Fiat Lux II

Occasion cannot make me weak or strong

For mine own soul the true occasion is,

Nor shall I measure fact more short or long

Except the soul's rod space exceed or miss.

Like a revolving many‑coloured sphere

My soul turns to the event one casual side,

And shows to it what was already there;

Its hue with the turned hue the effect decide.

So, various by position, not by shape,

Outward in truth but by its motion’s seeing,

The produced act cannot foreseeing escape

Save it take colour of act for shape of being.

I am the same; change cannot change me for

More than mine own illusion of what is more.

Fernando Pessoa

Fiat Lux...

“Desejaria construir um código de inércia para os superiores nas sociedades modernas. A sociedade governar-se-ia espontaneamente e a si própria, se não contivesse gente de sensibilidade e de inteligência. 

Acreditem que é a única coisa que a prejudica. As sociedades primitivas tinham uma feliz existência mais ou menos assim.

Pena é que a expulsão dos superiores da sociedade resultaria em eles morrerem, porque não sabem trabalhar. 

E talvez morressem de tédio, por não haver espaços de estupidez entre eles. 

Mas eu falo do ponto de vista da felicidade humana.

Cada superior que se manifestasse na sociedade seria expulso para a ilha, a Cidade dos superiores. 
Os superiores seriam alimentados, como animais em jaula, pela sociedade normal.

Acreditem: se não houvesse gente inteligente que apontasse os vários mal-estares humanos, a humanidade não dava por eles. 

E as criaturas da sensibilidade fazem sofrer os outros por simpatia.

Por enquanto, visto que vivemos em sociedade, o único dever dos superiores é reduzir ao mínimo a sua participação na vida da tribo.

Não ler jornais, ou lê-los só para saber o que de pouco importante e curioso se passa; não ninguém imagina a volúpia que arranco ao noticiário sucinto das províncias. Os meros nomes abrem-me portas sobre o vago.

O supremo estado honroso para um homem superior é não saber quem é o chefe de Estado do seu país, ou se vive sob monarquia ou sob república.

Toda a sua atitude deve ser colocar a alma de modo que a passagem das coisas, dos acontecimentos não o incomodem. Se o não fizer terá que se interessar pelos outros, para cuidar de si próprio.”

Fernando Pessoa

"Livro do desassossego"

Into a vision before me the world

Flowered, and it as when a flag, unfurled,

Suddenly shows unknown colours and signs.

Into an unknown meaning, evident

And unknown ever, it outspread its lines

Of meaning to my passive wonderment.

The outward and the inward became one.

Feelings and thoughts were visible in shapes,

And flowers and trees as feelings, thoughts. Great capes

Stood out of Soul, thrust into conscious seas,

And on all this a man‑sky spoke its breeze.

Each thing was linked into each other thing

By links of being past imagining,

But visible, as if the skeleton

Were visible and the flesh round it, each one

As if a separate thing visibly alone.

There was no difference between a tree

And an idea. Seeing a river be

And the exterior river were one thing.

The bird's soul and the motion of its wing

Were an inextricable oneness made.

And all this I saw, seeing not, dismayed

With the New God this vision told me of;

For this was aught I could not speak nor love

But a new sentiment not like all others,

Nought like the human feelings, men are brothers

In feeling, woke on my astonished spirit.

With a great suddenness did this disinherit

That thought that looks through mine eyes of the pelf

Of ordered seeing that maketh it itself.

O horror set with mad joy to appal!

O self‑transcendency of all!

O inner infinity of each thing, that now

Suddenly was made visible and local, though

No manner of speech to speak these things in words

Followed that vision! Sight whose sense absurds

Likeness of like, and makes disparity

Contiguous innerly to unity!

How to express what, seen, is not expressed

To the struck sight that sees it? How to know

What comes to senses' threshold to bestow

A visible ignorance upon the knowing?

How to obey the analogy‑behest,

Community in unity to prove

The intellectual meaning of to love,

Shipwrecking difference upon the sight

Renewed from God to Inwards infinite?

Nothing: the exterior world inner expressed,

The flower of the whole vision of the world

Into its colour of absolutely meaning

In the night unfurled,

And therefore nought unfurling, abstract, that,

Vision self‑screening,

Patent invisible fact.

Nothing: all,

And I centre of to recall,

As if Seeing were a god.

The rest the presence of to see,

Hollow self‑sensed infinity,

And all my being‑not‑souled‑to‑oneness trod

To fragments in my sight‑dishevelled sight.

This Night is Light.

Fernando Pessoa

"Fiat Lux"

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