Monday's Illustrated Word: "Traitors to the Earth!" by unknown writer (in English)

   art by Gustav Schrotter - Captain Science #1 - Youthful Magazines, November 1950.

 

 

Saturday's Good Reading: “Nebulosas” by Narcisa Amália (in Portuguese).

 

On done le nom de Nébuleuses à des taches

blanchâtres que l’on voit çà et là, dans toutes

les parties du ciel.

DELAUNAY

 

No seio majestoso do infinito,

 — Alvos cisnes do mar da imensidade, —

Flutuam tênues sombras fugitivas

Que a multidão supõe densas caligens,

E a ciência reduz a grupos validos;

Vejo-as surgir à noite, entre os planetas,

Como visões gentis à flux dos sonhos;

E as esferas que curvam-se trementes

Sobre elas desfolhando flores d'ouro,

Roubam-me instantes ao sofrer recôndito!

 

Costumei-me a sondar-lhe os mistérios

Desde que um dia a flâmula da ideia

Livre, ao sopro do gênio, abriu-me o templo

Em que fulgura a inspiração em ondas;

A seguir-lhes no espaço as longas clâmides

Orladas de incendidos meteoros;

E quando da procela o tredo arcanjo

Desdobra n’amplidão as negras asas,

Meu ser pelo teísmo desvairado

Da loucura debruça-se no pélago!

 

Sim! São elas a mais gentil feitura

Que das mãos do Senhor há resvalado!

Sim! De seus seios na dourada urna,

A piedosa lágrima dos anjos,

Ligeira se converte em astro esplêndido!

No momento em que o mártir do calvário

A cabeça pendeu no infame lenho,

A voz do Criador, em santo arrojo,

No macio frouxel de seus fulgores

Ao céu arrebatou-lhe o calmo espírito!

 

Mesmo o sol que nas orlas do oriente

Livre campeia e sobre nós desata

A chuva de mil raios luminosos,

Nos lírios siderais de seu regaço

Repousa a fronte e despe a rubra túnica!

No constante volver dos vagos eixos,

(Os orbes em parábolas se encurvam

Bebendo alento no seu manso brilho!

E o tapiz movediço do universo

Mais belo ondeia com seus prantos fúlgidos!

 

E quantos infelizes não olvidam

|O horóscopo fatal de horrenda sorte,

Se no correr das auras vespertinas

Seus seres vão pousar-lhes sobre à coma,

Que as madeixas enastram do crepúsculo!

Quanta rosa de amor não abre o cálix

Ao bafejo inefável das quimeras

No coração temente da donzela,

Que, da lua ao clarão dourando as cismas,

Lhes segue os rastros na cerúlea abóbada?

 

Um dia no meu peito o desalento

Cravou sangrenta garra; trevas densas

Nublaram-me o horizonte, onde brilhava

A matutina estrela do futuro.

Da descrença senti os frios ósculos;

Mas no horror do abandono alçando os olhos

(Com tímida oração ao céu piedoso,

Eu vi que elas, do chão do firmamento,

Brotavam em lucíferos corimbos

Enlaçando-me o busto em raios mórbidos!

 

Oh! Amei-as então! Sobre a corrente

De seus brandos, notívagos lampejos,

“Audaz librei-me nas azuis esferas;

Inclinei-me, de flamas circundada

Sobre o abismo do mundo torvo e lúgubre!

Ergui-me ainda mais da poesia

Desvendei as lagunas encantadas,

E prelibei delícias indizíveis

Do sentimento nas caudais sagradas

Ao clarão divinal do sol da glória!

 

Quando desci mais tarde, deslumbrada

De tanta luz e inspiração, ao vale

Que pelo espaço abandonei sorrindo,

E senti calcinar-me as débeis plantas

Do deserto as areias ardentíssimas;

(Ao fugir das sendaes que estende a noite

Sobre o leito da terra adormecida,

Fitei chorando a aurora que surgia!

E — ave de amor — a solidão dos ermos

Povoei de gorjetas melancólicos!...

 

Assim nasceram os meus tristes versos,

Que do mundo falaz fogem às pompas!

Não dormem eles sob os áureos tetos

Das térreas potestades, que falecem

De morbidez nos flácidos triclínios!

