Quero!

Curve pet bed - design de Akemi Tanaka
http://store.yankodesign.com/

 E pensar que, pelo preço do fogão que comprei hoje, podia ter duas destas!

Gatos e mulheres

Viens, mon beau chat, sur mon cœur amoureux;
Retiens les griffes da ta patte,
Et laisse-moi plonger dans tes beaux yeux,
Mêlés de métal et d'agate.

Lorsque mes doigts caressent à loisir
Ta tête et ton dos élastique,
Et que ma main s'enivre du plaisir
De palper ton corps électrique,

Je vois ma femme en esprit. Son regard
Comme le tien, aimable bête,
Profond et froid, coupe et fend comme un dard,

Et, des pieds jusques à la tête,
Un air subtil, un dangereux parfum,
Nagent autour de son corps brun.

Charles Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du Mal (Librarie Française Générale, 1972)

Cecilia Beaux, Sita et Sarita (Jeune Fille au Chat),
1893-94, Musée d'Orsay

     Para o poema, nem me ocorrem comentários (ça va de soi...), mas neste quadro gosto do jogo claro-escuro e dos olhos que, apesar de paralelos, divergem em direcções obliquas. Gosto ainda de como o magnetismo do olhar do gato põe o da mulher a  um canto - acho que é isso que, mais do que qualquer outra coisa, o aproxima do poema de Baudelaire. Mas talvez seja o despeito feminino que me atraiçoa... ela é realmente muito bonita (o gato também, mais ça va de soi :)).

Não gosto muito deste poema, mas gosto muito deste quadro

a sombra, o gato

Emily Carr, Zunoqua of the Cat Village
(1931, Vancouver Art Gallery)

vejo atrás dos vidros
no jardim o gato
siamês que passa
entre os girassóis

na mesa da sala
há mais girassóis
num pote azul
de faiança.

às cinco da tarde
a janela,
a porta,
estão fechadas, mas

agora o gato
vai passar na penumbra,
entre os girassóis
e a parede.

é uma sombra
rapidamente
imaginada
sobre a mesa,

que fita em ponto,
de olhos límpidos,
e percebe o jogo
de espaços e que

já regressou ágil
de salto felino
ao corpo do gato
repentino lá fora.

Vasco Graça Moura, A Sombra das Figuras,

in Poemas Escolhidos (Bertrand Editora, 1996)

     E tem, adicionalmente, um lado lúdico de "descobre o wally"! :)

Not exactly the same

     Colin passa son bras autour des épaules de Chloé, et prit le cou gracieux entre ses doigts, sous ses cheveux, comme on prend un petit chat.

Boris Vian, L'écume des jours (Librairie Générale Française, 2010)

Lucian Freud, Girl with a kitten (1947, Col. privada)

     Mais de duas décadas depois, li finalmente a narrativa mágica de Boris Vian. O último capítulo, no qual o rato, ao persuadir um gato a suicidá-lo, deixa o leitor conhecer o destino de Colin, terá obviamente lugar neste blogue. Por agora, deixo apenas esta passagem, que antecipa a doença fatal de Chloé e que está mais próxima do assombroso e terrível quadro de Lucian Freud do que poderia parecer à primeira vista. A morte, em L'écume des jours, é o espaço que se torna cada vez mais exíguo, o monstruoso nenúfar que suga o oxigénio de Chloé. Falta de ar, simplesmente, ou «l'amour qui tue»?

Amor de gato

Bjork, Triumph of a heart, Medulla (2001) - real. de Spike Jonze

Lightening up

SI RUSSE

Lorsque tu vois un chat, de sa patte légère,

Laver son nez rosé, lisser son poil si fin,
Bien fraternellement embrasse ce félin.

Moralité:

S'il se nettoie, c'est donc ton frère.

