The Suffering of the Righteous (June, Part 1)

"For I expected good, and there came evil; and I waited for light, but there came darkness." The Book of Job 30:26



There is a beautiful link connecting atheist Susan Sontag and God-fearing Job. Their stories of being radically faithful to their own principles has, nonetheless, taken them into the valley of the shadow of death, demanding from them that they faced the experience of illness in spite of their high moral, intellectual or social standards.

"Illness as Metaphor", as well as the book of Job, is a well articulated speech in defense of the author. Against the truth of their ages, Sontag and Job argue against superstition, respectively in favor of Reason and God. The question that remains, is: how could the righteous discourse of Sontag and Job resolve the paradoxal experience of illness without making use of the figures of punishment and atonement?

Different answers arise from these two diverse experiences of man's essential frailty and mortality. And so we start our reading for the month of June.

A conclusion (May, part 7)

So, Fortunate had a Secret Cause. Although I'm not a fan of Freudian literary interpretations, this one is hard to avoid in such a case. The father of all explanations regarding our subconscious motivations was preceeded in many philosophers and artists but, in fact, was able to articulate much of man's previous ideas on the theme as a clear and understandable theory.

The central discussion in "The Secret Cause" is not so much ethical as it is historical and genealogical. The matter does not concern Fortunate's acts or Garcia's acts as being right or wrong, but their very nature is under scrutiny, in reality.

Machado de Assis' brilliant shor story invites us, by telling the tales of two men involved in human health care, to question not only our own actions, but our deeper reasons and ultimately our own nature. It's not that Fortunate alone is above good and evil. The poet himself is there, contemplating what's more profound (and sometimes uglier) than morals; and we, readers, are called to the same exercise. If we have such a courage.

[images: Sigmund Freud and "The Fall of Man", by Lukas Cranach, 15th century]

The sleeping beauty (May, part 6)

It is around Maria Luiza's body that the characters of Garcia and Fortunate will manifest in full. She is the axis of the transvaluation of values, of the turning of The Wheel of Fortune. Around the coffin, we see Garcia as the byronian (almost medieval) devastated man who cries over the body of his dead, forbidden, unreachable love - now immortalized in her youth and perfection; there, we also see Fortunate as the cold-hearted observer, who sucks on Garcia's pain to the point of no longer mourning the death of his wife, and not even resenting his friend's betrayal.

There is, of course, a fine piece of scholarly irony here, because Machado de Assis is known for his ability to turn against the Romantic values of the Literature which generated him. Garcia, representative of such values, is here demoralized, as Fortnuate becomes our sole fountain of admiration in his full strength and sheer sincerity - human, all too human. But this text goes far beyond mere aesthetical polemics.

Edgar Allan Poe, the Romantic poet from the 19th century, went far enough even to say that "the death of a beautiful woman is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world", in his Philosophy of Composition, 1846. Cordelia, Ophelia, Ines de Castro and ultimately the Church as Christ's bride, for whom He died and ressurrected in order to give life to, are all examples of such a powerful and resonant theme in poetry.

Such is the importance of Maria Luiza to this story: she is the eye of the whirlpool, the axis of the Wheel and the element before which all things are revealed. The image is a detail of the famous John Everett Millai's Ophelia.

Literature and morals, a misapprehension (May, part 5)

What's most irritating about Harold Bloom is that he's usually right. The statement that Literature won't make us men of morality and kindness should be repeated, proclaimed and even exaggerated today, to fight one of the meanest crimes ever commited against aesthetics.

It's mandatory that we undo this misapprehension, the confusion of aesthetics and morals in people who think Literature has some important contribution to this mess. I can't think of any other clearer example of confusion than the case of the study of Literature in Medical Schools, where Shakespeare and Machado de Assis are being used as tools of “humanization”.

When I read “A Causa Secreta” (M. de Assis), being 19 years old, it was by Paulo César de Souza's suggestion on his notes to his own translation of “Genealogy of Morals” (F. Nietzsche), but then I was certainly not mature enough to see the “transvaluation of all values” in the short story. Anyway, the attraction Fortunate will have on any person with an IQ above 70 is automatic; even after the scene of the scisors and candle.

It's impossible not to feel accused by the story's author: if we're not guilty of the same sadism as Fortunate is, we'll be at least blamed by this instinctive sympathy for he that should be the villain, while kind and romantic (in an aesthetic sense, as everything else in Machado's works) Garcia can only cause us repulse and indigestion.