Cortando as brumas glaciais do inverno

Adejam nas estâncias consteladas!...

Onde elas pairam; e à luz da liberdade

Devassando os mistérios do infinito,

Vão no sólio de Deus rolar exânimes!...

Friday's Sung Word: "Vai, Mulher da Orgia" by Roberto Martins e Miguel Baúso (in Portuguese)

Vai, vai, vai
Eu não sou culpado de você me abandonar
O destino de toda mulher da orgia
É penar, é penar

Foi você a flor que quis
roubar minha alegria
E no meu coração 
deixou a nostalgia
Se o fogo da vida 
desfolhar sua beleza
Você há de sentir 
a lei da natureza

Em todo o caminho
perfumado e venturoso
há sempre um abismo
frofundo e perigoso;
neste mar da vida 
o destino é traiçoeiro,
às vezes sem querer.
o azar chega primeiro.

You can listen  "Vai, Mulher da Orgia" sung by Orlando Silva with the Diabos do Céu band here.

Thursday's Serial: “The Centaur” by Algernon Blackwood (in English) - XVII

 CHAPTER XXXIX

The extraordinary abruptness of the transition produced no bewilderment, it seems. Realizing that without Rostom he would be in a position of helplessness that might be serious, the Irishman put his hands to his lips and called out with authority to the running figure of his frightened guide. He shouted to him to stop.

"There is nothing to fear. Come back! Are you afraid of a gust of wind?"

And in his face and voice, perhaps too in his manner, was something he had brought back from the vision, for the man stopped at once in his headlong course, paused a moment to stare and question, and then, though still looking over his shoulder and making occasional signs of his religion, came slowly back to his employer's side again.

"It has passed," said O'Malley in a voice that seemed to crumble in his mouth. "It is gone again into the mountains whence it came. We are safe. With me," he added, not without a secret sense of humor stirring in him, "you will always be safe. I can protect us both." He felt as normal as a British officer giving orders to his soldiers. And the Georgian slowly recovered his composure, yet for a long time keeping close to the other's side.

The transition, thus, had been as sudden and complete as anything well could be. O'Malley described it as the instantaneous dropping of a shutter across his mind. The entire vision had lasted but a fraction of a second, and in a fraction of a second, too, he had returned to his state of everyday lesser consciousness. That blending with the Earth's great Consciousness was but a flashing glimpse after all. The extension of personality had been momentary.

So absolute, moreover, was the return that at first, remembering nothing, he took up life again exactly where he had left it. The guide completed the gesture and the sentence which the vision had interrupted, and O'Malley, similarly, resumed his own thread of thought and action.

Only a hint remained. That, and a curious sense of interval, alone were left to witness this flash of an immense vision,--of cosmic consciousness--that apparently had filled so many days and nights.

"It was like waking suddenly in the night out of deep sleep," he said; "not of one's own accord, or gradually, but as when someone shakes you out of slumber and you are wide awake at once. You have been dreaming vigorously--thick, lively, crowded dreams, and they all vanish on the instant. You catch the tail-end of the procession just as it's diving out of sight. In less than a second all is gone."

For this was the hint that remained. He caught the flying tail-end of the vision. He knew he had seen something. But, for the moment, that was all.

Then, by degrees and afterwards, the details re-emerged. In the days that followed, while with Rostom he completed the journey already planned, the deeper consciousness gave back its memory piece by piece; and piece by piece he set it down in notebooks as best he could. The memory was on deposit deep within him, and at intervals he tapped it. Hence, of course, is due the confused and fragmentary character of those bewildering entries; hence, at the same time, too, their truth and value. For here was no imaginative dream concocted in a mood of high invention. The parts were disjointed, incomplete, just as they came. The lesser consciousness, it seems, could not contain the thing complete; nor to the last, I judge, did he ever know complete recapture.

They wandered for two weeks and more about the mountains, meeting various adventure by the way, reported duly in his letters of travel. But these concerned the outer man and have no proper place in this strange record ... and by the middle of July he found himself once more in--civilization. At Michaelevo he said good-bye to Rostom and took the train.