Alphonse Allais, in Le rire en poésie,

présentation de Jacques Charpentreau (Éditions Gallimard Jeunesse, 1998)

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Jeune fille au chat
(1876, National Gallery of Art, Washington)

:)))

Como escrever um romance V: My she-cat (closure)

Giovanni Lanfranco, Giovane con un gatto sul letto (1620, Walpole Gallery, London)

Time passes and, their honeymoon over, the cats begin to tell us things about humanity which even the lid of civilization cannot conceal in the world of men. They tell us — what, alas, we already know — that husbands soon tire of their wives, particularly when they are expecting or nursing families; that the essence of maleness is the love of adventure and infidelity; that guilty consciences and good resolutions are the psychological symptoms of that disease which spasmodically affects practically every male between the ages of eighteen and sixty — the disease called “the morning after”; and that with the disappearance of the disease the psychological symptoms also disappear, so that when temptation comes again, conscience is dumb and good resolutions count for nothing. All these unhappily too familiar truths are illustrated by the cats with a most comical absence of disguise. No man has ever dared to manifest his boredom so insolently as does a Siamese tomcat, when he yawns in the face of his amorously importunate wife. No man has ever dared to proclaim his illicit amours so frankly as this same tom caterwauling on the tiles. And how slinkingly — no man was ever so abject -he returns next day to the conjugal basket by the fire! You can measure the guiltiness of his conscience by the angle of his back-pressed ears, the droop of his tail. And when, having sniffed him and so discovered his infidelity, his wife, as she always does on these occasions, begins to scratch his face (already scarred, like a German student’s, with the traces of a hundred duels), he makes no attempt to resist; for, self-convicted of sin, he knows that he deserves all he is getting. It is impossible for me in the space at my disposal to enumerate all the human truths which a pair of cats can reveal or confirm. I will cite only one more of the innumerable sermons in cats which my memory holds — an acted sermon which, by its ludicrous pantomime, vividly brought home to me the most saddening peculiarity of our human nature, its irreducible solitariness. The circumstances were these. My she-cat, by now a wife of long standing and several times a mother, was passing through one of her occasional phases of amorousness. Her husband, now in the prime of life and parading that sleepy arrogance which is the characteristic of the mature and conquering male (he was now the feline equivalent of some herculean young Alcibiades of the Guards), refused to have anything to do with her. It was in vain that she uttered her love-sick mewing, in vain that she walked up and down in front of him rubbing herself voluptuously against doors and chairlegs as she passed, it was in vain that she came and licked his face. He shut his eyes, he yawned, he averted his head, or, if she became too importunate, got up and slowly, with an insulting air of dignity and detachment, stalked away. When the opportunity presented itself, he escaped and spent the next twenty-four hours upon the tiles. Left to herself, the wife went wandering disconsolately about the house, as though in search of a vanished happiness, faintly and plaintively mewing to herself in a voice and with a manner that reminded one irresistibly of Mélisande in Debussy’s opera. “Je ne suis pas heureuse ici,” she seemed to be saying. And, poor little beast, she wasn’t. But, like her big sisters and brothers of the human world, she had to bear her unhappiness in solitude, uncomprehended, unconsoled. For in spite of language, in spite of intelligence and intuition and sympathy, one can never really communicate anything to anybody. The essential substance of every thought and feeling remains incommunicable, locked up in the impenetrable strong-room of the individual soul and body. Our life is a sentence of perpetual solitary confinement. This mournful truth was overwhelmingly borne in on me as I watched the abandoned and love-sick cat as she walked unhappily round my room. “Je ne suis pas heureuse ici,” she kept mewing, “je ne suis pas heureuse ici.” And her expressive black tail would lash the air in a tragical gesture of despair. But each time it twitched, hop-la! from under the armchair, from behind the book-case, wherever he happened to be hiding at the moment, out jumped her only son (the only one, that is, we had not given away), jumped like a ludicrous toy tiger, all claws out, on to the moving tail. Sometimes he would miss, sometimes he caught it, and getting the tip between his teeth would pretend to worry it, absurdly ferocious. His mother would have to jerk it violently to get it out of his mouth. Then, he would go back under his armchair again and, crouching down, his hindquarters trembling, would prepare once more to spring. The tail, the tragical, despairingly gesticulating tail, was for him the most irresistible of playthings. The patience of the mother was angelical. There was never a rebuke or a punitive reprisal; when the child became too intolerable, she just moved away; that was all. And meanwhile, all the time, she went on mewing, plaintively, despairingly. “Je ne suis pas heureuse ici, je ne suis pas heureuse ici.” It was heartbreaking. The more so as the antics of the kitten were so extraordinarily ludicrous. It was as though a slap-stick comedian had broken in on the lamentations of Mélisande -not mischievously, not wittingly, for there was not the smallest intention to hurt in the little cat’s performance, but simply from lack of comprehension. Each was alone serving his life-sentence of solitary confinement. There was no communication from cell to cell. Absolutely no communication. These sermons in cats can be exceedingly depressing.

