(This is a rush translation. The version may not be in its final form.)
"It is said that the god Hermes when he crosses a man's path, inspires him with the desire of distance." Mr. Mann drank his tea on the terrace of the hotel, with his dark glasses for which he gazed with visible satisfaction at the limpid, mild climate. He had come to Brazil for a "secret" one-month trip, thinking of maintaining discipline in creating his new book, since in Southern California he was "constantly swallowed up for solar activities" - lectures, official tributes, interviews, perhaps because it proved that America "was what everyone knew". (In addition, he had had severe lung surgery.)
Roosevelt had said that he would be a great president for Germany. It seemed simply morbid how they wanted to separate him from everyday humanity. "The trip is the biggest study," said my teacher, but I traveled to stop the time, "he said humorously, requesting another slice of lemon pie. "I've always wanted to see things from afar," he said, seeming to look at me, protected by his glasses. I did not dare to return the look. I preferred pool water. I drank another cup, even with the heat of 25 degrees.
He spoke very slowly, all his movements seemed studied, as if they were part of an opera, but I thought that had nothing to do with arrogance or pedantry, but with a European culture that I would never completely understand. And at the same time, I was constantly feeling that I was also acting, needing to be able to do things in a timely manner, that there was a measure of everything. Especially for "that". "Say it all, but never say 'I,' say Proust said.
Nothing "of it" was spoken at that time. When I saw Mrs. Mann for the first time in New York, I was amazed at his masculine appearance. My father, who had known her many years before, had the greatest admiration for her and, precisely, considered her feminine, to look "strong and sensual". The first thing that struck me, which may be really stupid, was that she was not happy. Today, I think it was a sort of extreme serenity, pride, and detachment, for being the pillar of the house. He, on the contrary, looked like a fragile bird, had white skin, a tender look, and a slightly comic mustache. Somehow, nothing in him made me see the "god of literary philosophy," "incarnate Germany," Plato's "nostalgia" with which he was generally described. Did he feel free because he came alone?
I was a young journalist who had just graduated, the son of a Brazilian concert pianist. I had been scaled to be her chaperone, especially in this first presentation, cause I could speak German and because, I believe, my father supposed it would be a "training job" for me. I had read his book about Venice, of course. I wanted to talk about it, but my shyness would not allow me to. Somehow, did he notice?
We went to the Botanical Garden. Regal Victory, this sexual flower, inspired a languid thought: "Most of my work, I owe to the spirit of my mother, this Brazilian. Oh, greed, oh hell - insatiable, invincible! says the philosopher." He seemed to study closely an elegant transvestite pacing through the orchids. And among the tall palm trees, which seem to grow up to the sky: "At the heart of everything is the will to live, the desire." I remembered reading about his brother's having recommended sleep therapy to him to "treat" his "condition."
- Andre Gide published in 1924 his "Coridon", in which exposes his intimate life. It is said that the Catholic philosopher Charles Maurras went to visit him a year earlier to avoid publication. He asked him to kneel and ask Christ for guidance, and Gide refused to do so. "It is not about being or not being rebellious, but about being true or not," he would have said.
I tried to fight the thought that such a kind man belonged to a past world; he thought that the weight he had on the bottom of his soul should be because he had suffered when he saw what he considered civilization being devoured by madness, which threatened to burn everything. But he was moving on. And he liked to talk.
We went up to the mountain. In the car, I dared to ask something about the book. "Have you read Goethe's Faust?" He asked. "Do you remember that man sells his soul to conquer the world? That makes him grow, he is forgiven. I believed that what saved us from all the bourgeois pettiness, the banality of the accumulating commerce and the calculating bureaucracy, was the art, I thought that art was this passage, that link between being to be and the timeless, the real and the abstract, the sensual and the universal. Thought in feeling, of feeling-thinking. But after the horror, I am afraid of which may be art, science, philosophy. Fear of closed Fausts in your world. "
We had dinner early, walked through the garden of the house that hosted us. He was very excited about his new book. He spoke in "abyss," "pact with the devil," "German destiny," and I, even though I knew myself to be in the face of History, began to feel an increasing weariness. "An intellectual seduced by the sleep of happiness, sunk in dirty stopped water of conservative thinking".
It was cold. We lit the fireplace. "My mother was not bourgeois, she told us beautiful stories, she played with us, and one day my father sent my Brazilian nanny away because she thought she was making me soft" - would he be talking to me? "Passion is death, all desire is suffering, said a pastor who was my father's friend, and this atmosphere generated the romantic revolt. "
The second bottle made us half drunk.
"One day I went to the opera and met a young man who had been my colleague. Dressed with the latest fashion news, surrounded by friends, he appeared, as always, as an intimate of the arts and a daring thinker. Several times in public he had criticized my works, opinions, and even behavior, so that I knew that, behind this cheerful sympathy, there was an even colder hatred of the new and envy. He tried to make me ashamed of being a thinker, and free, trying to convince me I was the kiss of death since the rebellious people in this romantic environment were just the ones who did all the usual things, I just left the theater, this Hades inviting eternal repetition."
He stopped. Our eyes met. I have seen him a few times after that, and I could not even say if I had learned anything from this man, the feeling I have is that I observed life passing freely.
Afonso Jr. Ferreira de Lima
2014
https://afonsojunior.blogspot.com/2014/05/thomas-mann-no-brasil.html
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