And it was with the return to the conditions of modern life that the reaction set in and stirred the deeper layers of consciousness to reproduce their store of magic. For this return to what seemed the paltry activities of an age of machinery, physical luxury, and superficial contrivances brought him a sense of pain that was acute and trenchant, more--a deep and poignant sense of loss. The yearnings, no longer satisfied, began again to reassert themselves. It was not the actual things the world seemed so busy about that pained him, but rather the point of view from which the world approached them--those that it deemed with one consent "important," and those, with rare exceptions, it obviously deemed worth no consideration at all, and ignored. For himself these values stood exactly reversed.

The Vision then came back to him, rose from the depths, blinded his eyes with maddening beauty, sang in his ears, possessed his heart and mind. He burned to tell it. The world of tired, restless men, he felt, must equally burn to hear it. Some vision of a simple life lived close to Nature came before his inner eye as the remedy for the vast disease of restless self-seeking of the age, the medicine that should cure the entire world. A return to Nature was the first step toward the great Deliverance men sought. And, most of all, he yearned to tell it first to Heinrich Stahl.

To hear him talk about it, as he talked perhaps to me alone, was genuinely pathetic, for here, in Terence O'Malley, I thought to see the essential futility of all dreamers nakedly revealed. His vision was so fine, sincere, and noble; his difficulty in imparting it so painful; and its marriage with practical action so ludicrously impracticable. At any rate that combination of vision and action, called sometimes genius, which can shake the world, assuredly was not his. For his was no constructive mind; he was not "intellectual"; he saw, but with the heart; he could not build. To plan a new Utopia was as impossible to him as to shape even in words the splendor he had known and lived. Bricks and straw could only smother him before he laid what most would deem foundations.

At first, too, in those days while waiting for the steamer in Batoum, he kept strangely silent. Even in his own thoughts was silence. He could not speak of what he knew. Even paper refused it. But all the time this glorious winged thing, that yet was simple as the sunlight or the rain, went by his side, while his soul knew the relief of some divine, proud utterance that, he felt, could never know complete confession in speech or writing. Later he stammered over it--to his notebooks and to me, and partially also to Dr. Stahl. But at first it dwelt alone and hidden, contained in this deep silence.

The days of waiting he filled with walks about the streets, watching the world with new eyes. He took the Russian steamer to Poti, and tramped with a knapsack up the Tchourokh gorge beyond Bourtchka, regardless of the Turkish gypsies and encampments of wild peoples on the banks. The sense of personal danger was impossible; he felt the whole world kin. That sense protected him. Pistol and cartridges lay in his bag, forgotten at the hotel.

Delight and pain lay oddly mingled in him. The pain he recognized of old, but this great radiant happiness was new. The nightmare of modern cheap-jack life was all explained; unjustified, of course, as he had always dimly felt, symptom of deep disorder; all due, this feverish, external business, to an odd misunderstanding with the Earth. Humanity had somehow quarreled with her, claiming an independence that could not really last. For her the centuries of this estrangement were but a little thing perhaps--a moment or two in that huge life which counted a million years to lay a narrow bed of chalk. They would come back in time. Meanwhile she ever called. A few, perhaps, already dreamed of return. Movements, he had heard, were afoot--a tentative endeavor here and there. They heard, these few, the splendid whisper that, sweetly calling, ever passed about the world.

For her voice in the last resort was more potent than all others--an enchantment that never wholly faded; men had but temporarily left her mighty sides and gone astray, eating of trees of knowledge that brought them deceptive illusions of a mad self-intoxication; fallen away into the pains of separateness and death. Loss of direction and central control was the result; the Babel of many tongues so clumsily invented, by which all turned one against another. Insubordinate, artificial centers had assumed disastrous command. Each struggled for himself against his neighbors. Even religions fought to the blood. A single sect could damn the rest of humanity, yet in the same breath sing complaisantly of its own Heaven.

Meanwhile She smiled in love and patience, letting them learn their lesson; meanwhile She watched and waited while, like foolish children, they toiled and sweated after futile transient things that brought no single letter of content. She let them coin their millions from her fairest thoughts, the gold and silver in her veins; and let them turn it into engines of destruction, knowing that each "life lost," returned into her arms and heart, crying with the pain of its wayward foolishness, the lesson learned; She watched their tears and struggling just outside the open nursery door, knowing they must at length return for food; and while thus waiting, watching, She heard all prayers that reached her; She answered them with love and forgiveness ever ready; and to the few who realized their folly--naughtiness, perhaps, at worst it was--this side of "death," She brought full measure of peace and joy and beauty.

