Banzando IV.

(Northrop Frye em 1933. Créditos.)

(...) The same would be true of criticism to the extent that criticism has to deal with imponderables other than consciousness or logically directed will. If one critic says that another has discovered a mass of subtleties in a poet of which that poet was probably quite unconscious, the phrase points up the biological analogy. A snowflake is probably quite unconscious of forming a crystal, but what it does may be worth study even if we are willing to leave its inner mental processes alone. (Segundo Ensaio, Anatomy of Criticism, Princeton/Oxford UP, 10ª ed., 1990, p. 89; grifo meu.)

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De A vida & as opiniões do barnabé guilherme gontijo flores servidor do estado, Guilherme Gontijo Flores:

       1.

       (...)

   Eu não sorvi do sangue das vitórias

   eu nem mesmo as contei

   em nada fui desapontado

   & creio não desapontei

   na tarefa tão árdua de um abraço

   eu recuava ao tempo da família

   dos quadros apagados

   dos nomes sem memória

   & de um brasão talvez

   perdido nas gavetas inventadas

   de algum antepassado

   que hoje sumiu sem deixar traço

   & sem abrir no espaço

   uma ferida falsa

   à qual eu me apegasse

   toda história é cansaço

       (...)

Retirado daqui.

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Ainda quero falar com mais tardar sobre o poema do camarada Guilherme e de como ele pode dar uma puta duma leitura Direito e Poesia (e em muitos, mas muitos sentidos). Por hora, relendo Richard Posner, Law and Literature, 2009, 3ª ed., capítulo 12, parte III, p. 486:

4. Literature can expand our emotional horizons. An idea can usually be encoded straightforwardly enough and transferred more or less intact to another person. It is different with emotions. You can describe a pain, its origins, its consequences, in as much detail as you like and I still will not experience them. And so with describing one’s feelings about growing old, falling in love, losing a friend, failing in business, succeeding in politics. Imaginative literature can engender in its readers emotional responses to experiences they have not had. (...)

O Posner, nesse capítulo que é a meu ver de longe o mais interessante na obra toda, diz que a Literatura não pode humanizar o Direito. Mas aqui ele toma o termo "humanizar" num sentido moral ― isto é, a Literatura não pode fornecer um enriquecimento moral: "The world of literature is a moral anarchy; if immersion in it teaches anything in the moral line it is moral relativism." (p. 463) Embora, "This is not to deny that reading literature can have consequences, including moral and political ones." (p. 457)

Assim,

If we do not read literature in order to form better or truer opinions on matters of religion or politics, economics or morality, then why do we read it at all? I shall suggest several answers: acquiring surrogate experience; obtaining templates for interpreting one‘s actual experiences (but not practical lessons for living); sharpening one’s writing and reading skills; expanding one’s emotional horizons; obtaining self-knowledge; gaining pleasure; experiencing an echo-chamber effect; undergoing therapy; and enjoying art for art’s sake. None of these benefits is likely to improve the reader’s morals. (p. 481-482)

O que meio que dá na mesma, se considerarmos onde a maior parte das pessoas que dizem que a Literatura pode humanizar o Direito querem chegar. Pondo em termos waratianos, poderíamos dizer que humanizar o Direito → reabilitar a figura do Outro → carnavalizar. Aí, claro, podemos dizer que a Literatura ajuda e muito nesse sentido, embora as problematizações do Posner continuem excelentes uma vez que, a bem da verdade, a Literatura por si só não é fator determinante de humanização: se a Literatura for pensada apartada da vida, ela pode alienar que é uma beleza (mas não me lembro onde o Posner diz isso), além, claro, de que "But I resist the idea that literature can tell us how to live, as distinct from telling us how the characters in a literary work live." (p. 487).

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Aí eu fiz o link entre o trecho do poema do Guilherme e a ideia de que a Literatura não humaniza o Direito, segundo o Posner. Como o poema do Guilherme pode humanizar se ele basicamente escarnece? ― ou se ele à priori não tem nada a oferecer de, digamos, imaginativo, estrada pro arco-íris ou coisa do tipo? ― se ele é a constatação de que nós não podemos ser humanizados?

