Sunday, January 15, 2006

Anything

Now, are not you fancying, gentlemen, that I am expressing remorse for something now, that I am asking your forgiveness for something? I am sure you are fancying that ... However, I assure you I do not care if you are. ...

It was not only that I could not become spiteful, I did not know how to become anything; neither spiteful nor kind, neither a rascal nor an honest man, neither a hero nor an insect. Now, I am living out my life in my corner, taunting myself with the spiteful and useless consolation that an intelligent man cannot become anything seriously, and it is only the fool who becomes anything.

Notes from the Underground
- Fyodor Dostoyevsky

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

bom, ou tiramos daqui uma ideia positiva de método, no sentido de que não basta saber/perceber o caminho, é preciso querer percorrê-lo...ou então, ou então...lá vamos nós passear à beira de um abismo conceptual – se não pior, existencial –... de ausência / impossibilitação de auto-construção:), enfim, de...ser...

E então pergunto: mas o que é que a inteligência tem a ver com o que quer que seja, no que toca a ser-se algo?? E o que reflectem estas palavras, esta atitude, afinal? a pior das "tentações", quer-me parecer: a tentação do nada posso, nada sou...que paradoxalmenbte se pode traduzir numa falsa humildade, num falso estoicismo, num orgulho displicente (tipo as ilhas)...ou num cepticismo derrotista, empedernido, descarnado: dou-me ao trabalho de analiticamente concluir que nada posso/nada sou/nada posso ser (..."nothing can be changed, so I’ll just sit here resting my bones"- bah...)...ou seja, uma quase auto-imolação espiritual... Não serve...

[e já agora...only the fool? o idiota? na obra do F.D. nem este se safou...]

António Araújo said...
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António Araújo said...

A implacável voz da minha consciência :)

Não há descanso para os danados, nem mesmo no ultimo reduto da auto-comiseração.

Nós conhecêmo-nos ,mn? Tanta precisão assusta. :)

Stejahen said...

That's one of my favorites as well, he completly captures what insecurity and solitude feel like. Dostoyevsky wrote Notes from the Underground while his first wife was dying.

Anonymous said...

Self pity is a mask. Although I appreciate Dostoivesky's literary style, I'm wary of adhering to it. First because it is quite a convenient approach. Since nothing can be done, I might as well stay in my little corner.

I recommend for your benefit the viewing of Bresson's Film Le Diable Probablement.

António Araújo said...

There are many ways of interpreting the same thing (I could refer you to the Bhagavad Gita, but then again I could refer you to it for just about anything, so you might as well ignore me :)). Uselessness of action is no reason not to act. You act because it is in yout nature. Determinism may mean that your volition is pointless, but at the same time it ensures that it is also unavoidable. Furthermore, even forgetting psychological (on final analysis physical) determinism, and indulging for a moment in the fiction of free will - I'd still act for the sheer beauty of the action itself.