Not permanently could they hurt themselves, for evil was but distance from her side, the ignorance of those who had wandered furthest into the little dark labyrinth of a separated self. The "intellect" they were so proud of had misled them.

And sometimes, here and there across the ages, with a glory that refused utterly to be denied, She thundered forth her old sweet message of deliverance. Through poet, priest, or child she called her children home. The summons rang like magic across the wastes of this dreary separated existence. Some heard and listened, some turned back, some wondered and were strangely thrilled; some, thinking it too simple to be true, were puzzled by the yearning and the tears and went back to seek for a more difficult way; while most, denying the secret glory in their hearts, sought to persuade themselves they loved the strife and hurrying fever best.

At other times, again, she chose quite different ways, and sent the amazing message in a flower, a breath of evening air, a shell upon the shore; though oftenest, perhaps, it hid in a strain of music, a patch of color on the sea or hills, a rustle of branches in a little twilight wind, a whisper in the dusk or in the dawn. He remembered his own first visions of it....

Only never could the summons come to her children through the intellect, for this it was that led them first away. Her message enters ever by the heart.

The simple life! He smiled as he thought of the bald Utopias here and there devised by men, for he had seen a truth whose brilliance smote his eyes too dazzlingly to permit of the smallest corner of darkness. Remote, no doubt, in time that day when the lion shall lie down with the lamb and men shall live together in peace and gentleness; when the inner life shall be admitted as the Reality, strife, gain, and loss unknown because possessions undesired, and petty selfhood merged in the larger life--remote, of course, yet surely not impossible. He had seen the Face of Nature, heard her Call, tasted her joy and peace; and the rest of the tired world might do the same. It only waited to be shown the way. The truth he now saw so dazzling was that all who heard the call might know it for themselves at once, cuirassed with shining love that makes the whole world kin, the Earth a mother literally divine. Each soul might thus provide a channel along which the summons home should pass across the world. To live with Nature and share her greater consciousness, en route for states yet greater, nearer to the eternal home--this was the beginning of the truth, the life, the way.

He saw "religion" all explained: and those hard sayings that make men turn away:--the imagined dread of losing life to find it; the counsel of perfection that the neighbor shall be loved as self; the fancied injury and outrage that made it hard for rich men to enter the kingdom. Of these, as of a hundred other sayings, he saw the necessary truth. It all seemed easy now. The world would see it with him; it must; it could not help itself. Simplicity as of a little child, and selflessness as of the mystic--these were the splendid clues.

Death and the grave, indeed, had lost their victory. For in the stages of wider consciousness beyond this transient physical phase he saw all loved ones joined and safe, as separate words upgathered each to each in the parent sentence that explains them, the sentence in the paragraph, the paragraph in the whole grand story all achieved--and so at length into the eternal library of God that consummates the whole.

He saw the glorious series, timeless and serene, advancing to the climax, and somehow understood that individuality at each stage was never lost but rather extended and magnified. Love of the Earth, life close to Nature, and denial of so-called civilization was the first step upwards. In the Simple Life, in this return to Nature, lay the opening of the little path that climbed to the stars and heaven.

 

 

Chapter XL

At the end of the week the little steamer dropped her anchor in the harbor and the Irishman booked his passage home. He was standing on the wharf to watch the unloading when a hand tapped him on the shoulder and he heard a well-known voice. His heart leaped with pleasure. There were no preliminaries between these two.

"I am glad to see you safe. You did not find your friend, then?"

O'Malley looked at the bronzed face beside him, noted the ragged tobacco-stained beard, and saw the look of genuine welcome in the twinkling brown eyes. He watched him lift his cap and mop that familiar dome of bald head.

"I'm safe," was all he answered, "because I found him."

For a moment Dr. Stahl looked puzzled. He dropped the hand he held so tightly and led him down the wharf.

