This pensive gentleman is the late Brazilian novelist Osman Lins (1924-1978), of whom I've only recently heard but whose work I fully intend to explore: the novel Avalovara, for instance, in which--in a surrealistic manner reminiscent of his cultural cousin, the great Portuguese writer Fernando Pessoa, with his "heteronyms"--Lins introduces the "Yolyp," a person who is two people in one, a kind of spiritual hermaphrodite. (Well, we'll see how it goes.) But I enjoyed this passionate comment by Lins on the eternal subject: Why We Write.
"Earlier I talked about the damnation of being
a writer. But I also said that I wouldn't give this up for anything. I still
want--I swear--to be nothing else in life but a writer. Mine is a free trade, a
rare thing. Not only this. Mine is a trade that drives me towards other human
beings and doesn't betray or offend them in any way. On the contrary: it exalts
and honors them. We reach out to those who are our brothers in the world. Literature,
moreover, is a way of transfiguring the faces we love and making them last a
little longer, just a little longer, in the memory of the world. Not to speak
of the creatures that don't exist, that never existed, that God, out of
distraction or just to give us a chance, didn't create and that only begin to
exist through the power of words. We operate in a society which is, overall,
hostile or indifferent to our work. But how to describe the joy of finding an
attentive reader at the most unexpected times? And this thing is so strong that
it overcomes the barriers of translation. I have found, even in foreign
readers, reactions that are not too far from tenderness. Have you ever thought
about the meaning of this? A human being, overcoming all barriers, including
linguistic ones. Who else, besides the artist, knows this joy?"
