A Réplica
Fiz minhas as palavras de Michal Blumenthal sobre a Hungria e a Györgyi, minha amiga húngara, nao tardou a escrever a réplica: uma declaracao de amor ao Brasil! Um texto tao apaixonado e bonito - como todo texto apaixonado - que seria injustica deixá-lo escondido ali nos comentários. Com voces, o coracao da Györgyi - e viva todo tipo de amor e ser amado!
"Dear Anna and all of Brazil,
I cannot leave this without comment any more. God, all these feelings and nostalgies and yearnings - are actually getting stronger and stronger, as Anna is preparing to go back to My Wonderland.
Two years ago I knew hardly anything about this beautiful land, which welcomed me with extreme kindness and warmth and a peculiar feeling of familiarity on January 18, 2004, when I first stepped on its soil in Sao Paulo. I knew nothing about the country, the language, its people, still, I immediately felt I was at home.
I spent just one day in Brazil when I flew over to Uruguay and then to Argentina for a total of three weeks, but all through this time I was sure that Brazil would be my favorite of the three. However, what I did not know then was that Brazil would change all my life, turn everything upside down, and all this never-felt chaos and novelty would make me feel extremely happy.
I returned to Brazil, this time to Rio, on February 4, 2004. I returned there to meet the father of my baby in that 'cidade maravilhosa', just 2 hours after landing. Who could have known all that in advance? I did not. But Fate definitely had it in there for me.
Rio, Brazil and Eustaquio made me feel free, liberated, sunshiny, happy, feminine, passionate and MY BEST EVER SELF. Who was I before, and who did I become after spending just one week with an eccentric, funny, extreme and very difficult 'brasileiro'?! Just that one week brought me a new self-confidence, a new way to look at myself and my life, and although the union of a European intellectual girl and a poor Brasilian worker guy could not be called a guarantee for life-long happiness, I still felt so at ease in this "life-out-of-my-own-life" that it was just the most natural thing in the world to conceive a baby there and then, with him.
Petra changed my life into constant radiance and balance and harmony. Before Petra and Eustaquio and Brazil, I was a girl constantly ridden with self-doubts, serious and long periods of depression, constant failures with men and relationships, although, true, very successful in her job and studies, having the money to travel and enjoy life as best she could.
In Brazil I was the girl with the henna tatoo on her neck, I was the girl who mixed with all kinds of people, who she would never have met in Europe, I was free of all the negative aspects of my life in Europe. Everything felt natural and easy and harmonious.
Brazil gave me a feeling of being in absolute harmony with myself, with the world, with Nature, with life. I knew exactly what I wanted from life there and then - and it was this baby. God, I never really planned to have a baby. Brazil made me instinctive, spontaneous, it changed my whole life and this positive feeling has not left me for a moment since then.
I love the sound of Brazilian Portuguese. I hope to be able to speak it myself one day. I love samba. I love the natural inclination and talent to dance in my own daughter's character. I love this joyful spirit of life, I love the deep, troubled sounds of Rio, I love the scorching heat on its beaches, the old colonial buildings in the city, I love the mischievous smile on the guys' faces - and on my own daughter's, who is such a real, genuine 'brasileira' - already at the age of one! :)
My boldest dream is to live there some day. To show Petra where, and why exactly there, she was conceived. Without Brazil, she would never have existed, without Brazil, I would never have been reborn.
God bless every bit of this land's soil, and every single brasileiro and brasileira. I love you with all my heart, and I hope to see you again, Brazil. Have a happy Christmas!
Györgyi"
Budapest Love Song III
"'For the first time I recognized the truth of beauty: that it is brokenness, it is on its knees... I could sit, merely breathing, and be part of it. I was beautiful - at last. And I didn't care - at last. I stumbled through the ancient streets, stopped in the smoke-grimed coffehouses and added my signature of ash, anonymous, and yet entirely satisfied... I was, simply, in the most beautiful place I have ever seen, and it was grimy and sad and broken...' (Patricia Hampl:
A Romantic Education)
The city Hampl - in her beautiful, lyrical memoir - is speaking of is Prague. But, for me, it is Budapest (...)"
Pra mim também, Michael Blumenthal, pra mim também...
Budapest Love Song II
Mamae, lembra que um dia eu tentei descrever os prédios, as ruas de Budapeste, "such a multiplicity of browns and greys that the two colours themselves have taken on rainbow-like dimensions in my imagination", lembra disso? Pois é, esse Michael Blumenthal também acha a mesma coisa, deve ser assim mesmo...
