Shibboleth // um poema do Paul Celan

Shibboleth


Junto das minhas pedras
grandes de tanto chorar
por detrás das grades
arrastaram-me
para o meio do mercado,
para lá,
onde se desfralda a bandeira
à qual eu não eu prestei juramento.

Flauta,
Flauta-dupla da noite:
pensa na negra
roda dupla
em Viena e Madrid.

Põe a tua bandeira a meia haste,
Memória.
A meia haste
hoje e para sempre.

Coração:

dá-te também aqui a conhecer,
aqui, no meio do mercado,
Convida-o, ao Shibboleth,
para a estranheza do lar:
Fevereiro. No pasarán.

Unicórnio:

tu sabes das pedras,
tu sabes das águas,
vem,
que eu levo-te para longe
para as vozes
da Estremadura.


Paul Celan. Tradução minha.


Schibboleth

Mitsamt meinen Steinen,
den großgeweinten
hinter den Gittern,
schleiften sie mich
in die Mitte des Marktes,
dorthin,
wo die Fahne sich aufrollt, der ich
keinerlei Eid schwor.

Flöte,
Doppelflöte der Nacht:
denke der dunklen
Zwillingsröte
in Wien und Madrid.

Setz deine Fahne auf Halbmast,
Erinnrung.
Auf Halbmast
für heute und immer.

Herz:

gib dich auch hier zu erkennen,
hier, in der Mitte des Marktes.
Ruf's, das Schibboleth, hinaus
in die Fremde der Heimat:
Februar. No pasaran.

Einhorn:

du weißt um die Steine,
du weißt um die Wasser,
komm,
ich führ dich hinweg
zu den Stimmen
von Estremadura.

It is with them a war or a revolution, or it is nothing.

It was in the most patient period of Roman servitude that themes of tyrannicide made the ordinary exercise of boys at school — quum perimit sævos classis numerosa tyrannos. In the ordinary state of things, it produces in a country like ours the worst effects, even on the cause of that liberty which it abuses with the dissoluteness of an extravagant speculation. Almost all the high-bred republicans of my time have, after a short space, become the most decided, thorough-paced courtiers; they soon left the business of a tedious, moderate, but practical resistance to those of us whom, in the pride and intoxication of their theories, they have slighted as not much better than Tories. Hypocrisy, of course, delights in the most sublime speculations, for, never intending to go beyond speculation, it costs nothing to have it magnificent. But even in cases where rather levity than fraud was to be suspected in these ranting speculations, the issue has been much the same. These professors, finding their extreme principles not applicable to cases which call only for a qualified or, as I may say, civil and legal resistance, in such cases employ no resistance at all. It is with them a war or a revolution, or it is nothing. Finding their schemes of politics not adapted to the state of the world in which they live, they often come to think lightly of all public principle, and are ready, on their part, to abandon for a very trivial interest what they find of very trivial value. Some, indeed, are of more steady and persevering natures, but these are eager politicians out of parliament who have little to tempt them to abandon their favorite projects. They have some change in the church or state, or both, constantly in their view. When that is the case, they are always bad citizens and perfectly unsure connections. For, considering their speculative designs as of infinite value, and the actual arrangement of the state as of no estimation, they are at best indifferent about it. They see no merit in the good, and no fault in the vicious, management of public affairs; they rather rejoice in the latter, as more propitious to revolution. They see no merit or demerit in any man, or any action, or any political principle any further than as they may forward or retard their design of change; they therefore take up, one day, the most violent and stretched prerogative, and another time the wildest democratic ideas of freedom, and pass from one to the other without any sort of regard to cause, to person, or to party.

Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France.

TS Eliot e o Renascimento

What happens is not, to be sure, always just what the author intends. It is fatally easy, under the conditions of the modern world, for a writer of genius to conceive of himself as a Messiah. Other writers, indeed, may have had profound insights before him; but we readily believe that everything is relative to its period of society, and that these insights have now lost their validity; a new generation is a new world, so there is always a chance, if not of delivering a wholly new gospel, of delivering one as good as new. Or the messiahship may take the form of revealing for the first time the gospel of some dead sage, which no one has understood before; which owing to the backward and confused state of men's minds has lain unknown to this very moment; or it may even go back to the lost Atlantis and the ineffable wisdom of primitive peoples. A writer who is fired with such a conviction is likely to have some devoted disciples; but for posterity he is liable to become, what he will be for the majority of his contemporaries, merely one among many entertainers. And the pity is that the man may have had something to say of the greatest importance: but to announce, as your own discovery, some truth long known to mankind, is to secure immediate attention at the price of ultimate neglect.

T.S. Eliot. After Strange Gods: A Primer of Modern Heresy.

A paixão pela eternidade

Nei nostri tempi, pochi parlano volentieri dell'eternità. Non ne parlano gli scrittori: i filosofi; e nemmeno i teologi, che scorgono nell'eternità una specie di incrostazione greca, sovrapposta al messagio di Cristo. Ciò che oggi importe è il qui ed ora; e così anche la fede cristiana diventa qualcosa di storico, che non bada al Paradiso, ma alle mortificazioni della realtà quotidiana. Vorrei soltanto ricordare un fatto linguistico: la parola greca da cui deriva il nostro «eterno», la parola aión, significa in Omero «liquido vitale», «forza vitale». Dunque, nella sua radice, l'eternità non è nulla di estraneo e di sovrapposto a noi stessi: è la nostra forza vitale, il liquido vitale, che corre nelle membra degli uomini e dell'universo e non si consuma mai.

Pietro Citati. Le due preghiere nel Getsemani. in Dio La Morte Il Mistero. (1999) Mondadori

Esta parece-me uma forma adequada de definir o indefinido que se alargou sobre nós nas últimas décadas desde o último estrebuchar do Modernismo: o fim da paixão pela eternidade que, até à nossa, cunhara todas as épocas da história humana e a consciência desse facto.

are both perhaps present in time future

O passado, que é meu e de Johanes Lupigis e de outros, começa a amontoar-se diante de mim como um futuro, no qual devo penetrar. O passado amontoa-se, assim, diante de todos nós. Nós erguemo-nos e caminhamos sobre ele e temos de o penetrar para obter o conhecimento. Nós experienciámos — ou absorvemos — parte dele e agora temos de o penetrar e engolir novamente para nos libertarmos através do conhecimento sobre o que aconteceu. Esse é, possivelmente, o acto do conhecimento, o caminho onde recolhemos os benefícios da experiência, como disse o diácono Anselmus.

Eyvind Johnson (1960) in O tempo de Sua Graça. João Reis (trad). Cavalo de Ferro.

um poema

e Deus disse: Não
me quero ir embora
prefiro empunhar a espada
da História degolar o tempo,

ficar junto de ti.

In Hora Mortis (Thomas Bernhard)

Xenofonte sobre Segunda-feira 13

O tirano nem sequer se alegra juntamente com a sua cidade em tempos de prosperidade e de abundância, pois conclui que se pode servir dos seus cidadãos melhor se eles forem pobres e passarem necessidade.

 Xenofonte. Hierão. V.4

ἀλλὰ μὴν οὐδ' ἂν εὐετηριῶν γενομένων ἀφθονία τῶν ἀγαθῶν γίγνηται, οὐδὲ τότε συγχαίρει ὁ τύραννος. ἐνδεεστέροις γὰρ οὖσι ταπεινοτέροις αὐτοῖς οἴονται χρῆσθαι.

Sebastianismo à Grega

Θά'ρθεις σαν ἀστραπή

θά'χει ἡ χώρα γιορτή

θάλασσα γῆ και οὐρανός

στο δικό σου φῶς!