Shikasta

“Bem, se nos destruirmos, há muito mais no lugar de onde viemos.” É com esse pensamento que a escritora zimbábuo-inglesa Doris Lessing – vencedora do Nobel de Literatura em 2007 – nos faz mergulhar dentro de uma possibilidade diferente de nossa própria existência. Mas, antes de ser apenas um questionamento existencial, “Shikasta”, primeiro livro da pentalogia Canopus in Argos: Arquivos, evolui para um estudo minucioso e autocrítico de uma humanidade em queda livre.

A trajetória de nosso planeta é narrada na primeira parte da história, onde Johor – um enviado de uma galáxia fictícia criada pela autora para explicar a evolução humana – parte para Shikasta, a Terra, a fim de fazer o trabalho de outro emissário: o de recuperar a humanidade. O que se lê, na verdade, são arquivos e relatórios destinados à Canopus – galáxia colonizadora da Terra – feitos por Johor em suas diversas passagens pela Terra.

O senso crítico da autora pincela no livro um panorama dramático do ser humano enquanto evolue, até atingir o zênite do caos no Século da Destruição (Século XX). O que lemos, no entanto, não é uma crítica acalorada e política, mas um quadro pintado para mostrar os diversos comportamentos humanos contraditórios que poluem a Terra desde seus primórdios, para que nós, leitores, possamos refletir. Trocando em miúdos, o livro não tem a tarefa de doutrinar seus leitores, mas de mostrá-los as contradições comportamentais em que estamos mergulhados, além de nos brindar com uma fantástica história espacial das mais originais [jamais] criadas.

Para isso, relatórios sobre simbioses, arquivos descrevendo comportamentos e até mesmo um diário de uma detenta ‘louca’ (atualmente sendo transcrito aqui neste blog) é relatado para que o leitor melhor entenda a questão comportamental e contraditória. É a ficção e a realidade confundindo-se constantemente durante a leitura; locais descritos em relatórios são facilmente reconhecidos como continentes ou países atuais, emissários do livro também podem ser imaginados até como certos líderes religiosos ou estadistas. Essa ‘primeira parte’ serve para aclimatar o leitor e deixá-lo à par dos problemas descritos para que então Johor possa, de fato, realizar sua tarefa.

A segunda parte do livro, embora não exista essa divisão propriamente dita – e não espere por capítulos – é quando Johor encarna na Terra para cumprir sua tarefa de acordo com as necessidades. Nasce e cresce como o prodigioso George Sherban e sua história é descrita nos diários de sua irmã, Rachel. O tom narrativo do diário não é apenas uma solução para contar a história de George e de sua família errante, mas uma forma da autora evidenciar alguns pontos que permeiam toda a visão Canopiana do comportamento humano naquele momento – por canopiana, leia-se Canopus, a galáxia que coloniza e mantém Shikasta, ou Terra.

A ficção criada por Lessing é quase zombeteira, pois é muito mais simples do que os problemas humanos – quando temos ‘n’ exemplos em que o contrário é frequentemente visto. Considerada como uma das obras mais importantes da autora inglesa, “Shikasta” é o pontapé inicial da série Canopus em Argos: Arquivos, onde cinco livros vão tratar, entre outros problemáticos assuntos, do comportamento humano. Se a ficção é ácida e a realidade problemática, é a anacronicidade da obra que assusta. Lançado em 1978, não é complicado levar os textos, relatórios e narrativas para o tempo atual e entendê-los de maneira completa.

A má notícia é a raridade dos exemplares.

Atualização de 2015:

Terminei pela primeira vez a leitura em inglês do livro e foi uma experiência excelente, pois é possível notar como a escrita da Lessing é bem mais presente, pouco usual — o que combina bem com o teor do livro de ser um constante passeio por vários relatórios enviados do Império Galático sobre a Terra.

Ao mesmo tempo que a escrita torna-se quase infantil no diário da doidinha Lynda Coldridge ou completamente marcial e cuidadosamente excessivo quando os enviados de Shammat comunicam-se entre si.

Puta experiência poder reler e destaco abaixo vários dos trechos que eu acho sensacional e como eles ecoam de maneira atemporal com muitos debates que ainda temos hoje em dia, racial, social, educacional, sexual, psicológico — eu realmente fico super chocado como Lessing já dizia coisas tão sãs em 78 e ainda hoje é uma batalha vermos quão atrasada a sociedade ainda é.

Bruno Portella

Leia também as Resenhas das duas continuações desse livro, Casamento entre as Zonas 3, 4 e 5 e também As Experiências de Sirius, e acompanhe o diário de Lynda Coldridge.

Caso queira comprar, a dica é na Amazon.

Veja abaixo Lessing recebendo a notícia de que venceu o Prêmio Nobel.