Aldous Huxley, Music at Night

http://danassays.wordpress.com/collected-essays-by-aldous-huxley

     Huxley entra aqui no mais completo dos delírios, o que não tem qualquer importância, uma vez que o que lhe interessa não é, obviamente, falar de gatos. «For in spite of language, in spite of intelligence and intuition and sympathy, one can never really communicate anything to anybody.» E se é possível inspirarmo-nos nos negros das Índias Ocidentais para retratar o microcosmos do Mayfair, por que razão não poderemo esboçar a mais trágica das solidões no gatinho que brinca com a cauda da mãe, indiferente a que esta seja o seu pathos de fêmea rejeitada?

O que Huxley não sabia sobre a vida sexual dos gatos

POR QUE É QUE AS FÊMEAS FAZEM UM TAL ALARIDO DURANTE O ACASALAMENTO?

     Quando o gato termina o breve acto da cópula, o qual não se prolonga para além de alguns segundos, a fêmea volta-se e ataca-o, batendo-lhe selvaticamente com as garras e «gritando insultos». Logo que o macho retira o pénis e desmonta, tem de afastar-se rapidamente, sob pena de ser agredido. Será fácil compreendermos os motivos desta selvagem reacção se examinarmos fotografias do pénis dos gatos, tiradas ao microscópio. Contrariamente aos pénis lisos da maioria dos mamíferos, o órgão do gato está coberto de afiados espinhos, todos apontados para trás. Isto significa que o pénis pode ser introduzido sem dificuldade de maior mas, ao ser retirado, arranha brutalmente as paredes da vagina da fêmea. Naturalmente que isto lhe provoca uma dor intensa, razão pela qual ela reage com tanta cólera. O macho atacado, naturalmente, não tem voto na matéria. Não pode ajustar os espinhos, mesmo que o queira fazer: estes são fixos e, além disso, quanto mais viril for o macho, maior o comprimento destes. Assim, são os machos mais viris que provocam maior sofrimento às fêmeas.

     Parece estarmos perante um bizarro desenvolvimento sadomasoquista do sexo dos felinos, mas a verdade é que este tem uma explicação biológica. As mulheres que não engravidam produzem óvulos a intervalos regulares, quer tenham tido, ou não, relações sexuais com os homens. Uma mulher virgem, por exemplo, tem a ovulação mensalmente, mas isto não se passa com as gatas. Uma gata virgem não produz óvulos: as gatas só podem ter ovulação depois de terem sido cobertas pelo macho. Leva um certo tempo, cerca de vinte e cinco a trinta horas, mas isto não tem importância, pois o intenso período do cio dura pelo menos três dias; deste modo, quando ocorre a ovulação, a gata ainda se encontra em grande actividade de acasalamento. A ovulação é desencadeada pelo choque da intensa dor que a gata sofre, quando o primeiro pretendente retira o espinhoso pénis. Este momento de violência actua como o «pontapé de saída», pondo o seu sistema hormonal em funcionamento.

Desmond Morris, Guia Essencial do Comportamento do Gato,

tradução de Renato Casquilha (Pub. Europa-América, s/d)

     1) Sim, eu sei que a tradução é péssima, mas Desmond Morris é tão instrutivo!

     2) Os gatos são uma forma superior de vida... excepto no sexo!