"We'll get out of this devilish sun," he said, leading the way among the tangle of merchandise and bales, "it's enough to boil our brains." They passed through the crowd of swarthy, dripping Turks, Georgians, Persians, and Armenians who labored half naked in the heat, and moved toward the town. A Russian gunboat lay in the Bay, side by side with freight and passenger vessels. An oil-tank steamer took on cargo. The scene was drenched in sunshine. The Black Sea gleamed like molten metal. Beyond, the wooded spurs of the Caucasus climbed through haze into cloudless blue.

"It's beautiful," remarked the German, pointing to the distant coastline, "but hardly with the beauty of those Grecian Isles we passed together. Eh?" He watched him closely. "You're coming back on our steamer?" he asked in the same breath.

"It's beautiful," O'Malley answered ignoring the question, "because it lives. But there is dust upon its outer loveliness, dust that has gathered through long ages of neglect, dust that I would sweep away--I've learnt how to do it. He taught me."

Stahl did not even look at him, though the words were wild enough. He walked at his side in silence. Perhaps he partly understood. For this first link with the outer world of appearances was difficult for him to pick up. The person of Stahl, thick-coated with the civilization whence he came, had brought it, and out of the ocean of glorious vision in his soul, O'Malley took at random the first phrases he could find.

"Yes, I've booked a passage on your steamer," he added presently, remembering the question. It did not seem strange to him that his companion ignored both clues he offered. He knew the man too well for that. It was only that he waited for more before he spoke.

They went to the little table outside the hotel pavement where several weeks ago they had drunk Kakhetian wine together and talked of deeper things. The German called for a bottle, mineral water, ice, and cigarettes. And while they sipped the cooling golden liquid, hats off and coats on the backs of their chairs, Stahl gave him the news of the world of men and events that had transpired meanwhile. O'Malley listened vaguely as he smoked. It seemed remote, unreal, almost fantastic, this long string of ugly, frantic happenings, all symptoms of some disordered state that was like illness. The scream of politics, the roar and rattle of flying-machines, financial crashes, furious labor upheavals, rumors of war, the death of kings and magnates, awful accidents and strange turmoil in enormous cities. Details of some sad prison life, it almost seemed, pain and distress and strife the note that bound them all together. Men were mastered by these things instead of mastering them. These unimportant things they thought would make them free only imprisoned them.

They lunched there at the little table in the shade, and in turn the Irishman gave an outline of his travels. Stahl had asked for it and listened attentively. The pictures interested him.

"You've done your letters for the papers," he questioned him, "and now, perhaps, you'll write a book as well?"

"Something may force its way out--come blundering, thundering out in fragments, yes."

"You mean you'd rather not--?"

"I mean it's all too big and overwhelming. He showed me such blinding splendors. I might tell it, but as to writing--!" He shrugged his shoulders.

And this time Dr. Stahl ignored no longer. He took him up. But not with any expected words or questions. He merely said, "My friend, there's something that I have to tell you--or, rather, I should say, to show you." He looked most keenly at him, and in the old familiar way he placed a hand upon his shoulder. His voice grew soft. "It may upset you; it may unsettle--prove a shock perhaps. But if you are prepared, we'll go--"

"What kind of shock?" O'Malley asked, startled a moment by the gravity of manner.

"The shock of death," was the answer, gently spoken.

The Irishman only knew a swift rush of joy and wonder as he heard it.

"But there is no such thing!" he cried, almost with laughter. "He taught me that above all else. There is no death!"

"There is 'going away,' though," came the rejoinder, spoken low; "there is earth to earth and dust to dust--"

"That's of the body--!"

"That's of the body, yes," the older man repeated darkly.

"There is only 'going home,' escape and freedom. I tell you there's only that. It's nothing but joy and splendor when you really understand."

But Dr. Stahl made no immediate answer, nor any comment. He paid the bill and led him down the street. They took the shady side. Passing beyond the skirts of the town they walked in silence. The barracks where the soldiers sang, the railway line to Tiflis and Baku, the dome and minarets of the church, were left behind in turn, and presently they reached the hot, straight dusty road that fringed the sea. They heard the crashing of the little waves and saw the foam creamily white against the dark grey pebbles of the beach.

