DOS LIVROS E DAS ELITES

No mundo em que cresci, a leitura era algo importante, essencial e, como tal, fomentado, pese embora alguma censura a determinados livros e autores – censura cujo principal efeito era ler esses autores e livros na primeira oportunidade, com livros escondidos por trás de estantes, no fundo de gavetas, por baixo do colchão … e muito “frisson” enquanto decorriam as leituras proibidas. Por via dessas proibições li todo o Alexandre Dumas entre os onze e os doze anos, o Eça entre os catorze e os quinze, a par de leituras aprovadas, como Os Thibault (o livro da minha vida), oferecido por meu pai aos treze anos, Pearl Buck, em que me iniciei também aos treze anos, Jorge Amado aos catorze, Hemingway e Erich Maria Remarque aos quinze…

Durante anos, os livros que lia eram os que havia na casa paterna (neste momento, cerca de 3000 volumes…), trocas com amigas e irmãs de amigas da irmã, e os que devorava na Biblioteca Municipal do Porto, nas tardes vagarosas dos Verões intermináveis dos quatro meses de férias grandes (confesso que as leituras na Biblioteca eram mais comezinhas e constituídas sobretudo por policiais – lembo-me em particular de todos os casos de Perry Mason, de autoria de Erle Stanley Gardner e de Dick Haskins.

Isto passou-se depois de ter devorado todos os livros da Biblioteca dos Rapazes, herdados dos manos mais velhos – Rititi, Fúria, Bonanza, a saga da conquista americana do Oeste (A Caminho do Oregon, A Caminho de Santa Fé, A Caminho de Oklahoma), os pioneiros americanos (Daniel Boone, David Crocket, Bufallo Bill, Kit Carson), as tristes histórias de Cavalo Maluco e Jerónimo – e das paixões infantis e desejos de santidade após a leitura de Joana d’Arc e de A terceira cruzada com Ricardo Coração de Leão (o qual deve ter sido a minha primeira paixão, aí pelos oito anos de idade, logo seguido pelo Robin Hood, porque a volubilidade do coração das meninas de oito anos é elevadíssima…), Ivanhoe e Talismã. Confesso que, comparado com tanta acção e aventura, os livros da Biblioteca das raparigas eram uma valente seca – recusei-me a ler Brigitte, cujo cheiro a mofo era mais do que evidente já no tempo em que havia sido escrito – mas sempre fui lendo a biografia de Louise May Alcott e a respectiva obra, que pela primeira vez me deu a conhecer nomes como Emmerson, Thoreau, a corrente filosófica do transcendentalismo e, também, que havia pessoas diferentes, que viajavam com o busto de Platão e não comiam carne, algo que se tornou comum na minha vida, alguns anos mais tarde (a falta de carne, bustos, só a Flor Agreste e algumas reproduções da Diana Caçadora e da Vitória de Samotrácia, que continuam de pedra e cal a ornamentar as estantes paternas…).

Actualmente, não leio tanto quanto gostaria, muitas vezes porque por força das muitas leituras profissionais, já não há “espaço” para as outras. A falta de tempo é falácia, porque dedico algum tempo a ler blogs de que gosto e que me preenchem, tempo que é desviado dos livros.

Não consigo ler livros em suportes digitais, tem que ser o bom velho livro, manuseado, às vezes sublinhado, lombadas torturadas.

Sei que nunca conseguirei ler tudo o que gostaria e começo a ser selectiva. E, quando descubro um novo escritor, leio dele tudo o que há para ler e compro todas as novidades – foi assim com Paul Scott e Doris Lessing nos idos de 1985, Erico Veríssimo em 1986, Kundera no final dos anos 80, Tom Sharpe e alguns Durrel na década de 90, David Lodge e Julian Barnes, no princípio dos anos 2000, Catherine Clément, por volta de 2005, Murakami em 2007 (deste desisti entretanto), Bruce Chatwin e Jack London em 2008, J. Rentes de Carvalho em 2011. Nas décadas de 90 e de 2000 descobri e encantei-me com Jane Austen, que recusara ler quando jovem.

Entretanto descobri alguns escritores de língua espanhola, que vou lendo com menos compulsão mas igual devoção – Rosa Montero, Leonardo Padura, Juan Marsé, Vargas Llosa, Antonio Muñoz Molina – por influência dum Clube de Leitura espanhola de que faço parte. E estou a iniciar-me nessa coqueluche colectiva que é a Elena Ferrante, sem ter ainda ideia formada sobre a dita.

Duma coisa tenho a certeza – sem os livros que li e sem a leitura que me alimenta o espírito tanto como os alimentos me nutrem o corpo – eu não seria a pessoa que hoje sou.

Por isso me revejo na visão catastrofista de Francisco José Viegas sobre as consequências da falta de leitura e não resisto a transcrever o discurso de Doris Lessing na cerimónia de aceitação do Prémio Príncipe das Astúrias para as Letras, em 2001 (ela que também foi Prémio Nobel da Literatura em 2007, com 88 anos), com o qual me deparei num livro de ensaios de sua autoria que estou presentemente a ler, e cujo teor subscrevo na íntegra. É um escrito que poderá ser catalogado de elitismo, acusação com a qual não concordo. Na minha família tenho muitos exemplos de pessoas modestas com estudos que não ultrapassavam a quarta classe e que liam (e percebiam…) os jornais diários (às vezes também os vespertinos) e, sempre que podiam, tomavam de empréstimo Eça, Camilo, Júlio Dinis e tantos outros. E, mesmo que seja elitista, pena é que não haja mais e melhores elites, mais bem educadas e preparadas - elites cultas, cosmopolitas e com provas mais do que dadas, como Frederico Lourenço, cujo trabalho e obra nos deveria encher a todos de orgulho, tanto como cada Bola de Ouro de Cristiano Ronaldo. Não será com certeza com a mediocridade reinante que o mundo “pula e avança”, como diria Gedeão.