Como escrever um romance IV: um chorrilho de disparates

Giuseppe Maria Crespi, Mulher com Gato e Rosa
 (1700)

We will begin — as every good novel should begin, instead of absurdly ending — with marriage. The marriage of Siamese cats, at any rate as I have observed it, is an extraordinarily dramatic event. To begin with, the introduction of the bridegroom to his bride (I am assuming that, as usually happens in the world of cats, they have not met before their wedding day) is the signal for a battle of unparalleled ferocity. The young wife’s first reaction to the advances of her would-be husband is to fly at his throat. One is thankful, as one watches the fur flying and listens to the piercing yells of rage and hatred, that a kindly providence has not allowed these devils to grow any larger. Waged between creatures as big as men, such battles would bring death and destruction to everything within a radius of hundreds of yards. As things are, one is able, at the risk of a few scratches, to grab the combatants by the scruffs of their necks and drag them, still writhing and spitting, apart. What would happen if the newly-wedded pair were allowed to go on fighting to the bitter end I do not know, and have never had the scientific curiosity or the strength of mind to try to find out. I suspect that, contrary to what happened in Hamlet’s family, the wedding baked meats would soon be serving for a funeral. I have always prevented this tragical consummation by simply shutting up the bride in a room by herself and leaving the bridegroom for a few hours to languish outside the door. He does not languish dumbly; but for a long time there is no answer, save an occasional hiss or growl, to his melancholy cries of love. When, finally, the bride begins replying in tones as soft and yearning as his own, the door may be opened. The bridegroom darts in and is received, not with tooth and claw as on the former occasion, but with every demonstration of affection. At first sight there would seem, in this specimen of feline behavior, no special “message” for humanity. But appearances are deceptive; the lids under which civilized people live are so thick and so profusely sculptured with mythological ornaments, that it is difficult to recognize the fact, so much insisted upon by D. H. Lawrence in his novels and stories, that there is almost always a mingling of hate with the passion of love and that young girls very often feel (in spite of their sentiments and even their desires) a real abhorrence of the fact of physical love. Unlidded, the cats make manifest this ordinarily obscure mystery of human nature. After witnessing a cats’ wedding no young novelist can rest content with the falsehood and banalities which pass, in current fiction, for descriptions of love.

Aldous Huxley, Music at Night

http://danassays.wordpress.com/collected-essays-by-aldous-huxley

Anexo pedagógico

Yvette Guilbert
 por Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

Yvette Guilbert:
cantora francesa
de "café-concert"
(1865-1944)

Félicien Rops: pintor belga (1833-1898)

Félicien Rops, Femme à cheval (British Museum)

Félicien Rops, La dame au cochon - pornokrates
(1878, Rhode St. Genèse, Belgique)

Como escrever um romance III: Siameses

Egipto, 304-30 a. C., bronze
(Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York )

Yes, a pair of cats. Siamese by preference; for they are certainly the most “human” of all the race of cats. Also the strangest, and, if not the most beautiful, certainly the most striking and fantastic. For what disquieting pale blue eyes stare out from the black velvet mask of their faces! Snow-white at birth, their bodies gradually darken to a rich mulatto color. Their forepaws are gloved almost to the shoulder like the long black kid arms of Yvette Guilbert; over their hind legs are tightly drawn the black silk stockings with which Félicien Rops so perversely and indecently clothed his pearly nudes. Their tails, when they have tails — and I would always recommend the budding novelist to buy the tailed variety; for the tail, in cats, is the principal organ of emotional expression and a Manx cat is the equivalent of a dumb man — their tails are tapering black serpents endowed, even when the body lies in Sphinx-like repose, with a spasmodic and uneasy life of their own.

Ando Hiroshige (madeira, 1858)

     And what strange voices they have! Sometimes like the complaining of small children; sometimes like the noise of lambs; sometimes like the agonized and furious howling of lost souls. Compared with these fantastic creatures, other cats, however beautiful and engaging, are apt to seem a little insipid. Well, having bought his cats, nothing remains for the would-be novelist but to watch them living from day to day; to mark, learn, and inwardly digest the lessons about human nature which they teach; and finally — for, alas, this arduous and unpleasant necessity always arises — finally write his book about Mayfair, Passy, or Park Avenue, whichever the case may be. Let us consider some of these instructive sermons in cats, from which the student of human psychology can learn so much.

Aldous Huxley, Music at Night
http://danassays.wordpress.com/collected-essays-by-aldous-huxley

     Para os japoneses, os gatos de rabo cortado trazem sorte... excepto para os aspirantes a romancistas! ;)
     À suivre: o que Huxley não sabia sobre a vida sexual dos gatos.