And when they reached a small enclosure where thin trees were planted among sparse grass all brown and withered by the sun, they paused, and Stahl pointed to a mound, marked at either end by rough stone boulder. A date was on it, but no name. O'Malley calculated the difference between the Russian Calendar and the one he was accustomed to. Stahl checked him.

"The fifteenth of June," the German said.

"The fifteenth of June, yes," said O'Malley very slowly, but with wonder and excitement in his heart. "That was the day that Rostom tried to run away--the day I saw him come to me from the trees--the day we started off together ... to the Garden...."

He turned to his companion questioningly. For a moment the rush of memory was quite bewildering.

"He never left Batoum at all, you see," Stahl continued, without looking up. "He went straight to the hospital the day we came into port. I was summoned to him in the night--that last night while you slept so deeply. His old strange fever was upon him then, and I took him ashore before the other passengers were astir. I brought him to the hospital myself. And he never left his bed." He pointed down to the little nameless grave at their feet where a wandering wind from the sea just stirred the grasses. "That was the date on which he died."

"He went away in the early morning," he added in a low voice that held both sadness and sympathy.

"He went home," said the Irishman, a tide of joy rising tumultuously through his heart as he remembered. The secret of that complete and absolute Leadership was out. He understood it all. It had been a spiritual adventure to the last.

Then followed a pause.

In silence they stood there for some minutes. There grew no flowers on that grave, but O'Malley stooped down and picked a strand of the withered grass. He put it carefully between the pages of his notebook; and then, lying flat against the ground where the sunshine fell in a patch of white and burning glory, he pressed his lips to the crumbling soil. He kissed the Earth. Oblivious of Stahl's presence, or at least ignoring it, he worshipped.

And while he did so he heard that little sound he loved so well--which more than any words or music brought peace and joy, because it told his Passion all complete. With his ears close to the earth he heard it, yet at the same time heard it everywhere. For it came with the falling of the waves upon the shore, through the murmur of the rustling branches overhead, and even across the whispering of the withered grass about him. Deep down in the center of the mothering Earth he heard it too in faintly rising pulse. It was the exquisite little piping on a reed--the ancient fluting of the everlasting Pan....

And when he rose he found that Stahl had turned away and was gazing at the sea, as though he had not noticed.

"Doctor," he cried, yet so softly it was a whisper rather than a call, "I heard it then again; it's everywhere! Oh, tell me that you hear it too!"

Stahl turned and looked at him in silence. There was a moisture in his eyes, and on his face a look of softness that a woman might have worn.

"I've brought it back, you see, I've brought it back. For that's the message--that's the sound and music I must give to all the world. No words, no book can tell it." His hat was off, his eyes were shining, his voice broke with the passion of joy he yearned to share yet knew so little how to impart. "If I can pipe upon the flutes of Pan the millions all will listen, will understand, and--follow. Tell me, oh, tell me, that you heard it too!"

"My friend, my dear young friend," the German murmured in a voice of real tenderness, "you heard it truly--but you heard it in your heart. Few hear the Pipes of Pan as you do. Few care to listen. Today the world is full of other sounds that drown it. And even of those who hear," he shrugged his shoulders as he led him away toward the sea,--"how few will care to follow--how fewer still will dare."

And while they lay upon the beach and watched the line of foam against their feet and saw the seagulls curving idly in the blue and shining air, he added underneath his breath--O'Malley hardly caught the murmur of his words so low he murmured them:--

"The simple life is lost forever. It lies asleep in the Golden Age, and only those who sleep and dream can ever find it. If you would keep your joy, dream on, my friend! Dream on, but dream alone!"

Wednesday's Good Reading: “Afonso Arino” by Olavo Bilac (in Portuguese).

