moral e ética

Tolstoi é claro, as suas ideias sólidas e limpas, o bem e o mal definidos, o corpo e a mente, a simplicidade e a empatia, a terra e a honra, a alegria de celebrar a vida. em Guerra e Paz, muitos são os episódios memoráveis e que vibrarão pelo futuro, vivos para sempre em obras alheias e nos arquétipos da cultura comum. Andrei olhando para as nuvens, Anatol caindo do cavalo, Denisov roubando víveres para o seu pelotão, a alcoviteira. há também a shakespeariana varanda de Natasha. e Anna Karenina está lá no corpo de Ellen, Lévin e Kitty em Andrei e Natasha. das mais impressionantes 'cenas': Andrei atravessando o hospital militar. esta cena então perde-se na contagem de réplicas. aqui, este movimento que acompanha o andar do personagem é mais frequente, ou o olhar de quem está de lado a ver. em Karenina, o olhar começa no meio do grupo de pessoas e depois eleva-se para uma vista panorâmica de toda a sala, outro lugar entretanto comum do cinema.

não me admira que Nabokov tenha dedicado a vida à literatura russa: entre Gogol, Tolstoi, Dostoiesvky e Chekhov está na verdade quase tudo.  (não esquecendo o pai, Turgenev e ele próprio, Nabokov, o último ? nesse breve período genial) --que século glorioso ("One century, the nineteenth, had been sufficient for a country with practically no literary tradition of its own to create a literature which in artistic worth, in wide-spread influence, in everything except bulk, equals the glorious output of England or France, although their production of permanent masterpieces had begun so much earlier. This miraculous flow of esthetic values in so young a civilization could not have taken place unless in all other ramifications of spiritual growth nineteenth-century Russia had not attained with the same abnormal speed a degree of culture which again matched that of the oldest Western countries. I am aware that the recognition of this past culture of Russia is not an integral part of a foreigner's notion of Russian history. The question of the evolution of liberal thought in Russia before the Revolution has been completely obscured and distorted abroad by astute Communist propaganda in the twenties and thirties of this century. They usurped the honor of having civilized Russia.", diz o mestre.)

e continua:

"For an artist one consolation is that in a free country he is not actually forced to produce guidebooks. Now, from this limited point of view, nineteenth-century Russia was oddly enough a free country: books and writers might be banned and banished, censors might be rogues and fools, be-whiskered Tsars might stamp and storm; but that wonderful discovery of Soviet times, the method of making the entire literary corporation write what the state deems fit — this method was unknown in old Russia, although no doubt many a reactionary statesman hoped to find such a tool. A staunch determinist might argue that between a magazine in a democratic country applying financial pressure to its contributors to make them exude what is required by the so-called reading public — between this and the more direct pressure which a police state brings to bear in order to make the author round out his novel with a suitable political message, it may be argued that between the two pressures there is only a difference of degree; but this is not so for the simple reason that there are many different periodicals and philosophies in a free country but only one government in a dictatorship. It is a difference in quality. If I, an American writer, decide to write an unconventional novel about, say, a happy atheist, an independent Bostonian, who marries a beautiful Negro girl, also an atheist, has lots of children, cute little agnostics, and lives a happy, good, and gentle life to the age of 106, when he blissfully dies in his sleep — it is quite possible that despite your brilliant talent, Mr. Nabokov, we feel [in such cases we don't think, we feel] that no American publisher could risk bringing out such a book simply because no bookseller would want to handle it. This is a publisher's opinion, and everybody has the right to have an opinion. Nobody would exile me to the wilds of Alaska for having my happy atheist published after all by some shady experimental firm; and on the other hand, authors in America are never ordered by the government to produce magnificent novels about the joys of free enterprise and of morning prayers."

sem dúvida, mr. nabokov. poucas coisas foram tão assassinas como o comunismo russo.