(Claro que é uma posição muito pendular dentro da poesia do Guilherme, pois enquanto ele nos diz, em embora nas pregas peças, que "– uma lira à guisa de arco / sem saber do sensabor diário –" [e creio que esta seja a posição geral no primeiro livro dele ― preciso quebrar o cofre, juntar as moedas e comprar ainda e ver direitinho], por outro lado, nos poemas publicados na Modo, o clima parece ser outro. Ao menos, a princípio...)

Lembrei-me que o último verso do trecho do poema do Guilherme é uma paródia do "Toda história é remorso." com que o Drummond fecha a parte V (Museu da Inconfidência) do Estampas de Vila Rica no Claro Enigma. Só que a redação original do verso era "Vê como a glória é simples." Que paródia esplêndida, não é mesmo?...

Deixo a pergunta em aberto (e por isso mesmo ela está tão mal formulada). Até pra mim mesmo. Quem sabe mais tarde eu não volte. ("Quem sabe" nada. É preciso voltar.)

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A quem interessar possa, Posner esmiúça ao todo nove pontos. Senão vejamos:

1. (...) Fiction, like other counterfactual imaginative thinking, enables us to decouple thought from action (we don’t rush out of the theater when we see a lion on the movie screen) and even helps us to tune our brains. (...)

2. But it would be a mistake to think that because some people use literature as a source of insight into human nature and social interactions, it provides a straighter path to knowledge about man and society than writings in other fields, such as history and science, and interactions with real people as distinct from fictional characters. (...) // Nor can readers expect to extract from literature many practical lessons for living. (...) Writers of imaginative literature rarely are practical people with sound practical guidance to impart.

3. We might read literature just to improve our writing skills. (...)

4. já citado.

5. (...) But I resist the idea that literature can tell us how to live, as distinct from telling us how the characters in a literary work live. Literature is not in the advice business. (...) But reading them may make you realize that this is what you think, and so may serve to clarify yourself to yourself. Literature helps us to become what we are. // (...) // The possession of knowledge does not dictate its use for moral ends. Not only may we identify as readers with the egomaniacs, scamps, seducers, conquerors, psychopaths, tricksters, and immoralists who people fiction; we may improve our skills in manipulating people to selfish ends by acquiring a better understanding of the naive and vulnerable, the good, the generous human types we encounter in works of fiction. (...)

6. To emphasize the role of literature in imparting self-knowledge is more defensible than assigning it the role of making the reader a more moral individual. But it still gives literature too solemn and even too puritanical an air. It leaves out pleasure, though pleasure that can be contemplative and fused with knowledge rather than ecstatic (...)

7. Literature yields a special kind of pleasure by imparting an echochamber effect to everyday life. The life depicted in works of literature is recognizably human and therefore like our own, but it is more intense, more charged with significance. (...) We have a vision of a life more “real”—vivid, meaningful, coherent— than our everyday existence, a sense of immense human possibility, of exaltation (a common response of art lovers to a first-rate art museum). We feel bigger; we are transported. (...)

8. Literature can function as therapy and more commonly as consolation. This value is connected with its focus on disruption and crisis. (...)

9. Particularly remote from morality is the disinterested “art for art’s sake” pleasure that much literature affords. This is closest to the pleasure we get from the visual arts, especially abstract art, and from instrumental music. (...)

Como exemplo de que a literatura, enquanto fonte moral, é algo perigoso, Posner argumenta, no capítulo 13, da parte IV, sobre a regulamentação literária,

Those who disagree with the preceding chapter and thus believe that literature can make us better people are apt also to think that the wrong kind of literature can make us worse people. (...) Censorship is encouraged by the moralistic approach to literature. To someone who believes that literature to count as such must be edifying, immoral books are by definition not literature and banning them cannot impair literary values. (p. 497)

É realmente um bom ponto de vista. A conclusão é também digna de nota:

The harmlessness of imaginative literature is not a universal law. But in our time and place, works of nonpictorial imaginative literature do not have significant power for good or for evil. Lawyers and judges will not become better people by trolling in literature for ethical insights, and other readers will not become worse people by seeking erotic stimulation in pornography. (p. 511)

Mas a parte IV já não nos concerne tanto. Ao lado da parte parte III, a parte II (Legal Texts as Literary Texts) possui seus momentos de interesse, em especial graças ao zelo certo modo purista de Posner em defender uma separação tão radical entre Direito e Literatura (como ao chamar, por exemplo, a intertextualidade de Kristeva de "a promiscuous inter-discipline", p. 285).

Deixo pra depois.