herbário

ainda com a ideia de Rousseau, perseguido, a ocupar o seu tempo com o catálogo da flora na ilha de Saint-Pierre, nesse gesto de miniatura e listagens e sistemas de organização obsessivos que me vejo tanto a ter que quero começar já amanhã. todas as colecções me atraem dessa maneira e todos os coleccionadores que vejo absortos descobrindo detalhes e coisas ínfimas, elaborando esquemas complicados para o registo sistemático, ter de escolher e imaginar recipientes por exemplo e todas as condições de espaço e de permanência que rodeiam a colecção. Nabokov e as borboletas ou o Gabinete de Amador (grande mentira a verdade) de Perec. também podia inventar espécimes de folhas, agulhas, ramos, pétalas, frutos.

a acordar e no mais nebuloso das imagens que vemos ao acordar de manhã, vejo Rousseau colhendo folhas no meio de uma floresta verde onde cai a luz, como o meu filho que ontem me pediu para começarmos um herbário, não dito desta maneira mas ainda assim de um modo claro. talvez não haja muita coisa mais pessoal do que as ideias embaciadas com que se sai do sono.

saint pierre

ainda com as batotas digitais, a criar cores onde elas faltam, contorno onde são indistintos, estações modificadas, a entrar em casas, varadins e a olhar para dentro de ninhos, adulterar os olhos tem disso, criar o que se vê para logo depois crer que essa é a tal verdade, grande mentira a verdade. à noite visitei a ilha de Saint-Pierre, no lago Bienne, onde Rousseau procurou refúgio no Outono de 1765.

"Quand le soir approchait je descendais des cimes de l'île et j'allais volontiers m'asseoir au bord du lac sur la grève dans quelque asile caché ; là le bruit des vagues et l'agitation de l'eau fixant mes sens et chassant de mon âme toute autre agitation la plongeaient dans une rêverie délicieuse où la nuit me surprenait souvent sans que je m'en fusse aperçu. Le flux et reflux de cette eau, son bruit continu mais renflé par intervalles frappant sans relâche mon oreille et mes yeux, suppléaient aux mouvements internes que la rêverie éteignait en moi et suffisaient pour me faire sentir avec plaisir mon existence sans prendre la peine de penser." (daqui)

o gosto não muda

engraçado descer às minhas caves para rebuscar o Caminhante Solitário na primeira edição da Cotovia (gostava daquelas capas bicolores) que ofereci a alguém em 1989 e que esse alguém confiou à minha guarda até hoje.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau: The Reveries of the Solitary Walker. First Walk

HERE I am, then, alone on the earth, having neither brother, neighbour, friend, or society but myfelf. The most sociable and the most: friendly of mankind is proscribed from the rest by universal consent. They have fought in the refinements of their malice to find out that torment which could most afflict my tender heart ; they have violently broken every tie which held me to them : I had loved mankind in spite of themselves. They had no other means than ceasing to be such of avoiding my affection. They are therefore unknown foreigners; nothing, in fact, to me, since they will have it so. But I, withdrawn from them and from every thing, what am I then? This remains to be fought into. Unfortunately, this research must be preceded by a view of my situation. This is an idea thro' which I muft necessarily pass, to arrive from them to me.

For fifteen years and more that I am in this strange situation, it still seems to me a dream. I continually imagine an indigestion troubles me, that I sleep badly, and that I am going to awake quite eased of all my pain, and am once more with my friends. Yes, without doubt, I must, without perceiving it, have skipped from labour to rest, or rather from life to death. Torn, I don't know how, from the order of things, I find myfelf precipitated into an incomprehensible chaos, where I can't distinguish the least thing; and the more I reflect on my present situation, the less I comprehend where I am.

Ah I how could I foresee the fate which awaited me ? How can I yet conceive it, at this moment that I am devoted to it? Could I, in my right senses, suppose a time when I, the same man I was, the same I still am, sbould be called, sbould be held, without the least doubt, a monster, a corrupter of mankind, an assassin; that I should become the aversion of the human race, the sport of the rabble ; that all the salutation I should receive from those who passed me would be spitting at me; that a whole generation would divert themselves, by common accord, in burying me alive ? When this strange revolution took place, taken unprepared, I was at first lost as in a maze. My agitation, my indignation, plunged me into a delirium which ten years were not too much to calm; and in this interval, falling from error to error, from fault to fault, from folly to folly, my imprudence supplied the directors of my destiny with all the instruments they have ingeniously set to work to fix it without a hope.

...

reveries

Rousseau foi uma avalanche, Thoreau discípulo tardio. Rousseau iniciador, mas estas caminhadas foram forçadas pela velhice e pelo exílio. em Walden os caminhos eram novos e voluntários. Rousseau vegetariano no papel, predador na vida. Thoreau uma lua toda a brilhar no lago, podia chamar-lhe integridade.

agora:

quero isto. e quero isto. depois do Walden, estava condenada.

[grande Cotovia].

"On Thursday, the twenty-fourth of October, 1776, I walked after dinner through the Boulevards, as far as the Rue du Chemin-vert; from whence I gained the heights of Ménil-montant, and, passing through the vineyards and meadows, crossed, as far as Charronne, the lovely manor that separates those two villages; after which, I took a circle, designing to cross the same meadows by another path." todo online, só no google books que lhe deu uma introdução romantizada ("This is a digital copy of a book that was preserved for generations on library shelves before it was carefully scanned by Google as part of a project to make the world’s books discoverable online.") está bem, não me aborrece nada. preferia o original mas ficaria pela terceira linha, senão pela segunda.