Filme do Desassossego Page #5

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It wouldn't trouble me at all if Portugal

were invaded or occupied,

as long as I was left in peace.

But I hate with genuine hatred,

with the only hatred I feel,

not those who write bad Portuguese,

not those whose syntax is faulty,

but the badly written page

itself, as if it were a person,

incorrect syntax, as someone

who ought to be flogged,

the substitution of i for y, as the spit

that directly disgusts me,

independent of who spat it.

Yes, because spelling is also a person.

The Word is complete

when seen and heard.

And the pageantry of Graeco-Roman

translitearion dresses it for me

in its authentic royal robe,

making it a lady and a queen.

But I don't write in Portuguese.

I write my own self.

So long, Mr. Soares,

and I hope you feel better.

The trumpet blast of this simple phrase

relieved my soul like a sudden wind

clearing the sky of clouds.

Camaraderie has its subtleties.

Some govern the world,

others are the world.

Between an american milionaire,

a Caesar or Napoleon, or Lenin,

and the Socialist leader of a small town,

there's a difference in quantity

but not of quality.

Bellow them there's us,

the unnoticed:

The reckless playwright

William Shakespeare,

John Milton the schoolteacher,

Dante Alighieri, the tramp,

and the waiter who just now

demonstrated his camaraderie

by wishing me well, after noticing

I'd drunk only half the wine.

I can assure you that I sometimes feel

what I say and even,

despite being a woman,

what I say through my gaze...

Aren't you being harsh on yourself?

Do we really feel what we think

we're feeling?

Does this conversation, for example,

have any semblance of reality?

Surely not. It would be

unacceptable in a novel.

I realize it gives the impression of an

overwrought, somewhat forced reality...

To be an illustration seems to me

the only ideal worthy

of a contemporary woman.

As a child

I wanted to be the queen

of one of the suits in a deck

of old cards we had at home...

For a child, of course, such moral

aspirations are common...

Only later, when all our aspirations are

immoral, do we really think about this.

You know, even now as I'm talking

I'm trying to fathom the true meaning of

the things you've been telling me.

Do you forgive me?

Not entirely...

We should never plumb the feelings

that other people pretend to have.

They're always too intimate...

don't think it doesn't hurt me

to share these intimate secrets,

all of which are false

but which represent

true tatters of my pathetic soul...

You've hurt me.

Why ruin the constant

unreality of our conversation?

Now it's my turn to ask

forgiveness...

But I was distracted

and really didn't

notice that I'd said something

that makes sense...

How late it always is!

Don't get upset again, the sentence

I just said, after all,

is complete nonsense...

Don't apologize, and don't pay any

attention to what we're talking about...

Every good conversation should

be a two-way monologue...

The best and profoundest

conversations,

and the least morally instructive ones,

are those that novelists have between

two characters

from one of their books.

For example...

For heaven's sake! Don't tell me

you were going to cite an example!

That's only done in grammars;

perhaps you've forgotten

that we don't even read them.

Did you ever read a grammar?

Never.

I've always despised knowing

the correct way to say something...

All I ever liked in grammar books

were the exceptions and pleonasms...

To dodge the rules

and say useless things

sums up the essentially

modern attitude.

Isn't that how they say it?

What's especially irritating in grammars

is the chapter on verbs,

since these are what give meaning

to sentences...

An honest sentence should always

have any number of possible meanings.

Verbs!

A friend of mine who committed suicide

was going to dedicate his life

to destroying verbs...

Why did he commit suicide?

He wanted to discover and develop

a method

for surreptitiously

not completing sentences.

He commited suicide, yes,

of course,

because one day he realized

what a tremendous responsability

he'd assumed...

The enormity of the problem

made him go nuts...

A revolver and...

No...

Don't you see that it could never

be a revolver?

A man like that never

shoots himself in the head...

You understand very little about the

friends you've never had...

The two figures sitting at the table

surely didn't have this conversation.

But they were so well groomed and

dressed that it seemed a pity

for them not to talk this way...

That's why I wrote this conversation

for them to have had...

Sometimes, when I lift my dazed head

from the books

where I record other

people's accounts

and the absence of a life

I can call my own,

I feel a pshysical nausea,

which might be from hunching over,

but which transcends the

numbers and my disillusion.

I find life distasteful,

like a useless medicine.

We live by action, by acting on desire.

Those of us who don't know how to

want, whether geniuses or beggars,

are related by impotence.

What's the point of calling myself

a genius,

if I'm after all an assistant

bookkeeper?

I looked at it from the depths

of the abyss, anonymous and attentive.

It was coloured by green shades

of black-blue,

and its shiny repulsiveness wasn't ugly.

A life!

I didn't think:

I felt.

It was carnally, directly,

with profound and dark horror

that I made this ludicrous comparison.

I was a fly when I compared

myself to one.

I really felt like a fly when I imagined

I felt like one.

And I felt I had a flyish, slept flyish

and was flyish withdrawn.

And what's more horrifying is that I felt,

at the same time, like myself.

I automatically raised my eyes

towards the ceiling,

lest a lofty wooden ruler

should swoop down to swat me,

as I might swat that fly.

When I lowered my eyes,

the fly had fortunately

disappeared without a sound,

at least not any I could hear.

The involuntary office

was again without philosophy.

In my kingdom

love doesn't weary,

for it doesn't long to possess;

nor does it suffer from the frustration

of never having posessed.

My hand lightly rests

on the hair of those who think,

and they forget;

those who have waited in vain

lean against my breast,

and finally come to trust.

My lips

utter no song like the sirens'

nor any melody

like that of the trees

and fountains,

but my silence welcomes

like a faint music,

and my stillness soothes

like the torpor of a breeze.

In my domain,

where only the night reins,

you will be consoled,

for your hopes will have ceased;

you'll be able to forget,

for your desire will have died;

you will finally rest,

for you'll have no life.

Drink from my inexhaustible chalice

the supreme nectar

which doesn't jade or taste bitter,

which doesn't nauseate or inebriate.

Look out the window of my castle

and contemplate not the moonlight

and the sea,

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