na lista: Hjalmar Söderberg. "I often walk out onto Ship's Isle, solely because that's where I spoke to her last. This evening I stood up on the hill by the church, watching the sunset. It struck me how beautiful Stockholm is." em Dr. Glas.
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do site, gostei disto:
PostmodernismPlace: The Western World
Time: 1960-Now (peak)
-Contemporary existence is in a state of confusion.
-The world is absurd. -- The modernist quest for coherence is abandoned.
-Contradictory orders of reality - A taste for science fiction and the eruption of the fabulous into the secular world.
-An interest in the products of culture. (A distinction between "high" and "low" culture is dissolved. Styles are mixed. Commercialism and the media are key players.)
-Disbelief in traditional literary values, originality is challenged through parody, narrative authority is undermined, the canon is questioned, as is the "normal self"
-Radical questioning of the integrity of language
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(um pouco de Dr. Glas)
Well, I'm not Schopenhauer. When I saw the parson coming towards me in the distance across the Vasa Bridge I halted abruptly and, turning, leaned my arms on the parapet to admire the view. Grey houses on Helgeand Island. The crumbling wooden architecture of the old Nordic-style bath-house, reflected in The Stream, in whose flowing waters the grand old willows trail their leaves. I hoped the clergyman hadn't seen me, or wouldn't recognise my rear-view. Indeed, I'd almost forgotten him, when suddenly I realised he was standing beside me, his arms like mine resting on the parapet and his head cocked a little to one side--exactly the same pose as twenty years ago, in Jacob's Church, when I used to sit in the family pew beside my late lamented mother, and first saw that odious physiognomy, like a nasty fungus, hop up in the pulpit and heard him strike up with his Abba Father. Same greyish pudgy face; same dirty yellow side-whiskers, now greying slightly, perhaps: and that same unfathomably mean look behind the spectacles. Impossible to escape! I'm his doctor now, as I am many others'. And sometimes he comes to me with his aches and pains.--Well, well . . . good evening, Vicar, And how are you?--Not too good; in fact not at all well. My heart's bad, thumps irregularly, sometimes stops at nights, so it seems to me.--Glad to hear it, I thought. For all I care you can die, you old rascal, and rid me of the sight of you. Besides, you've got a pretty young wife, whom you're probably plagueing the life out of, and when you die she'll remarry and get herself a much better husband. But aloud I said: Really? Really? That so? Perhaps you'd better come and see me one of these days. We'll look into the matter. But there was a lot more than this he wanted to talk about. Important things: It's quite simply unnatural, this heat. And: It's stupid, building great big parliament buildings on that little island. And: My wife isn't really well, either, if it comes to that.
In the end he cleared off, and I went on my way. Entering the Old Town, along Storkyrkobrinken, I strayed among its narrow alleys. A close evening atmosphere among the cramped passages and between the houses: and along the walls strange shadows. Shadows never seen in our quarters.
Mrs Gregorius, yes! That was a queer visit she paid me the other day. She came to my surgery hour. I noticed clearly when she arrived, but although she had come in good time she waited until the last, letting others who had come after her see me first. At last she came in. Blushed and stammered. Finally blurted out something about having a sore throat. Well, it was better now.--I'll come back tomorrow, she said. Just now I'm in such a hurry . . .
So far she hasn't come back.
Emerging from the alleyways, I walked down Skeppsbron Quay. Over Skeppsholmen Island the moon hovered, lemon yellow in the blue twilight. But my quiet and peaceful mood was gone. Meeting the parson had spoilt it. That there should be such people in the world! Who hasn't heard the old conundrum, so often debated when two or three poor devils are sitting round a cafe table: If, by pressing a button in the wall, or by a mere act of will, you could murder a Chinese mandarin and inherit his riches--would you do it? This problem I've never bothered my head to find an answer to, perhaps because I've never known the cruel misery of being really and truly poor. But if, by pressing a button in the wall, I could kill that clergyman, I do believe I should do it.
As I went on homewards through the pale unnatural twilight the heat seemed as oppressive as at high noon; and the red dust-clouds which lay in strata beyond Kungsholmen's factory chimneys, turning to darkness, resembled slumbering disasters. With long slow steps I went down past Klara Church, hat in hand, sweat breaking out on my forehead. Not even beneath the great trees in the churchyard was the air cool. Yet almost every bench had its whispering couple; and some, with drunken eyes, sat in each other's laps, kissing.
* * *
Now I sit at my open window, writing--for whom? Not for any friend or mistress. Scarcely for myself, even. I do not read today what I wrote yesterday; nor shall I read this tomorrow. I write simply so my hand can move, my thoughts move of their own accord. I write to kill a sleepless hour. Why can't I sleep? After all, I've committed no crime.
* * *
What I set down on these pages isn't a confession. To whom should I confess? Nor do I tell the whole truth about myself, only what it pleases me to relate, but nothing that isn't true. Anyway, I can't exorcise my soul's wretchedness--if it is wretched--by telling lies.
* * *
Outside, the great blue night hangs over the churchyard and its trees. Such silence now reigns in the town that sighings and whisperings among the shadows down there reach up to me in my eyrie. And, once, an impudent laugh pierces the darkness. I feel as if at this moment no one in the world is lonelier than I--I, Tyko Gabriel Glas, doctor of medicine, who at times help others, but have never been able to help myself, and who, at past thirty years of age, have never been near a woman.