The great poet does not “humanize” his readers. On the contrary, he holds them over a candle falme, while cutting off their paws, because he proposes another reading(unauthorized) of that which his readers justly considered more important and certain in the text of morals, psychology and tradition. From Fortunate to Iago, Shylock and Puck, including Jesus Christ in the Gospels, the center of the Canon(here, Bloom was wrong, being one of the strongest misreaders of the Bible, side by side with Nietzsche), the strength of Literature is in the deconstrustor characters, the dehumanizers, the "misreaders" of the morals their antecessors wrote as a text weaker than the characters' own personalities.

If "humanizing" Med-students is therefore to make them lovely and clown-like, Nietzsche, Shakespeare and Machado de Assis will be of little use. Such an error must be corrected so that Medical schools will honestly declare that, aiming to doctrinate their students towards good citizenship (which makes all sene in the political logics of public shools and state-financed training of doctors for the State), they're in search of good moral texts. Which takes us far from where true wisdom shall be found. Once again, Harold Bloom was right.

Garcia and values transvaluated (May, part 4)

Garcia is our good man, in this short story. He is the medicine student, the care-giver in training, the future and the hope of people's healths and well-being. He is the man in white.

Nevertheless, it is him who betrays his best friend, falls in love for Maria Luiza and even in the beginning of the story he is the one who follows the still strenge and unknown Fortunate along the streets of 19th century Rio de Janeiro - a fine piece of weird behaviour.

Fortunate, on the other hand, is the cruel man: the torturer, the ruthless, the brute. He is also, notwithstanding, the one who tirelessly cares for the beaten man in the beginning of the story, the one who suggests the opening of the hospital and the one who, ultimately, will apparently forgive his friend for the betrayal at the end of the story - all the expense of human suffering, of course, but who would condemn such a kind and forginving man based on his motivations.

Machado de Assis' propositions as to human character, here, are "beyond good and evil". They wander the perilous paths of relativity and leave us reader in want of the concrete answer. Again, we see that humanities in Medicine are not all about comfort and joy.

(May, part 3)

So, as we gaze upon Fortunate, we understand what is his secret bond with the goddess Fortuna: as life agonizes, they but watch. The link between visual perception and the medical practice is notorious, and M. Foucault well characterized the silent interplay of power and observation in many of his works, and not surprisingly also in his "The Birth of the Clinic".
The term "humanities" has been terribly misused in Brazil and often is confused with "goodness" and "kindness", but contrarily the scientifical look upon the workings of our mind and motivations will frequently reveal badness and cruelty in the root of many of our noblest actions. Which, finally takes us back to F. Nietzsche and his transvaluation of values.
Paulo Cesar de Souza, Brazilian scholar and translator of many of Nietzsche's works for Portuguese, well suggested a reading of "A Causa Secreta" based on the ideas from the Genealogy of Morals. Acute perception, which could be useful for the attentive physician still in training.

Sors immanis et inanis (May, part 2)

Now, there are certain moments in which the poet's intentions just cannot be mistaken as mysterious. Such a case is seen in "A Causa Secreta", or The Secret Cause, by Brazilian writer Machado de Assis. The opening scene shows us the picture of three characters which are, right on the first paragraph, revealed in their most intimate features through a series of visual images, as well as through their names.

Today, we focus on Fortunato, which we will here translate as Fortunate. His name is a clear reference to the gentile Roman goddess Fortuna, associated throughout the Middle Ages to the ever changing moods of fate. The Wheel of Fortune, a constant literary and graphical motif in the medieval times, reflects the elements of human experience associated to this figure Fortuna.

The Wheel is commonly divided in four parts, which represent four stages in the ever-turning story of men: regnabo, regno, regnavi, sum sine regno (I shall reign, I reign, I have reigned, I have no kingdom, in Latin). Our character Fortunate, as the goddess herself, is the personification of luck in the sense of power. On the first scene, he is found looking up, with his head held high, while the other two characters show signs of discomfort and anguish.

For all beings will the Wheel of Fortune turn, except for Fortuna and Fortunate, in this story: this goddess (as well as this unique short-story character) is also the embodiment of cruelty, because in the face of the most apalling terrors she is still impenetrable. To the minds of the roman and medieval poets, such a goddess could as well find pleasure in life's frailty and proneness to suffering.

So, let us not be mistaken: the first lines of this short story are very clear. One of the three people in that room must be understood as an overcomer, as a strong, that is, a cruel man.

[image: The Wheel of Fortune, in a medieval miniature]

The Secret Cause - May, part 1

Why is "The Secret Cause", by Machado de Assis, the most important short story in a long list of interesting literary works worthy of medical student's attentions all around the world?

Internationally acknowledged as an important writer from the late 19th century scene, Machado de Assis, as Harold Bloom pointed out in his book "Genius", was able to rise beyond the effects of cultural and political determination. What we get by reading Machado is access to witty, elegant and deep pictures of the workings and surprises of human behaviour, whether in relation to society or independently from it.

