If you remember correctly, the readers who eventually share my “ecite” (a term that Brazilians invented to name the overwhelming passion for Eça de Queirós that strongly affects some people), the character of The Mayans Mr. Sousa Neto is a gentleman who goes to Carlos da Maia to ask him “if there were, in England, serial writers, poets with talent, like we have here in Portugal”, Carlos replied, with impudence, that “no sir, there weren’t any of those”, to the satisfaction of Mr. Sousa Neto, who was, in fact, our general director of Education, as Ega later revealed.
The new Sousa Netos don’t care in the slightest about the existence or the lack, wherever it may be, of “serial writers, poets”, because they don’t read them, anyway. But all the contempt of fashion has gone to humanistic culture, and all the remaining admiration to the culture that can be poured into numbers.
Messrs. Sousa Netos do not accept any economic analysis that does not conform to the Manchester liberalism of the 19th century, now seen as holding the lights of modernity and the profile of the future, unlike boring liberals like Keynes or (even worse) socialists who still believe in socialism.
International politics is seen by Mr. Sousa Netos strictly in accordance with the principles proclaimed by those who rule us, but they are ready to change principles, so let those who rule change, because, like Groucho Marx, they always have others available.
Common sense and good taste are increasingly being banished from international life, where a modicum of rationality seems to have been lost. The logic of strength dominates the weakness of logic. From the subtlety of The Prince of Machiavelli we move abruptly to the pure brutality of Leviathan the Hobbes.
“He is very strong”, said the diplomat Steinbroken (another Queiroz character) about Chancellor Bismarck, builder of the greatness of German power in the 19th century. And then, anguished, he continued: “But where is he going? Where is he going?” The 20th century, with two World Wars that destroyed Europe, gave the historical answer to Steinbroken’s doubts.
Pure strength leads to pure destruction. But we will be reborn as Humanity. And there will be a future to judge and condemn what we have all been doing these last few years.
And the Sousa Netos of that distant future will be, in a world under reconstruction, the most determined and consequential pacifists… as long as they do not have to change their principles!1
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“The path of History is not, in fact, that of a billiard ball, which, once thrown, follows a predictable course; it is rather similar to the path of a cloud, which also follows the laws of physics, but is also influenced by something that we can only call a coincidence of facts.”
Robert Musil
“German as
symptom”1923
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