a terra como deus

Não está muito longe das tradições mais antigas, nem dos povos anteriores ao cristianismo, os povos do livro. Recuperada e reciclada a imagem da terra divina em To a God Unknow, um cristo de sacrifício pela sobrevivência da fertilidade. De certo modo recuperada a imagem que agora se revê pelos olhos estatísticos de quem alterou o curso das estações. Os não-católicos mais afastados da mãe-terra, os católicos semi-pagãos com as suas cerimónias e representações e finalmente o homem natural, nesta procissão de valores. Um cortejo de símbolos e mitos, gostei das personagens tipificadas e maiores do que elas próprias de To a God Unknown, mais ainda das árvores, do musgo e dos riachos e, finalmente, das mulheres, ligação de sempre do homem-ideia ao que lhe resta de bicho.

As mulheres e a violência particular do seu mundo em dois momentos, o parto e a morte.

Rama was washing out the baby's toothless mouth with warm water while Alice set the safety pins in the strip of muslin that would bind Elizabeth's hips after the placenta came. «Only a little while yet,» Rama said. «It will be over in an hour.»
Joseph sat heavily in a chair and watched the women, and he watched the dull, pained eyes of Elizabeth, filled with suffering. The baby lay in its basket-crib, dressed in a gown twice as long as itself.
When the birth was all over, Joseph lifted Elizabeth and held her in his lap while the women took up the fould birth pad and made the bed again. Alice took out all the rags and burned them in the kitchen stove, and Rama pinned bandage around Elizabeth's hips as tightly as she could pull it.
. . .

A furtive step sounded on the porch. He heard the front door open quietly. A rustling sound came from the sitting-room. Joseph lay still and listened, and wondered idly who was there, but he did not call. And then the bedroom door opened, and he turned his head to look. Rama stood naked in the doorway, and the lamplight fell upon her. Joseph saw the full breasts, ending in dark hard nipples, and the broad round belly and the powerful legs, and the triangle of crisp black hair. Rama's breath came panting, as though she had been running.
«This is a need,» she whispered hoarsely.
In Joseph's throat and chest a grinding started, like hot gravel, and it moved downward.
Rama blew out the light and flung herself into the bed. Their bodies met furiously, thighs pounding and beating, her thewed legs clenched over him. Their breath sobbed in their throats. Joseph could feel the hard nipples against his breast; then Rama groaned harshly, and her broad hips drummed against him, and her body quivered until the pressure of her straining arms crushed the breath from his chest, and her hungry limbs drew irresistibly the agonizing seed of his body.
She relaxed, breathing heavily. The strong muscles grew soft; they lay together in exhaustion.
«It was a need to you,» she whispered. «It was a hunger in me, but a need to you.»

in To a God Unknow
John Steinbeck