Como escrever um romance II: Yes, a pair of cats

Franz Marc, Zwei Katzen, blau und gelb (1912, Kunstmuseum Basel, Suíça)

And as the young man still looked rather disappointed, I volunteered a final piece of advice, gratuitously. “My young friend,” I said, “if you want to be a psychological novelist and write about human beings, the best thing you can do is to keep a pair of cats.” And with that I left him. I hope, for his own sake, that he took my advice. For it was good advice — the fruit of much experience and many meditations. But I am afraid that, being a rather foolish young man, he merely laughed at what he must have supposed was only a silly joke: laughed, as I myself foolishly laughed when, years ago, that charming and talented and extraordinary man, Ronald Firbank, once told me that he wanted to write a novel about life in Mayfair and so was just off to the West Indies to look for copy among the Negroes. I laughed at the time; but I see now that he was quite right. Primitive people, like children and animals, are simply civilized people with the lid off, so to speak — the heavy elaborate lid of manners, conventions, traditions of thought and feeling beneath which each one of us passes his or her existence. This lid can be very conveniently studied in Mayfair, shall we say, or Passy, or Park Avenue. But what goes on underneath the lid in these polished and elegant districts? Direct observation (unless we happen to be endowed with a very penetrating intuition) tells us but little; and, if we cannot infer what is going on under other lids from what we see, introspectively, by peeping under our own, then the best thing we can do is to take the next boat for the West Indies, or else, less expensively, pass a few mornings in the nursery, or alternatively, as I suggested to my literary young friend, buy a pair of cats. Yes, a pair of cats.

Aldous Huxley, Music at Night

http://danassays.wordpress.com/collected-essays-by-aldous-huxley

     «Primitive people, like children and animals, are simply civilized people with the lid off» - adoro! :) Apesar de ser uma premissa para os mais incríveis disparates, como se verá nos postes seguintes. ;)

     À suivre: uma ode à superioridade dos gatos siameses.

Como escrever um romance - um clássico

     I met, not long ago, a young man who aspired to become a novelist. Knowing that I was in the profession, he asked me to tell him how he should set to work to realize his ambition. I did my best to explain. “The first thing,” I said, “is to buy quite a lot of paper, a bottle of ink, and a pen. After that you merely have to write.” But this was not enough for my young friend. He seemed to have a notion that there was some sort of esoteric cookery book, full of literary recipes, which you had only to follow attentively to become a Dickens, a Henry James, a Flaubert — “according to taste,” as the authors of recipes say, when they come to the question of seasoning and sweetening. Wouldn’t I let him have a glimpse of this cookery book? I said that I was sorry, but that (unhappily — for what an endless amount of time and trouble it would save!) I had never even seen such a work. He seemed sadly disappointed; so, to console the poor lad, I advised him to apply to the professors of dramaturgy and short-story writing at some reputable university; if any one possessed a trustworthy cookery book of literature, it should surely be they. But even this was not enough to satisfy the young man. Disappointed in his hope that I would give him the fictional equivalent of “One Hundred Ways of Cooking Eggs” or the “Carnet de la Ménagère,” he began to cross-examine me about my methods of “collecting material.” Did I keep a notebook or a daily journal? Did I jot down thoughts and phrases in a cardindex? Did I systematically frequent the drawing-rooms of the rich and fashionable? Or did I, on the contrary, inhabit the Sussex downs? or spend my evenings looking for “copy” in East End gin-palaces? Did I think it was wise to frequent the company of intellectuals? Was it a good thing for a writer of novels to try to be well educated, or should he confine his reading exclusively to other novels? And so on. I did my best to reply to these questions — as non-committally, of course, as I could. And as the young man still looked rather disappointed, I volunteered a final piece of advice, gratuitously. “My young friend,” I said, “if you want to be a psychological novelist and write about human beings, the best thing you can do is to keep a pair of cats.” And with that I left him.

Aldous Huxley, Music at Night

http://danassays.wordpress.com/collected-essays-by-aldous-huxley

à suivre...