A question we are not often encouraged to face openly in our first days of medical education is "why do you want to be a doctor?". Of course, we've been asked that several times, and thus have learnt to give away the best rehearsed and socially acceptable answer we are able to come up with.

The Secret Cause is not necessarily the ultimate answer to the question. It is, more importantly, a brave and free incursion into the possible complexities of the answers.

[the image is from the movie "A Erva do Rato", by Julio Bressane. official website: republicapureza.com.br/aervadorato]

On autumn and the anguish of the poet (April, part 5)

Sonnet 73 presents us the painful perception that the poet has on his own diminishing life-forces as age moves on. It has a sad tune and its images are of a beautiful melancholic tone. John Berryman, an American poet who commited suicide at age 57, thus talked about sonnet 73:

"The fundamental emotion is self-pity. Not an attractive emotion. What renders it pathetic, in the good instead of the bad sense, is the sinister diminution of the time concept, quatrain by quatrain. We have first a year, and the final season of it; then only a day, and the stretch of it; then just a fire, built for part of the day, and the final minutes of it; then -- entirely deprived of life, in prospect, and even now a merely objective "that," like a third-person corpse! -- the poet. The imagery begins and continues as visual -- yellow, sunset, glowing -- and one by one these are destroyed; but also in the first quatrain one heard sound, which disappears there; and from the couplet imagery of every kind is excluded, as if the sense were indeed dead, and only abstract, posthumous statement is possible. A year seems short enough; yet ironically the day, and then the fire, makes it in retrospect seem long, and the final immediate triumph of the poem's imagination is that in the last line about the year, line 4, an immense vista is indeed invoked -- that the desolate monasteries strewn over England, sacked in Henry's reign, where 'late' -- not so long ago! a terrible foreglance into the tiny coming times of the poem -- the choirs of monks lifted their little and brief voices, in ignorance of what was coming -- as the poet would be doing now, except that this poem knows. Instinct is here, after all, a kind of thought. This is one of the best poems in English."
(in: The Sonnets)

Man's conscience of hte finitude of his individual, egoistic self, is probably the deadly result of the eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, in Genesis 2. To be or not to be? With open eyes, man was finally able to ask the impossible question. The image that follows is John Everett Millais' Ophelia:

Time's mowing scythe (April, part 4)

Sonnet 60 presents to us the singer's perplexity as to time's effect on man, both physically and spiritually. Again, time is the motor of change and decay, as expresses the first quatrain by the figures of waves, in one of the metaphors most frequently reproduced in popular Brazilian language and communication. This personified figure, Time, the giver and taker of the flourish of youth, produces old age, by transfixing, delving and feeding on perfection, in order to produce weakness and disintegration before which nothing stands.

Again, against Time's cruel hand, verse and praise introduce the beloved into eternity. Poetry is here identified with hope, and as the relief to the inexorable fate of all that is young, art's perfection is proposed in contrast to the coming imperfections of the old age.

Rembrandt van Rijn, one of the most famous painters in the Golden Age of the Dutch visual arts (17th century CE), was also one of the most fruitful painters in self-portraits, and the collection of the portraits he produced all through his life, from youth into old age, is a touching and profound example of how arts can provide a beneficial reflexion on the matter of aging. The following paintings portray the painter in, respectively, 1634 (at around age 28, like myself today) and 1660 (at around age 54):

Beauty, art and immortality (April, part 3)

Sonnet 18 is written towards the singer's loved one. Verses 1/2 state that this one is "more temperate" than a summer's day. Temperance is the key concept here, which disqualifies the days of summer as theme to the poem. It is a poem about eternity, and under the writer's clear and bright language, nature's instability becomes obvious in verses 3-8. Rough winds, short-dated leases, exceedingly hot sunny days, the occasional dimness of sunlight, the decline of everything from its fair state and nature's randomness and unpredictability, all are elements that this singer's eyes see unfit for his song about temperate and unchanging timelessness.

This loved person's summer is not a day. It's not even a summer made of many days. It's eternal. Death shall never brag about this person, because they have nothing in common: the singer's beloved does not walk in the shades of death. One might think of the Greek god Apollos here, as the god of eternal summer and light - the always fair, the always bright Apollos. Nevertheless, we see again the strong influence of biblical language:

For instance, compare verse 11 of the sonnet ("Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade") with the ideas expressed in John 14:30 ("the prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me"), Psalms 23:4 ("though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death"), 1 Corinthians 15:54,55 ("Death is swallowed up in victory, O death, where {is} thy sting?"). We see here that this eternal godly young beloved is actually the one in Psalm 45, the one against which Death cannot brag, the one in which Death has nothing. This one is the perfect object for this poem of immortality, the perfect mirror for a song whose images are all never-changing: light and fairness in perfection. The 12th verse, at the end of the third quatrain, announces the overcoming of time.

