchem
O salmão rijo e bronco esforçou-se,
Golpeando as águas, contra a corrente,
Para no cume chegar ao repouso.


II
No segundo dia parei e olhei
Para o mergulho afiado da águia-pesqueira,
Que raiava sangue costa fora
Ao exibir a carne viva do tendão.

E no terceiro dia gritei: ‘Atenção
Ao arrulhar da coruja, ao furão sorridente,—
À calculista vénia do falcão,
Olhos frios, e corpos cingidos a aço,
Sempre na presa fincados.'


III
E renunciei no quarto dia,
A esta feroz e obstinada argila,
Ao construir em mito imenso à raça humana
O aquático Leviathã,

E fiz com que albatroz de asa enorme
Limpasse ao mar as cinzas
Onde Zero se cruza a Capricórnio,
Uma imortalidade pensativa —
Tal como a que tem a fénix assombrosa
Na árvore imarcescível.


IV
A fénix arde fria como a geada
E, como um fantasma das histórias,
A ave-espectral dá em louca e desvaira
Arremessada pelo oceano à toa.

Então no quinto dia eu de novo avancei
Para a carne e para o sangue e para a dor do sangue.


V
No sexto dia enquanto me apressava
A cavalgar pelas obras de Deus,
Com esporas colhi o sangue do cavalo.

Pelo sangue vivemos, o frio, o quente,
Para despojar e redimir o mundo:
Não há mito exangue que aguente.

E pelo sangue de Christo podem-se os homens libertar
Mesmo que os seus corpos jazam em sudários rentes
Sob o couro áspero do mar;

Mesmo tendo a Terra feito do seu peso embrulho
Aos ossos que não aguentam a luz.



Geoffrey Hill. Tradução minha.



Genesis

I
Against the burly air I strode
Crying the miracles of God.

And first I brought the sea to bear
Upon the dead weight of the land;
And the waves flourished at my prayer,
The rivers spawned their sand.

And where the streams were salt and full
The tough pig-headed salmon strove,
Ramming the ebb, in the tide’s pull,
To reach the steady hills above.


II
The second day I stood and saw
The osprey plunge with triggered claw,
Feathering blood along the shore,
To lay the living sinew bare.

And the third day I cried: ‘Beware
The soft-voice owl, the ferret’s smile,—
The hawk’s deliberate stoop in air,
Cold eyes, and bodies hooped in steel,
Forever bent upon the kill.’


III
And I renounced on the fourth day,
This fierce and unregenerate clay,
Building as a huge myth for man
The watery Leviathan,

And made the long-winged albatross
Scour the ashes of the sea
Where Capricorn and Zero cross,
A brooding immortality —
Such as the charmed phoenix has
In the unwithering tree.


IV
The phoenix burns as cold as frost;
And, like a legendary ghost,
The phantom-bird goes wild and lost,
Upon a pointless ocean tossed.

So, the fifth day, I turned again
To flesh and blood and the blood’s pain.


V
On the sixth day, as I rode
In haste about the works of God,
With spurs I plucked the horse’s blood.

By blood we live, the hot, the cold,
To ravage and redeem the world:
There is no bloodless myth will hold.

And by Christ’s blood are men made free
Though in close shrouds their bodies lie
Under the rough pelt of the sea;

Though Earth has rolled beneath her weight
The bones that cannot bear the light.

um poema do Cavafis para o referendo grego

Che fece ... il gran rifiuto

A algumas pessoas acontece que um dia
têm o grande Sim e o grande Não
e é preciso dizer um deles. Reconhece-se imediatamente aquele
que está pronto para o Sim, e que ao pronunciá-lo dá um

passo adiante na sua honra e na sua convicção.
Mas aquele que negou não se arrepende. Se lhe voltassem a perguntar,
voltaria a dizer não. Ainda assim vai deixá-lo inquieto
aquele não — tão acertado — toda a sua vida.

Constandinos Cavafis. Tradução minha

Σε μερικούς ανθρώπους έρχεται μια μέρα
που πρέπει το μεγάλο Ναι ή το μεγάλο το Όχι
να πούνε. Φανερώνεται αμέσως όποιος τόχει
έτοιμο μέσα του το Ναι, και λέγοντάς το πέρα

πηγαίνει στην τιμή και στην πεποίθησί του.
Ο αρνηθείς δεν μετανοιώνει. Aν ρωτιούνταν πάλι,
όχι θα ξαναέλεγε. Κι όμως τον καταβάλλει
εκείνο τ’ όχι — το σωστό —  εις όλην την ζωή του.

Aufklärung

Athen will eben immer wieder neu aus Alexandrien zurückerobert sein.

Atenas precisa de estar sempre a ser reconquistada de novo a Alexandria.

Aby Warburg, numa carta a T.S. Eliot.Tradução minha

De vera religione

Quid est aliud de philosophia tractare, nisi veræ religionis, qua summa et principalis omnium rerum causa, Deus, et humiliter colitur, et rationabiliter investigatur, regulas exponere? Conficitur inde, veram esse philosophiam veram religionem, conversimque veram religionem esse veram philosophiam.

João Escoto Eriugena. Sobre a predestinação. Tradução minha.

Que outra coisa é tratar a filosofia, se não explicar o que é a verdadeira religião, pela qual adoramos humildemente e investigamos racionalmente Deus, a maior e principal causa de todas as coisas? Daí se concluiu que a verdadeira filosofia é a verdadeira religião, e inversamente também que a verdadeira religião é a verdadeira filosofia.

The demands of memory are heavy.

Memory brings modesty and reassurance. It is necessary to culture, to an understanding of permanence in a changing world, to a possible persistence of the past in the present, a past whose influence lives on. The demands of memory are heavy. Rilke, seeing the Belvedere Torso: «You must change your life.» Times which remember are creative; times which forget fall into excess.

Friedrich Ohly. The Damned and the Elect: Guilt in Western Culture. Linda Archibald (trad.) Cambridge University Press (1992)

L'alma me levi e'l cor l'alegreça

E vantende, segnor mio, e vatene, amore
Con ti via se ne vene l'alma mia e'l core.
E gli ochi dolenti piangon sença fine
Cha veder el paradisso e soa belleza.
A cuy ti lasso, amore, ché no me meni?
L'alma me levi e'l cor e l'alegreça.
La bocha cridava che sentiva dolceça;
Amara lamentarse, oymé, topina!
Altro signor zamay non voglio avere
Perch'io non troverey del suo vallore.

Séc. XVº (Manuscrito em Paris)

George Steiner sur Martin Heidegger

a função da filosofia

vão é o filosofar que não alivia ninguém do seu sofrimento

— Epicuro (fr.54) —

κενὸς ἐκείνου φιλοσόφου λόγος, ὑφ'οὗ μηδὲν πάθος ἀνθρώπου θεραπεύεται