Cat - aracts

when our mouths are filled with uninvited tongues of others
and the strays are pining for their unrequited mothers
milk that sours is promptly spat
light will fill our eyes like cats


and they shall enter from the back
with spears and scepters and squirming sacks
scribes and tangles between their ears
faceless scrumbled charcoal smears


through the coppice and the chaparral
the thickets thick with mold
the bracken and the brier
catchweed into the fold


when our mouths are filled with uninvited tongues of others
and the strays are pining for their unrequited mothers
milk that sours is promptly spat
the light will fill our eyes like cats
cataracts

Andrew Bird, Armchair Apocrypha (2007)

     Will we go blind?

Franz Marc

Franz Marc, Drei Katzen

(1913, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Dusseldorf)

     It was at this period [depois de ter voltado para Paris, fugindo do casamento, na véspera da cerimónia, na Páscoa de 1907] that he began the intensive study of animals which was to lead to his mature style. He said that he wanted to recreate them 'from the inside', and made himself so complete a master of animal anatomy that he was able to give lessons in the subject (...). Though he felt he was now making some progress, he destroyed his more ambitious works, as they continued to dissatisfy him. In December 1908 he wrote a letter to Reinhart Piper:

     «I am trying to intensify my feeling for the organic rhythm of all things, to achieve pantheistic empathy with the throbbing and flowing of nature's bloodstream in trees, in animals, in the air.»

From Edward Lucie-Smith, "Lives of the Great 20th-Century Artists"

     Descobri Franz Marc graças a este blogue. Nem de propósito depois do último post. Como diz Lou Reed, «There's a bit of magic in everything and then some loss to even things out».

Para o Zap, que esperava por mim quando eu vinha da escola

Georg Schrimpf, Stillleben mit Katze

 (1923, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Munich)

Pela manhã o gato estende-se
vagaroso nesse impreciso lugar
em que luz e sombra
se entretecem. Nas pedras
rondantes do que sempre chamámos
a nossa casa, esse sonho
de irmos por detrás das janelas
encarcerados nas agrestes
paredes do amor.


Todas as manhãs, enquanto
a escola me espera, o
gato é tão certo como os passos
que dele se desviam. Um mero
olhar, a melancolia
de depois te dizer já sem o mesmo encanto
a sua negra quietude, o silêncio
em que se move.


Estamos todos, eu tu e o gato,
neste estranho sossego
de a morte ser um dia destes
entre luz e sombra.

Manuel de Freitas, Todos contentes e eu também (Campo das Letras, 2000)

Espero que este blogue tenha mais consequências para além de me fazer perceber que, afinal, não gosto tanto assim dos poemas do Manuel de Freitas...

too restless, too excited, too much of a cat to sleep

     What a delight to walk on four soft white paws. He could see his whiskers springing out from the sides of his face, and he felt his tail curling behind him. His tread was light, and his fur was like the most confortable of old woollen jumpers. As his pleasure in being a cat grew, his heart welled, and a tingling sensation deep in his throat become so strong that he could actually hear himself. Peter was purring. He was Peter Cat, and over there was William Boy.

     (...)
     That night Peter was too restless, too excited, too much of a cat to sleep. Towards ten o'clock he slipped through the cat flap. The freezing night air could not penetrate his thick fur coat. He padded soundlessly towards the garden wall. It towered above him, but one effortless, graceful leap and he was up, surveying his territory. How wonderfull to see into dark corners, to feel every vibration of the night air on his whiskers and to make himself invisible, when at midnight a fox came up the garden path to root amongst the dustbins. All around he was aware of other cats, some local, some from far away, going about their night-time business, travelling their routes.

Ian McEwan, The Daydreamer (1994)

para o b, que detestou este poema

Tu já me arrumaste no armário dos restos
eu já te guardei na gaveta dos corpos perdidos
e das nossas memórias começamos a varrer
as pequenas gotas de felicidade
que já fomos.
Mas no tempo subjectivo
tu és ainda o meu relógio de vento
a minha máquina aceleradora de sangue
e por quanto tempo ainda
as minhas mãos serão para ti
o nocturno passeio do gato no telhado?

