Cotação: I = 95 + II = 95 + 10 (estrutura e correção textual)
I
I. The Burial of the
Dead
(…)
Unreal City,
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Under the brown fog of a
winter dawn,
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A crowd flowed over London
Bridge, so many,
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I had not thought death had
undone so many.
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Sighs, short and infrequent,
were exhaled,
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And each man fixed his eyes
before his feet.
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Flowed up the hill and down
King William Street,
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To where Saint Mary Woolnoth
kept the hours
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With a dead sound on the
final stroke of nine.
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There I saw one I knew, and
stopped him, crying “Stetson!
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You who were with me in the
ships at Mylae!
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That corpse you planted last
year in your garden,
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Has it begun to sprout? Will
it bloom this year?
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Or has the sudden frost
disturbed its bed?
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Oh keep the Dog far hence,
that’s friend to men,
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Or with his nails he’ll dig
it up again!
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You! hypocrite
lecteur!—mon semblable,—mon frère!”
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T. S. Eliot, "The Waste Land."
Analise este excerto tendo em conta, entre outros elementos que julgue
importantes: i) a totalidade do poema; ii) a performance de Fiona Shaw (como
dialoga a sua leitura com esta interpretação corporalizada do poema de Eliot?);
iii) o contexto de produção da obra; iv) o intertexto; v) alguns dos paradigmas
que regem a escrita poética modernista.
II
"Oh, we have a houseful of the most interesting
people," said Flavia, professionally. "We have actually managed to
get Ivan Schemetzkin. He was ill in California at the close of his concert
tour, you know, and he is recuperating with us, after his wearing journey from
the coast. Then there is Jules Martel (…) Then there is my second cousin,
Jemima Broadwood, who made such a hit in Pinero's comedy last winter, and Frau
Lichtenfeld. Have you read her?"
Imogen confessed her utter ignorance of Frau
Lichtenfeld, and Flavia went on.
"Well, she is a most remarkable person; one of
those advanced German women, a militant iconoclast, and this drive will not be
long enough to permit of my telling you her history. Such a story! Her novels
were the talk of all Germany when I was there last, and several of them have
been suppressed--an honor in Germany, I understand. 'At Whose Door' has been
translated. I am so unfortunate as not to read German."
"I'm all excitement at the prospect of meeting
Miss Broadwood," said Imogen. "I've seen her in nearly everything she
does. Her stage personality is delightful. She always reminds me of a nice,
clean, pink-and-white boy who has just had his cold bath, and come down all
aglow for a run before breakfast."
"Yes, but isn't it unfortunate that she will
limit herself to those minor comedy parts that are so little appreciated in
this country? One ought to be satisfied with nothing less than the best, ought
one?" The peculiar, breathy tone in which Flavia always uttered that word
"best," the most worn in her vocabulary, always jarred on Imogen and
always made her obdurate.
"I don't at all agree with you," she said
reservedly. "I thought everyone admitted that the most remarkable thing
about Miss Broadwood is her admirable sense of fitness, which is rare enough in
her profession."
Flavia could not endure being contradicted; she always
seemed to regard it in the light of a defeat, and usually colored unbecomingly.
Now she changed the subject.
"Look, my dear," she cried, "there is
Frau Lichtenfeld now, coming to meet us. Doesn't she look as if she had just
escaped out of Valhalla? She is actually over six feet."
Imogen saw a woman of immense stature, in a very short
skirt and a broad, flapping sun hat, striding down the hillside at a long,
swinging gait. The refugee from Valhalla approached, panting. Her heavy,
Teutonic features were scarlet from the rigor of her exercise, and her hair,
under her flapping sun hat, was tightly befrizzled about her brow. She fixed
her sharp little eves upon Imogen and extended both her hands.
"So this is the little friend?" she cried,
in a rolling baritone.
Imogen was quite as tall as her hostess; but
everything, she reflected, is comparative. After the introduction Flavia
apologized.
"I wish I could ask you to drive up with us, Frau
Lichtenfeld."
"Ah, no!" cried the giantess, drooping her
head in humorous caricature of a time-honored pose of the heroines of sentimental
romances. "It has never been my fate to be fitted into corners. I have
never known the sweet privileges of the tiny."
Laughing, Flavia started the ponies, and the colossal
woman, standing in the middle of the dusty road, took off her wide hat and waved
them a farewell which, in scope of gesture, recalled the salute of a plumed
cavalier.
Willa
Cather, “Flavia and Her Artists”.
Comente a passagem apresentada
considerando, entre outros aspetos que julgar relevantes: i) as políticas de
identidade de género no contexto literário estado-unidense no início do século
XX; ii) a construção das personagens que representam a mulher artista neste
conto e em “June Recital”, de Eudora Welty.