"The sacred literatures of all races and nations have many things in common. Almost as if they can be regarded as the products of a single mind. It is possible we make a mistake when we dismiss them as quaint fossils from a dead past."

:)

"...for the economy of the planet is such that every lifeform preys on another, is supported by another, and in turn is preyed upon, down to the most minute, the subatomic level. This is not always evident to the creatures themselves, who tend to become obsessed with what they consume, and to forget what in turn consumes them."

O que nos consome?

"You will observe over the larger part of the sphere a smear of liquid. It is on this film of liquid that the profusion of life depends. (This planet knows nothing of the little scum of life on its surface: the planet has other ideas of itself, as we know; but that is not our concern here.) The point of the exercise is this: to understand that the proliferation of organic possibilities, the harvest of potentiality which is Shikasta, depends, from one point of view, on a scrape of liquid that could be drunk in a moment by a rogue star, or shaken off like puddle-mud from a child’s ball during a game if a comet came in from elsewhere. Which event would be, after all, not without its precedents!"

Efemeridade da vida no planeta.

"This is because the nature of this place is a strong emotion – ‘nostalgia’ is their word for it – which means a longing for what has never been, or at least not in the form and shape imagined. Chimeras, ghosts, phantoms, the half-created and the unfulfilled throng here, but if you are on your guard and vigilant, there will be nothing you cannot deal with."

A terrível Zona Seis.

"Our experiences, some chosen, some involuntary, mature us differently. We may have all begun on one of the planets, and some of us even on Shikasta in the same way, and with not much more to choose between us than between puppies of the same litter, but after even some hundreds of years, let alone thousands, we have been fused, baked out, crystallized, into forms as different as snowflakes are to each other."

Nossas experiências nos maturam diferente. Tão real.

Already depleted by grief, that emotion which of all others is the most useless

Verdade.

Taufiq’s condition, as captive of the Enemy, must be – could be no other – an excess of self-esteem, pride, silliness.

Basicamente todos nós.

at the first sight of them I felt the movement of the heart like a leaking of strength that means sorrow.

Bonito.

I was nearing the centre now, and was looking for grandiosities and pomps that are always a sign of the Degenerative Disease.

:)

Not in this city could it be possible for a child being brought by its parents to be introduced to the halls, towers, centres of its heritage, to feel awed and alienated, to know itself a nothing, a little frightened creature who must obey, and watch for Authority.

Ê, cidade grande.

To identify with ourselves as individuals – this is the very essence of the Degenerative Disease

Complicado.

We are all creatures of the stars and their forces, they make us, we make them, we are part of a dance from which we by no means and not ever may consider ourselves separate.

Somos tudo criatura das estrelas.

They might not go against the Laws of Canopus, I said, not one of us could do that, and the first Law of Canopus was that we may not make slaves and servants of others.

Ainda somos.

I said that Canopus forbade them to use each other or the other creatures of the planet as servants, unless these servants were treated as well as they would treat themselves, as equals at all times. I said that Canopus forbade them to kill animals unless it was for food, and then only with care and without cruelty. They must plant crops, I said, and must harvest fruit and nuts. I said that they might not waste the fruits of the earth, and each might take only what was needed, no more. They must not use violence with each other.

Que custa?

Before the Catastrophe, in the Time of the Giants, who had been their friends and mentors, and who had taught them everything, Shikasta had been an easy pleasant world, where there was little danger or threat. Canopus was able to feed Shikasta with a rich and vigorous air, which kept everyone safe and healthy, and above all, made them love each other. But because of an accident, this substance-of-life could not reach here as it had, could reach this place only in pitifully small quantities. This supply of finer air had a name. It was called SOWF – the substance-of-we-feeling – I had of course spent time and effort on working out an easily memorable syllable. The little trickle of SOWF that reached this place was the most precious thing they had, and would keep them from falling back to animal level. I said there was a gulf between them and the other animals of Shikasta, and what made them higher was their knowledge of SOWF. SOWF would protect and preserve them. They must reverence SOWF.

Amém SOWF.

It was necessary that Taufiq should cause himself to be born into the minority race of the planet, the white or pale-skinned peoples indigenous to the northern areas.

Curioso como na visão Canopeana, a minoria são justamente os brancos.

The young often have moments of clear thinking, which as they grow older become fewer, and muddied.

Como vamos estragando nossa juventudade.

He saw himself in a crucial role – as indeed he should – but one of the strongest of the false ideas of that epoch, politics, had entered into him.

Política. =D

The attitudes outlined in this paragraph define ‘polities’, ‘political parties’, ‘political programmes’. Nearly all political people were incapable of thinking in terms of interaction, of cross-influences, of the various sects and ‘parties’ forming together a whole, wholes – let alone of groups of nations making up a whole. No, in entering the state of mind where ‘politics’ was ruler, it was always to enter a crippling partiality, a condition of being blinded by the ‘correctness’ of a certain viewpoint. And when one of these sects or ‘parties’ got power, they nearly always behaved as if their viewpoint could be the only right one.

