
Richard Dadd - Contradiction: Oberon and Titania (1854/1858)
"Hoje eu tenho que sublinhar, acima de tudo, a raça, o dia da raça, o dia de Portugal, de Camões e das Comunidades Portuguesas"
People who come from fucked up places in a sense may have something more interesting to say about life
Le fait divers est un genre protéiforme qu’il est impossible d’enfermer dans une définition unique et précise. L’inventaire de ses thèmes de prédilection (le monstrueux, l’incroyable, le criminel), des types d’énonciation qu’il met régulièrement en œuvre (récit distancié, relation paradoxale, témoignage), des intentions dont il semble relever (informer, divertir), confirme cette constatation primordiale.
Drinking alcohol is not only good for the heart – it is good for the joints too. A regular tipple cuts the risk of rheumatoid arthritis by up to 50 per cent – and the more you drink the greater the protective effect.
"Violência é não se poder matar o touro na arena"
There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork.
Pour avoir osé déchirer cette obscénité pornographique qui constituait, de toute évidence, un attentat à la pudeur et un objet de scandale pour les jeunes enfants, je viens d’être lourdement condamné à, non-seulement, 1000 euros d’amende, mais aussi 9000 euros de dommages et intérêts envers la mairie socialo-communiste de Taverny !
Profondément écœuré et scandalisé par ce verdict, je déclare ne plus croire en la justice de mon pays.
Ne nous y trompons pas, ce jugement ne condamne pas le citoyen et élu du peuple Alexandre Simonnot, il condamne la pudeur, les bonnes mœurs et la morale publique ! Désormais, dans nos villes, il sera permis d’exhiber publiquement tout et n’importe quoi, même les pires obscénités, sans jamais en être inquiété…
Les magistrats de Pontoise porteront donc la lourde responsabilité de la décadence morale et de la déliquescence des mœurs dans notre département. Qu’ils ne s’étonnent plus de voir se multiplier les crimes et délits à caractère sexuel dans notre société, ils en seront directement responsables !
C’est, aujourd’hui, une victoire pour l’anti-France, les ennemis de la famille et les obsédés sexuels ! Mais que ces derniers se rassurent : ils ont remporté une bataille mais de gagneront jamais la guerre qu’ils ont déclarée à la France, fille aînée de l’Eglise.
Pour ma part, je m’estime, malgré cette parodie de justice, totalement innocent. Et si, par malheur, le maire de Taverny réitérait une telle provocation, qu’il sache que je reviendrai et recommencerai mon action. Jamais je ne laisserai ma ville être transformée en un musée de la capote et de la pornographie !
Seule la Justice Divine me rendra raison et punira très sévèrement ceux qui m’ont condamné, car c’est moi, l’accusé, qui aurais dû les juger !
I’m not suggesting that gigantic books are useful only as an excuse for avoiding responsibility. No, those who read them also reap the psychic benefits of being admitted to an exclusive club, like Icelandic rodeo queens or American presidents whose administrations did not end in disaster. Those who have read the unabridged “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” and “Remembrance of Things Past” and “Man Without Qualities” belong to a very special group because at any given time there are no more than a few hundred such people on the face of the earth, and none of them live in Tarrytown.
This is a far more exclusive group than those who have read “War and Peace” or the complete works of Jane Austen. Lots of high school kids have bluffed their way through Tolstoy, whose masterpiece is daunting but not insurmountable, and polishing off Austen is a snap because Austen is sassy and mean, and only one of her novels is more than 400 pages long. What’s more, you can always see the light at the end of the tunnel when you’re reading Austen and Tolstoy. You can never see the light at the end of the tunnel when you’re reading “The Man Without Qualities” because the author himself never saw it. Even though he spent his entire adult life working on the book, it remained unfinished at the time of his death.
(...)
In fairness to her, I must admit that the week I spent not reading “The Man Without Qualities” was a revelation. With no excuse for my indolence, I rearranged my LPs, repaired the back of the CD rack, got a carpenter to fix a rotting beam, threw out a bunch of old clothes, bought a fax machine, restrung my guitars and figured out how to operate my digital camera. I also made a vat of spaghetti sauce and visited my mother. So I could see how different life could be without Gibbon and Proust gumming up the works. But then my wife came in and said that in addition to buying a new car, she wanted to talk about refinancing our house. At which point I threw up my hands and went back to Musil. Now I’ve assured her that we can discuss the mortgage just as soon as I’ve finished the greatest Austrian novel of them all. But something tells me that before I get around to the mortgage, I’ll first gain admission to an even more exclusive club: people who have read the Big Three of the 20th century — “Ulysses,” “Remembrance of Things Past” and “The Man Without Qualities” — and then read them again. I wonder what those folks are driving.