«Once upon a time, and it seems a long time ago, there was a respected figure, The Educated Person. He -it was usually he, but then increasingly often she- was educated in a way that differed little from country to country -I am talking of course about Europe- but was different from what we know now. William Hazlitt, our great essayist, went to a school, in the late eighteenth century, whose curriculum was four times more comprehensive than that of a comparable school now, a mix of the bases of language, law, art, religion, mathematics. It was taken for granted that this already dense and deep education was only one aspect of development, for the pupils were expected to read, and they did.

This kind of education, the humanist education is vanishing. Increasingly governments - our British government among them - encourage citizens to acquire vocational skills, while education as a development of the whole person is not seen as useful to the modern society.

The older education would have had Greek and Latin literature and history, and the Bible, as a foundation for everything else. He -or she- read the classics of their own countries, perhaps one or two from Asia, and the best known writers of other European countries, Goethe, Shakespeare, Cervantes, the great Russians, Rousseau. An educated person from Argentina would meet a similar person from Spain, one from St. Petersburg meet his counterpart in Norway, a traveller from France spend time with one from Britain, and they would understand each other, they shared a culture, could refer to the same books, plays, poems, pictures, in a web of reference and information that was like a shared history of the best the human mind was thought, said, written.

This has gone.

Greek and Latin are disappearing. In many countries the Bible, and religion - going. A girl I know, taken to Paris to broaden her mind, which needed it, though she was doing brilliantly in examinations, revealed that she had never heard of Catholics and Protestants, knew nothing of the history of Christianity or any other religion. She was taken to hear mass in Notre Dame, told that this ceremony had been a basis of European culture for centuries, and she should at least know about it - and she dutifully sat through it, rather as she might a tea ceremony in Japan, and afterwards enquired, "Are these people some kind of cannibal then". So much for what seems enduring.

There is a new kind of educated person, who may be at school and university for twenty, twenty five years, who knows everything about a speciality, computers, the law, economics, politics, but knows about nothing else, no literature, art, history, and may be heard enquiring. "But what was the Renaissance then?" "What was the French Revolution?"

Even fifty years ago this person would have been seen as a barbarian. To have acquired an education with nothing of the old humanist background - impossible. To call oneself educated without a background of reading - impossible.

Reading, books, the literary culture, was respected, desired, for centuries. Reading was and still is in what we call the Third World, a kind of parallel education, which once everyone had, or aspired to. Nuns and monks in their convents and monasteries, aristocrats at their meals, women at their looms and their sewing, were read to, and the poor people, even if all they had was a Bible, respected those who read. In Britain until quite recently trade unions and workers' movements fought for libraries, and perhaps the best example of the pervasiveness of the love for reading is that of the workers in the tobacco and cigar factories of Cuba whose trade unions demanded that the workers should be read to as they worked. The material was agreed to by the workers, and included politics and history, novels and poetry. A favourite of their books was the Count of Monte Christo. A group of workers wrote to Dumas and asked if they might use the name of his hero for one of their cigars.

Perhaps there is no need to labour this point to anyone present here, but I do feel we have not yet grasped that we are living in a fast fragmenting culture. Pockets of the old excellences remain, in a university, a school, the classroom of and old-fashioned teacher in love with books, perhaps a newspaper or a journal. But a culture that once united Europe and its overseas offshoots has gone.

We may get some idea of the speed with which cultures may change by looking at how languages change. English as spoken in America or the West Indies is not the English of England. Spanish is not the same in Argentina and in Spain. The Portuguese of Brazil is not the Portuguese of Portugal. Italian, Spanish, French, grew out of Latin not in thousands of years but in hundreds. It is a very short time since the Roman world disappeared, leaving behind its legacy of our languages.

One interesting little irony about the present situation is that a lot of the criticism of the old culture was in the name of Elitism, but what is happening is that everywhere are enclaves, pockets, of the old kind of reader and reading and it is easy to imagine one of the new barbarians walking by chance into a library of the old kind, in all its richness and variety and understanding suddenly what has been lost, what he - or she - has been deprived of.

So what is going to happen next in this tumultuously changing world? I think we are all of us fastening our seat belts and holding on tight.

I drafted what I have just read before the events of the 11th September. We are in for a war, it seems, a long one, which by its nature cannot have an easy end. We all know that enemies exchange more than gunfire and insults. In this country Spain you know this better perhaps than anyone. When feeling gloomy about the world I often think about that time here, in Spain, in the early Middle ages, in Cordova, in Toledo, in Granada, in other southern cities, Christians, Moslems, Jews, lived harmoniously together, poets, musicians, writers, sages, all together, admiring each other, helping each other. It went on for three centuries. This wonderful culture went on for three centuries. Was anything like it been seen in the world? What has been, can be again.

I think the educated person of the future will have a wider basis than anything we can imagine now.»

Incluído no livro de ensaios “Time Bites”.

Por último, e não menos importante, Doris Lessing é uma escritora a ler. Não conheço - e acho que passo ao lado - a sua obra de ficção científica, mas a novela e o romance são fenomenais. Destaco A Erva Canta, obra seminal de 1949 que prenunciava tudo o que de bom se seguiria.