 

Há poucos meses, em Belo Horizonte, falando a homens de letras de Minas, procurei evocar, em poucas linhas, numa reminiscência, a figura de Afonso Arinos, homem e artista:

Conheci-o, a princípio, em Ouro Preto, na austera Vila Rica; ali vivi com ele, no silêncio e na poeira dos arquivos; e ali comecei a admirar o profundo brasileirismo orgânico, que forrava o seu espírito. Conheci-o depois, e melhor na Europa, no tumulto de Paris, e em longas viagens, romarias a catedrais e a castelos, passeios por cidades e campos. Na Europa, Afonso Arinos era ainda mais brasileiro do que no Brasil. Alto, robusto, elegante, de uma estatura e um ar de gigante amável, em que se aluavam a energia e a graça, conservando no olhar e na alma o nosso céu e o nosso sol, ele era como uma das árvores das nossas matas, exilada nas frias terras do velho continente. Nos boulevards, nos salões, nos teatros, e ainda nas geladas galerias de Rambouillet e de Versalhes, onde erravam os espectros de Francisco I e Luís XIV, — Afonso Arinos mantinha, sob a polidez das suas maneiras de fidalgo, o andar firme, um pouco pesado, e o jeito reservado, um pouco tímido, e o falar comedido, um pouco hesitante, de um sertanejo forte, andeiro e cavaleiro, caçador e escoteiro, simples e ousado... Ainda hoje o vejo, e me vejo, claramente, num dia de fevereiro de 1909, quando visitamos juntos a Catedral de Chartres. Era duro o inverno. Quando chegamos à velhíssima cidade episcopal, caía neve. De pé, insensíveis às lufadas cortantes dos flocos brancos, quedamos na praça, admirando a maravilhosa fábrica do templo, a sua caprichosa ossatura de contrafortes e botaréus, diante da fachada, a um tempo leve e severa, com a graciosa majestade da primeira fase da arquitetura ogival: as três portas baixas sobrecarregadas de estátuas, a grande rosaça fulgurando em cores múltiplas, e as duas torres, uma lisa, a outra rendada, esguias e longas, preces de pedra num surto para o céu... Dentro, na misteriosa cripta, na ressoante nave, nas capelas cheias de sombra, passamos duas horas, esmagados pela grandeza da catedral anciã de sete séculos, em que vivem, numa vida muda, mais de dez mil pinturas e esculturas, entes de sonho e terror, santos, apóstolos, bispos, anjos, demônios, animais e monstros fabulosos, grifos, dragões e quimeras. Ao cabo da longa conversação, em que nos haviam preocupado tantos aspectos da história e da arte do Cristianismo, houve um momento, em que, por não sei que vaga associação de ideias, Afonso entrou a dizer-me episódios de uma das suas recentes caçadas no Distrito Diamantino, nas cercanias do Serro. Estávamos no centro do cruzeiro, entre o coro e as naves colaterais. Do ponto em que estávamos, o nosso olhar abrangia um trecho fantástico da sombria floresta de pedra: as colunas, em duas filas, rodeavam-nos, como esbeltos estipes de palmeiras, misturando em cima, na abobada, as suas palmas em leques, entre lianas, entre folhas e flores, lódão e vinha, hera e nenúfar. E milagre da palavra... A voz de Afonso animava-se, exaltava-se e sacudia a catedral. Dizia os atalhos, as escarpas, os voltados, a mata, e os relinchos dos cavalos, e os estampidos dos tiros, e a alegria dos caçadores, e as cantigas dos camaradas, — e o sol mineiro... E a floresta gótica transformava-se em floresta natural: a pedra negra verdecia, a abóbada frondejava e sussurrava, a treva alagava-se de luz ofuscante, e um verão brasileiro incendiava o inverno europeu. Já não estávamos em Chartres: estávamos no Brasil...

Fica bem esta evocação no limiar do volume, em que se enfeixam as conferências de Afonso Arinos sobre histórias e lendas do Brasil. Estas conferências, e a lição, que ele professou, em Belo Horizonte, em 1915, sobre “A Unidade da Pátria”, são digno remate de uma obra literária, que foi perfeita pela consciência e pela beleza com que foi concebida e executada.

Quando, enfeitiçado pela palavra ardente do meu companheiro, vi o teto da catedral de Chartres mudar-se em cúpula de brenha tropical, era porque ele, nas suas peregrinações pelo velho mundo, levava consigo, num ambiente próprio, como a sua verdadeira atmosfera moral, a paisagem da terra que amava. E ninguém mais do que ele sentiu e definiu o influxo da visão natal: a alma da paisagem, para onde quer que andemos longe, nos segue de perto e acompanha, e chama-se a saudade; ela nos soa aos ouvidos em misteriosas melodias, onde flutuam, com o refrão de velhas canções, ladridos de vento no coqueiral, gorjeios de pássaros familiares; ela se debruça, à calada da noite, sobre os nossos leitos, para murmurar-nos as suas confidências em forma de recordações do passado, e acender no nosso ânimo as esperanças do porvir...