Isabel Meyrelles, O Rosto Deserto
(in O Surrealimo na Poesia Portuguesa, org. de Natália Correia, Frenesi, 2002)

Acho libertador que só eu leia o meu blogue.

Em casa

Pierre Bonnard, Portrait d'Ambroise Vollard (1904-1905,Kunsthaus Zurich)

LXVI

LES CHATS

Les amoureux fervents et les savants austères
Aiment également, dans leur mûre saison,
Les chats puissants et doux, orgueils de la maison,
Qui comme eux sont frileux et comme eux sédentaires.

Amis de la science et de la volupté,
Ils cherchent le silence et l'horreur des ténèbres;
L'Érèbes les eût pris pour ses coursiers funèbres,
S'ils pouvaient au servage incliner leur fierté.

Ils prennent en songeant les nobles attitudes
Des grands sphynx allongés au fond des solitudes,
Qui semblent s'endormir dans un rêve sans fin;

Leurs reins féconds sont pleins d'étincelles magiques,
Et des parcelles d'or, ainsi qu'un sable fin,
Étoilent vaguement leurs prunelles mystiques

Charles Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du Mal (Librarie Française Générale, 1972)

Puissants et doux

Ligações pouco perigosas...

Édouard Manet, Le rendez-vous des chats (1868, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)

Emir Kusturica, 1998

... sou demasiado óbvia, eu sei.

And now the big picture :)

Joan Mirò, La Fermière

(1922-23, Colecção Particular)

Prefiro os gatos

POSSIBILIDADES



Prefiro o cinema.
Prefiro os gatos.
Prefiro os carvalhos sobre o Warta.
Prefiro Dickens a Dostoievski.
Prefiro-me a gostar das pessoas
que a amar a humanidade.                          
Prefiro para uma emergência ter agulha e linhas.
Prefiro a cor verde.
Prefiro não afirmar
que a razão é a culpada de tudo.
Prefiro as excepções.
Prefiro sair mais cedo.
Prefiro falar de outras coisas com os médicos.
Prefiro as velhas ilustrações listradas.
Prefiro o ridículo de escrever poemas
ao ridículo de não os escrever.
Prefiro no amor os pequenos aniversários
para festejar todos os dias.
Prefiro os moralistas que nada me prometem.
Prefiro uma bondade algo prudente
a outra confiante em demasia.
Prefiro a terra à civil.

Prefiro os países conquistados

aos conquistadores.

Prefiro guardar as minhas reservas.Prefiro o inferno do caos ao inferno da ordem.

Prefiro as fábulas de Grimm às primeiras páginas dos

                                                                                  jornais.

Prefiro folhas sem flores às flores sem folhas.
Prefiro os cães sem a cauda cortada.
Prefiro gavetas.
Prefiro muitas coisas que não menciono aqui
a outras também aqui não mencionadas.
Prefiro os zero soltos
aos dispostos em bicha para o número.
Prefiro o tempo de insectos ao de estrelas.
Prefiro fazer figas.
Prefiro não perguntar se ainda demora e quando é.
Prefiro tomar em consideração a própria possibilidade
de ter a existência o seu sentido.

Wislawa Szymborska, Paisagem com grão de areia

(Relógio d'Água, 1998, trad. de Júlio Sousa Gomes)

Joan Mirò, Pormenor de La Fermière

(1922-23, Colecção Particular)

Prefiro a poesia ao amor. Os gatos são excepção. Prefiro as excepções. E os gatos.

Corto e os Gatos

Hugo Pratt, Fable de Venise

Estou exausta...

Gaël Garcia Bernal, Alain Chabat, Aurélia Petit, Sacha Bourdo, "If you rescue me (la chanson des chats)", do filme La Science des Rêves de Michel Gondry

... acho que vou acordar agora.

Gato ressacado

BMW 988

Talvez tudo fosse diferente

se o mundo tivesse começado tão bem               

como as variações de Goldberg

Não sei, não quero saber, não faço ideia.

Eu, que da arte nada quero,

estou há vários meses sem escrever
um poema. Mas agora, aqui,
sou trespassado por uma cama
demasiado larga e pelo olhar
negro do gato que se apieda, talvez,
de mim. De uma certa ideia de mim
que acorda às quatro da manhã
para a mais ampla noção de vazio.