Budapest Love Song
"'What do you love so much about Budapest?', they always ask. 'Isn't it, well, a bit primitive?' Yes, friends, it is a bit primitive, a bit sad, a bit tragic, a bit unfinished, a bit tinted, a bit melancholic - yes, yes, the way the beautiful always is and always has been tainted, primitive, slightly sad, unfinished, tragic, eternally hopeful. What is beautiful here - what has stolen my heart the way not even a beautiful woman has ever stolen my heart (now, finally, I realize why so often, in literature, the allure of a city is equated with the allure of a woman) - is precisely this (...)
In Budapest the future beckons to us with hope precisely because it is not yet realized, not yet perfected. Like a small scar on the underbelly of an otherwise perfect creature, it perpetually cries out to us
human! human! in its palpable griminess, its discrete lack of urgency and subculture of stolen pleasures, its ebullient inefficiency(...) Like a cat, it is passionate and tender, at times penurious, at times generous with its affections, but exactly as it chooses: it refuses, defiantly, to submit to our everdomesticating wishes."
(Michael Blumenthal)
Estatuazinha de Gesso
“Esta minha estatuazinha de gesso, quando nova
– O gesso muito branco, as linhas muito puras –
Mal sugeria imagem de vida
(embora a figura chorasse).
Há muitos anos tenho-a comigo.
O tempo envelheceu-a, carcomeu-a, manchou-a de pátina
amarelo-suja.
Os meus olhos de tanto a olharem,
Impregnaram-na da minha humanidade irônica de tísico.
Um dia mão estúpida
Inadvertidamente a derrubou e partiu.
Então ajoelhei com raiva, recolhi aqueles tristes fragmentos,
Recompus a figurinha que chorava.
E o tempo sobre as feridas escureceu ainda mais o sujo
mordente de pátina...
Hoje esse gessozinho comercial
É tocante e vive, e me fez agora refletir
Que só é verdadeiramente vivo o que já sofreu.”
Foi uma referencia a esse poema do Manuel Bandeira minha resposta ao Prof. Martinez quando ele me perguntou sobre Budapeste. Porque é assim que eu sinto a cidade: ao mesmo tempo em que traz consigo uma imponencia que a fez receber o apelido de "Pérola do Danúbio", traz consigo também tantas marcas de tempos difíceis que, por sua vez, fazem com que ela seja mais humana, mais real. Budapeste é como a estatuazinha quebrada, eu tentei dizer ao meu professor, meses atrás.
Hoje recebo um presente de minha colega de quarto. Um artigo:
In Praise of Broken Cities, escrito por um professor americano, Michael Blumenthal, e foi como se eu lesse meus pensamentos em ingles...
Mikulás
A cada dia que passa eu dou mais razao ao meu irmao, que um dia afirmou a Hungria ser "um país muito alternativo"! Papai Noel chegar vinte dias antes, por exemplo, é algo, no mínimo, inusitado! Dezembro mal comecou e ele, que recebe o nome de Mikulás ao cruzar a fronteira, já passou por aqui! - e nao, nao vai mais passar de novo. No fim do mes, dia 24, quem traz a árvore e mais presentes é o próprio Menino Jesus - ou entao os seus anjinhos, já que ninguém nunca tirou uma foto pra provar. Sim, há controvérsias, só nao há dúvidas de que na noite de Natal Papai Noel estará bem longe daqui, talvez nas Américas, distribuindo o resto dos presentes que ele já comecou a espalhar pela Hungria.
Hoje cedo as criancas húngaras sentiram a presenca do bom velhinho, encontrando seus sapatinhos cheios de bombons, nozes, frutas, brinquedinhos. Isto é, as criancas que merecem tais agrados porque, no meu caso, a família tanto reclamou que eu nao dou notícias, que eu nao escrevo no blog que, mesmo há muito já sendo adulta, recebi... "virgács"! De qualquer forma, obrigada, família... Brincando de Polianna, pelo menos gravetinhos dourados sao mais legais que carvao! :-P
In Brazil I was the girl with the henna tatoo on her neck, I was the girl who mixed with all kinds of people, who she would never have met in Europe, I was free of all the negative aspects of my life in Europe. Everything felt natural and easy and harmonious.
