Martín Fierro - La ley primera

"Los hermanos sean unidos
porque ésa es la ley primera,
tengan unión verdadera,
en cualquier tiempo que sea,
porque si entre ellos pelean
los devoran los de ajuera."

La vuelta de Martín Fierro - José Hernández, 1879

Com o agradecimento de Füllgrafianas a Lota Moncada pelo envio.

Ilustrações: domínio público

Albert Camus - (Apesar do absurdo...) é preciso imaginar Sísifo feliz

Ilustração: domínio público

"Deixo Sísifo no sopé da montanha! Encontramos sempre o nosso fardo. Mas Sísifo ensina a fidelidade superior que nega os deuses e levanta os rochedos. Ele também julga que tudo está bem. Esse universo enfim sem dono não lhe parece estéril nem fútil. Cada grão dessa pedra, cada estilhaço mineral dessa montanha cheia de noite, forma por si só um mundo. A própria luta para atingir os píncaros basta para encher um coração de homem. É preciso imaginar Sísifo feliz".

Albert  Camus, O Mito de Sísifo

Roger Casement - "England, the enemy of Peace" - Still an unfortunate truth

Sir Roger Casement (1864-1916)

"Inglaterra, a inimiga da paz"

Cap IV - The Crime Against Europe

[...]

I believe England to be the enemy of European peace, and that until her "mastery of the sea" is overmastered by Europe, there can be no peace upon earth or goodwill among men. Her claim to rule the seas, and the consequences, direct and indirect, that flow from its assertion are the chief factors of international discord that now threaten the peace of the world.

In order to maintain that indefensible claim she is driven to aggression and intrigue in every quarter of the globe; to setting otherwise friendly peoples by the ears; to forming "alliances" and ententes, to dissolving friendships, the aim always being the old one, divide et impera.

The fact that Europe to-day is divided into armed camps is mainly due to English effort to retain that mastery of the sea. It is generally assumed, and the idea is propagated by English agencies, that Europe owes her burden of armaments to the antagonism between France and Germany, to the loss of Alsace-Lorraine by France, and the spirit and hope of a revanche thereby engendered. But this antagonism has long ceased to be the chief factor that moulds European armaments.

Were it not for British policy, and the unhealthy hope it proffers France would ere this have resigned herself, as the two provinces have done, to the solution imposed by the war of 1870. It is England and English ambition that beget the state of mind responsible for the enormous growth of armaments that now over-shadows continental civilization. Humanity, hemmed in in Central Europe by a forest of bayonets and debarred all egress to the light of a larger world by a forbidding circle of dreadnoughts, is called to peace conferences and arbitration treaties by the very power whose fundamental maxim of rule ensures war as the normal outlook for every growing nation of the Old World.

If Europe would not strangle herself with her own hands she must strangle the sea serpent whose coils enfold her shores.

Inspect the foundation of European armaments where we will, and we shall find that the master builder is he who fashioned the British Empire. It is that empire, its claim to universal right of pre-emption to every zone and region washed by the waves and useful and necessary for the expansion of the white races, and its assertion of a right to control at will all the seas of all the world that drives the peoples of Europe into armed camps. The policy [pg 38]of the Boer War is being tried on a vaster scale against Europe. Just as England beat the Boers by concentration camps and not by arms, by money and not by men, so she seeks to-day to erect an armourplate barrier around the one European people she fears to meet in the field, and to turn all Central Europe into a vast concentration camp. By use of the longest purse she has already carried this barrier well towards completion. One gap remains, and it is to make sure that this opening, too, shall be closed that she now directs all the force of her efforts. Here the longest purse is of less avail, so England draws upon another armoury. She appeals to the longest tongue in history—the longest and something else.

In order to make sure the encompassing of Europe with a girdle of steel it is necessary to circle the United States with a girdle of lies. With America true to the great policy of her great founder, an America, "the friend of all powers but the ally of none," English designs against European civilization must in the end fail. Those plans can succeed only by active American support, and to secure this is now the supreme task and aim of British stealth and skill. Every tool of her diplomacy, polished and unpolished, from the trained envoy to the boy scout and the minor poet has been tried in turn. The pulpit, the bar, the press; the society hostess, the Cabinet Minister and the Cabinet Minister's wife, the ex-Cabinet Minister and the Royal Family itself, and last, but not least, even "Irish nationality"—all have been pilgrims to that shrine; and each has been carefully primed, loaded, well aimed, and then turned full on the weak spots in the armour of republican simplicity. To the success of these resources of panic the falsification of history becomes essential and the vilification of the most peace-loving people of Europe. The past relations of England with the United States are to be blotted out, and the American people who are by blood so largely Germanic, are to be entrapped into an attitude of suspicion, hostility and resentment against the country and race from whom they have received nothing but good. Germany is represented as the enemy, not to England's indefensible claim to own the seas, but to American ideals on the American continent. Just as the Teuton has become the "enemy of civilization" in the Old World because he alone has power, strength of mind, and force of purpose to seriously dispute the British hegemony of the seas, so he is assiduously represented as the only threat to American hegemony of the New World [...]