Felizes, mais ninguém, os que

se matam e não têm um gato

a servir fixo de remorso

nas dobras sujas dos lençóis.

Esses, apenas, que não procuram

de rastos a certeza de outro dia.

O amor? Talvez, quando um cadáver

se recria e afaga penosamente

a morte de que de uma maneira ou

de outra se morre. Quem me dera ser

menos realista, menos real,
menos permeável ao desgosto.
Mas a verdade é esta: partiste
a meio da noite, fodemos pouco e mal
e quando a janela me guilhotinou
já um táxi te levava
para longes terras da cidade em pânico.

É tudo - sabes? - tão dolorosamente simples.

A mão que não quer esperar-me,

o rumor sórdido dos bares,

a certeza de que a vida, a vida
não deveria ser exactamente assim.

Reúno, numa espécie de voz,
esses estilhaços. Sei que não vale
a pena, sempre o soube.
Há os que se despedem e os que não.
E, indiferentemente, progridem
as diferentes coisas. Carteiros
matinais, aviões, poetas que dão
corda à musa e escolhem
devagar o timbre da gravata.
Estão no seu direito, partilham
o bem comum, a cidadania do terror.

E eu, infelizmente, existo. Abro

outra lata de cerveja, sob

o olhar reprovador do gato. Sim,

gostava de ser felino - uma coisa

mansa, dolorosa, ao abrigo da tormenta.
Mas li demasiados livros, fumo
pelo menos três maços e não me
parece que volte a acreditar em Deus
(se nem Bach me convence, estou perdido).

E, porém, há nisto uma simplicidade

atroz. A demorada asfixia
das veias, percutindo a noite, a certeza
óbvia de que não estás aqui.
Que música, sequer, me redimiria
agora? Vou morrer assim,
de costas para os espelhos. A sabê-lo.

Deve ser isso, a dor.

O cancro da manhã infiltrando-se

pela janela, como se eu pudesse
num mundo adiado, palco já sem mim.
Ou o olhar que te viu e deixou
de ver e percebeu subitamente
que um corpo, um corpo apenas,
é matéria de desastre, pronúncia errada.

A música, claro, se tivéssemos
música, qualquer coisa assim.
Em vez disso, os órgãos acomodam-se
ao suplício dos minutos, desagregam-se.
E bastarias tu - ou ninguém, porque
ninguém basta. É um erro - mas gostamos
tanto - pensar que um rosto nos salvará
disto que não sabemos ser, de nós.
Esse pronome pessoal, o inferno.

E é estranho, no mínimo, que o mundo
saiba acontecer, apesar. O silêncio desta dor
devia calar o universo, dinamitar arredores.
Mas não, desiste. Desiste até de desistir.
Não será este o último poema, por mais
que o julgues ou sintas (e os versos, para ti,
foram sempre sentimentos vãos).

Acordarás sinistro, quase vertical,
para as tabernas disponíveis.
Dizem que abusas. Talvez.
Como explicar-lhes, a esta hora,
que nessa retórica gasta
comprometes a vida toda?
Nunca te leram - ou mal. E o grito
permanece incólume no susto da manhã,
nas paredes mais escuras que encontrares.

O mais estranho não é a literatura,

o solene esgar da poesia.

Mais estranho, sempre, é sobreviver
a isto, fingir que não, sorrir.

Enquanto o olhar negro negro

de um gato testemunha a tua morte

e se despede melhor do que tu

da música e dos dias e da música.

Qualquer coisa assim.

Manuel de Freitas, [sic] (Assírio & Alvim, 2002)

Félix Valloton, La Paresse (1896)

Sim, bem sei que o meu idolatrado Doutor O. olha com ostensiva displicência este poeta que gosta de ser maldito. Bem sei que eram escusados «as dobras sujas dos lençóis», «o rumor sórdido dos bares», «a demorada asfixia das veias, percutindo a noite» e «o cancro da manhã». Mas, enfim, não consigo evitar que a poesia e o olhar adolescentes do Manuel de Freitas, de quem colecciono livro após livro, me continuem a seduzir.