Coxinha x Petralhas

The qualities prized in ‘public servants’ on Shikasta were, almost invariably, the most superficial and irrelevant imaginable, and could only have been accepted in a time of near total debasement and falseness. This was true of all sects, groupings, ‘parties’: for what was remarkable about this particular time was how much they all resembled each other, while they spent most of their energies in describing and denigrating differences that they imagined existed between them.

Tão real. Veja um parlamentar discursando, por exemplo.

Looking from outside at this planet it was as if at a totally crazed species.

Somos mesmo.

May your envoy take this opportunity of suggesting that when Canopean eugenists map possibilities for Shikasta, they take into account Shikastan sexual propensities. It has long been my opinion, expressed more than once, that when sexuality was emphasized to ensure survival of species, this was perhaps overdone?

Muito sexo, hehe.

A note on sexual choice. Of course developed individuals with us are androgynous, to put it into the nearest Shikastan terminology possible: we do not have emotional or physical or psychological characteristics that are considered as appertaining to one sex rather than another, as is normal on the more backward planets.

Somos um planeta atrasado.

Standardization of intellectual and emotional patterns had become extreme. A main mechanism for achieving this was a device that supplied identical indoctrinational material simultaneously into every living or working unit, whether that of a single person, a family, or an institution, through a whole country. These programmes were standardized, particularly for children. At best they reinforced a low level of ethic – kindness to animals, for instance – but the worst was inherent in the sheer fact of the infinite repetition.

Sobre educação e meios de comunicação.

intolerance, the energy that is the result of identification with a limited objective?

Foda.

[SEE History of Shikasta, VOL. 3011, The Age of Ideology, ‘Self-Portraits of Nations’. Geographical areas, or temporary associations of peoples for the purposes of defence or aggression. Such an entity capable of believing itself different, better, more ‘civilized’ than another, when in fact to an outside view there is nothing to choose between them.

Genial essas notas de rodapé.

We may perhaps find illumination in the work of one of Shikasta’s own experts (Marcel Proust, sociologist and anthropologist). A servant of a rich family is ordered to prepare a fowl for the evening meal. She is chasing this fowl around a courtyard, muttering Filthy Beast, Disgusting Animal, and similar imprecations, while she catches the bird and kills it. So, too, a torturer new to his job, who has to inflict pain and humiliation on some person he knows nothing of save that this is the enemy: there in front of him or her stands, or lies, or sits a puzzled frightened creature, just like himself, but there is a remedy: the torturer will work himself up to the task by calling the victim all the frightful things his tongue can come by. Soon this individual exactly like himself is a disgusting beast, a filthy animal, and the work can begin. One might describe this process as a tax exacted by fellow-feeling (SOWF) on natures not yet entirely brutalized.

Até tu Proust?

Of all the major religions the most self-righteous, the most inflexible, the least capable of self-examination, this religion of the Northwest fringes, imposed often by forces on people in perfect rapport with themselves and their beliefs as children of the Great Spirit, was officered by individuals incapable of doubt as to their own capacities and rights. To add to the confusion and damage they caused, some were often of great bravery and dedication, with the utmost probity, and capacity – not to say thirst – for self-sacrifice.

Sim, é o cristianismo.

Another reason is that the people of Shikasta, being as they are now, at this time, the children of technology, of materialism, have been taught they are entitled to everything, can have everything, must have everything. Each young person – I am talking of the generality, not of the rare individual – confronts parents in antagonism because, having been promised everything, he soon understands that this will not happen: and the balk, the disappointment, is felt as a promise that has been broken – and is added to the reproof directed towards the parents.

Distância de gerações.

[Shikastans spend a good part of their time being surprised at each other’s behaviour and commenting on it. This is partly because their knowledge in the area they categorize as ‘psychological’ is faulty, and partly because they do not apply what they do know.

Basicamente o Twitter.

We have senses adjusted to a very small range of sight or hearing. All the time sounds are coming in from everywhere, like a waterfall. But we are machines set to accept only let us say five per cent. If the machine goes wrong then we hear more than we need. We see more than we need.

Sobre os loucos.

I have seen something. I wonder how it was I didn’t before. Who is it needs this killing, this agony, this suffering, the death, death, death, death. The blood and the blood. The reek of blood going up from this planet must be in somebody’s nostrils. Somebody needs it. Something. There isn’t anything that doesn’t have a function. What happens always fits in with everything. What happens is needed by something. It happens because it is drawn out of a situation by need. There isn’t anything that happens that is extraneous.

Muito interessante esse conceito de que a violência talvez seja necessária pra alguma coisa — nefasta, seja qual for.