Fotos: divulgação

David Cameron’s next Falkland War?

http://www.darkpolitricks.com/2012/01/camerons-falkland-war/

W. B. Yeats - Easter 1916

William Buttler Yeats (1865-1939)

I have met them at close of day

Coming with vivid faces

From counter or desk among grey

Eighteenth-century houses.

I have passed with a nod of the head

Or polite meaningless words,

Or have lingered awhile and said

Polite meaningless words,

And thought before I had done

Of a mocking tale or a gibe

To please a companion

Around the fire at the club,

Being certain that they and I

But lived where motley is worn:

All changed, changed utterly:

A terrible beauty is born.

That woman’s days were spent

In ignorant good-will,

Her nights in argument

Until her voice grew shrill.

What voice more sweet than hers

When, young and beautiful,

She rode to harriers?

This man had kept a school

And rode our winged horse;

This other his helper and friend

Was coming into his force;

He might have won fame in the end,

So sensitive his nature seemed,

So daring and sweet his thought.

This other man I had dreamed

A drunken, vainglorious lout.

He had done most bitter wrong

To some who are near my heart,

Yet I number him in the song;

He, too, has resigned his part

In the casual comedy;

He, too, has been changed in his turn,

Transformed utterly:

A terrible beauty is born.

Hearts with one purpose alone

Through summer and winter seem

Enchanted to a stone

To trouble the living stream.

The horse that comes from the road.

The rider, the birds that range

From cloud to tumbling cloud,

Minute by minute they change;

A shadow of cloud on the stream

Changes minute by minute;

A horse-hoof slides on the brim,

And a horse plashes within it;

The long-legged moor-hens dive,

And hens to moor-cocks call;

Minute by minute they live:

The stone’s in the midst of all.

Too long a sacrifice

Can make a stone of the heart.

O when may it suffice?

That is Heaven’s part, our part

To murmur name upon name,

As a mother names her child

When sleep at last has come

On limbs that had run wild.

What is it but nightfall?

No, no, not night but death;

Was it needless death after all?

For England may keep faith

For all that is done and said.

We know their dream; enough

To know they dreamed and are dead;

And what if excess of love

Bewildered them till they died?

I write it out in a verse -

MacDonagh and MacBride

And Connolly and Pearse

Now and in time to be,

Wherever green is worn,

Are changed, changed utterly:

A terrible beauty is born.

Português

PÁSCOA, 1916

Encontrei-vos ao fechar do dia;

Vinham com rostos vívidos

Do balcão ou secretária, por entre

Casas cinzentas setecentistas.

Passei com um acenar de cabeça

Ou palavras de cortesia sem sentido,

Ou então demorei-me um pouco e disse

Palavras de cortesia sem sentido,

E pensei antes de partir

Numa história jocose ou chalaça

Que agradasse a um amigo

À volta do fogo no clube,

Na certeza de que vivíamos

Onde reine o bolbo multicolour.

Tudo mudou, de todo mudou,

E uma terrível beleza nasceu.

II

Essa mulher passava os dias

Em ignorante benevolência,

E as noites em discussão

Até se tornar estridente.

Que voz mais doce que a dela,

Quando, bela e jovem,

Cavalgava com a matilha?

Este homem possuía uma escola

E montava o nosso cavalo alado;

Este outro, seu amigo e seu apoio,

Quase amoderecidos os poderes,

Podia ter, por fim, ganhado fama,

De tão sensível natureza era,

Tão ousado e doce o pensamento.

Este outro homem eu julgava

Um rude e arrogante bêbado,

Que tinha cruelmente ofendido

A quem tenho no coração,

Porém, conto-o no meu canto:

Também ele rejeitou o papel

Na comédia occasional;

Também ele foi, por sua vez, mudado,

De todo transformado:

E uma terrível beleza nasceu.

III

Corações de um só intento,

Ao longo do Verão e Inverno

Parecem de pedra, enfeitiçados,

Alterando a corrente viva.

O cavalo que surge da Estrada,

O cavaleiro, as aves que vão

De nuvem em nuvem rodopiante,

Mudam minuto a minuto;

Uma sombre de nuvem no rio

Muda minuto a minuto.

Um casco que escorrega na borda

E um cavalo chapinha na água;

Mergulham galinhas silvestres

E as fêmeas chamam os machos;

Todos vivem minuto a minuto:

A pedra permanence no meio.

IV

Longo de mais, o sacrifício

Faz do coração uma pedra.

Oh, quando bastará?

Isso cabe ao Céu dizer; a nós,

Murmurar nome após nome

Como a mãe nomeia o filho

Quando, por fim, o sono chega

A membros extenuados.

O que é, senão o anoitecer?

Não, não a noite, mas a morte;

Terá sido afinal a morte inútil?

Pois a Inglaterra pode cumprir,

Apesar de tudo, a palavra.

Sabemos o sonho deles; chega

Saber que sonharam e estão mortos;

E se o excesso de amor,

Por desvairo, os faz morrer?

No meu verso escrevo tudo:

MacDonagh e MacBride

E Connolly e Pearse,

Agora e no tempo por vir,

Onde quer que reine a cor verde,

Mudaram, de todo mudaram:

E uma terrível beleza nasceu.

(trad. João Ferreira Duarte)