E com estas lembranças e esperanças o espírito da pátria dava ao espírito do pensador sobressaltos e, às vezes, desesperações. Na “Unidade da Pátria”, que foi de fato o primeiro grito de alarme e o primeiro gesto fecundo da campanha de regeneração em que estamos empenhados, Afonso Arinos resumiu, com precisão cruel, os males que nos adoecem e envergonham: a dispersão dos bons esforços; o desamparo do povo do interior, dócil e resignado, roído de epidemias e de impostos; a falta do ensino; a desorganização administrativa; a incompetência econômica; a insuficiência, e muitas vezes os criminosos desvios da justiça; a ignorância petulante e egoísta dos que governam este imenso território, em que ainda não existe nação.

Mas o amor e a força do artista achavam remédio para o desânimo e salvação para a descrença: a sua alma ancorava-se na alma popular, e banhava-se na verdadeira fonte da energia dos povos, — as tradições, as lendas, a boa poesia, em que se espelham as virtudes da gente simples, seiva, sangue, fluido nervoso, que conservam a sua pureza e o seu vigor, enquanto a doença assola o organismo social, e bastam para sarar, no momento dado, todas as devastações.

Este livro é o efeito desta crença. Afonso Arinos nunca descreu da grandeza moral do Brasil. Conhecendo o seu povo, ele sabia que ele é o verdadeiro operário da sua nação. O valor e a bondade do povo hão de anular a fraqueza e a maldade dos que o exploram; e um dia os fracos e os maus desaparecerão, e os fortes e os bons, saídos da massa anônima, já livre e Instruída, serão os definitivos governadores.

Edouard Schurè, no prefácio da sua “Histoire du Lied”, escreveu estas linhas admiráveis: “O povo, muito tempo desprezado, sonha e canta, e tem a sua poesia e o seu ideal; opera-se nele um grande e surdo trabalho. Muitas vezes, este trabalho instintivo passa-se para a literatura, e os verdadeiros autores da obra ficam desconhecidos. Os homens da imprensa e das classes cultas não percebem isto; mas a imaginação popular continua a agitar se, subterrânea, múltipla, criadora, incessante, como a vegetação do coral, que lentamente se levanta do fundo do mar em ramificações infinitas, acabando por abrolhar em ilhas encantadoras que deslumbram os navegadores.”

Palavras que sempre devem ser meditadas por nós, homens de pensamento e de palavra. Os poetas, quando jovens pensam, no inocente orgulho da sua mocidade, e no natural engano do seu talento, que são eles que dão ao povo ideias e sentimentos; e ignoram que são apenas instrumentos de uma força estranha, que os inspira e exalta, emanações insensíveis da sua terra, eflúvios invisíveis da sua gente. O tempo e a reflexão, que dão modéstia, esfriam esse entusiasmo. Depois de certa idade, sabemos que os melhores poemas são os que nascem sem artifício, independentes do uso das métricas e dos léxicos, — os que saem do seio da natureza, frescos e límpidos, como a água salta das rochas. São os poemas melhores, e os mais duradouros. Os nossos livros, concebidos e dados à luz na ansiedade e na tortura, viverão menos do que esses contos singelos, essas lendas infantis, essas trovas ingênuas, que o povo ideou e criou, sem esforço, em sorrisos, entre o amanho da terra e a contemplação do céu.

Afonso Arinos conheceu bem, de perto, esse claro e eterno manancial da nossa poesia. Viajadorda nossa terra, familiar do sertão e dos sertanejos, ele teve o dom de tratar os homens de alma simples, sabendo falar-lhes e sabendo ouvi-los, e enternecendo-se com o seu sonho rústico.

Este enternecimento perfumou a sua vida, e adoçou a sua morte.

Olavo Bilac, 1917.