Then, at the final couplet, we meet the ingenious affirmation of the mutual and simultaneous influence of the poem and the object of the poem over each other. Firstly, we have seen how the singer chose this person as an object, due to this person's temperance, constancy and fairness; thus, this person has caused such a song to exist (and again, we think of Psalm 45:1, in which the tongue of the writer is put in motion in praise to the King's fairness). Now, the singer affirms that the song will make this person immortal, creating an inversion and a reciprocality which well conclude this eternal song in the form of a circle: the youth which first gave life to the poem, now shall draw his own life from it, forever.

Poetry, art and beauty as the key to overcoming death and time. As many times in Western poetry, here we see Shakespeare's assertion to that.

Of clouds and pilgrims (April, part 2)

Reminds me of a Brazilian poet called Cecilia Meirelles, whose themes often revolve around being in time for a brief moment and heading into not being. She sings because the moment exists, she says, and never gives too much thought to her own finitude, although she is aware of it. Here, nimbleness and grace are the answer to overcoming time, and as she draws on pictures of clouds and stars and the depths of the sea, she identifies spontaneously with these images of eternity. In her feminine, medieval song universe, endlessness is like the gardens and springs which she sees resurrected at the opening of a bottle of perfume: airy, light, free, irresistible. These ideas are all central to her book "Viagem" (Voyage).
How different the world of the psalmist in Psalm 39! As we see a man broken down by his own mistakes and flaws, he desperately tries and reaches out, no longer able to refrain from speaking. His anguish is fire, and it makes his tongue sing. God is fire, and He makes the singer sing. It is then that the psalmist seeks relief from his own fallen person into the idea of eternity and the person of YHWH.
He is a pilgrim, he says. Someone who is destined to be seen but for a limited section in time. Relief is granted, because imperfection will certainly cease, consumed by its own burning urge to sing. Perfection, on the other hand, is eternal and merciful. This pilgrim longs to see his ending and no longer bee looked upon by the self-existant YHWH. He seeks God's knowledge of manly mortality, but not God's accusations. This knowledge is the passive, contemplative one of the philosopher, and not the active designation of the judge who points out. The knowledge of relief, the knowledge of the one who turns away from the object of his knowing.
From fire the pilgrim sings and asks for the vision of his end. Once God removes from him the outer aspect of his burden by turning away His compassionate but inspector gaze, the pilgrim will even be able to breathe.

April readings, part 1

Sonnets 18, 60 and 73 by William Shakespeare are a collection of Elizabethan texts on aging, death and the overcoming of time. The term "Elizabethan" must not be seen as limiting these sonnets' potential to convey in a both broad and deep manner the rich subtleties of a perception which stretches far over boundaries of epoch and literary tradition. Together, the texts are a good sample of how inclusively Shakespeare was able to both consider and communicate the experience of ephemerality and change. Each sonnet a particular universe of image and metaphor, the three of them suggest that beauty, art and ultimately poetry are the key to rise above time.

While the Sonnets sing against the deleterious effects of the hours by focusing our vision on the image of the beloved, Psalm 39 is the voice of a man who turns to himself and finds it difficult to truly become conscious of his own finitude. Nevertheless, he seeks shuch a conscience because of his own wickedness, and finds contemplating his frailty to be the only cure to his anguish. The possibilty of death, then, and not death itself, becomes the point of relief for this singer's journey into not being. Hoping on the Eternal, here, is the way to overcome time: the consciousness of one's transitoriness as the way for eternity to manifest presently while one is still under time's influence.

[suggested reading for April: Shakespeare's sonnets 18, 60 and 73; Psalm 39, from The Bible]

2009 - Reading Suggestions

Each work will be discussed for a month. Readers are encouraged to share their views through their comments, in English.

1 - april: Sonnets 18, 60, 73, by W. Shakespeare, and Psalm 39, from The Book of the Psalms of Solomon

2 - may: The Secret Cause, by Machado de Assis

3 - june: Illness as metaphor, by Susan Sontag and The Book of Job, from The Bible

4 - july: Ward number 6, by Anton Chekhov

5 - august: The Alienist, by Machado de Assis

6 - september: The Death of Ivan Iilitch, by L. Tolstoi

7 - october: Stories of Diancecht and Miach, in celtic myth, and The Immortals, by Jorge. L. Borges

8 - november: The Imaginary Invalid, by Molière

9 - december: The Country Doctor, by H. de Balzac