Herman Hesse e a (não) dicotomia entre disciplina e liberdade

[00:00:03]Perfect. So, we're live.

[00:00:06]Good evening to everyone watching another workshop from LER, the novel studies laboratory at USP (University of São Paulo). I am Pedro Horta, as you can see here in the box. I also have a master's degree in literary theory and comparative literature from USP (University of São Paulo).

[00:00:30]And I am here in the role of mediator. The star of the show today is Luana, uh, Luana Gonçalves Carvalho Fúncia, who will be presenting today a workshop titled " Herman S and the Non-Dichotomy Between Discipline and Freedom."

[00:00:51]Okay, so I'm going to read a brief introduction about who Loana is, and then I'll give her the floor. I'm going to disappear from your screens for a while, but I'll still be behind the scenes monitoring everything. So feel free to ask questions, to interact during Luana's presentation, and then at the end we'll have about 15 minutes for questions, so we can chat about Luana's presentation and about her. She holds a master's degree in philosophy from the University of São Paulo (as a KISPROEX scholarship recipient), a bachelor's degree in law and also in philosophy from USP, and is currently pursuing a degree in literature (Portuguese and German), all from USP. So, let's take care of the house here. Luana, the stage is yours, make yourself at home, and thank you very much for being here.

[00:01:59]Good evening everyone. Pedro Horta, thank you so much for this introduction, an excellent presentation you're doing, because you covered all this behind-the- scenes information with great kindness. Thank you, Pedro. I thank Lero for the opportunity to talk a little about Herman H. Uh, I'm going to talk about two novels specifically, but I'm going to propose that we... So, starting off, [laughs] starting the workshop, propose that we don't think about the novels without a key to interpretation. In other words, it's possible that someone has read both of these novels and it's likely that they haven't suddenly followed this line of reflection, and it's possible to explore other, many other lines of reflection. And that's a broad thing, right? Interpretations of a novel, interpretations of a work of art. But what I want to propose is the question of how Herman Ré presents himself in the underworld. It 's a novel, and I'll talk briefly about it; it's a lesser-known novel here in Brazil.

[00:03:13]I came across it somewhat by chance when I was a teenager. I wanted to read Siddhartha, but the book I had at my parents' house was Under the Wheels. So, I started from underneath the wheels and was fascinated.

[00:03:27]So, considering that intellectual discoveries often happen by chance, it's neither a good nor a bad thing to value chance, right? And what I want to do, beneath the surface, is to explore the key to understanding this dichotomy, or lack thereof, between discipline and freedom. So, I'm going to bring up some things from philosophy for us to discuss, uh, some elements. So, briefly, what I thought of bringing from Herman R.'s novel, "Under the Wheels," is that he explores in this novel the idea of ​​a decline in the protagonist. So, it's the contact he has with a friend that's like an initiatory rite of poeticizing his life, an initiatory rite of new knowledge; this contact causes him to begin to feel out of place socially. So, we can think of it this way: these creative thoughts of the friend that influence the protagonist, would they be an element of knowledge or an element of anti-knowledge?

[00:04:44]This is the point I wanted to propose for us to reflect on, because if they are, let's think about it this way, to put it simply, there are two friends, one is disciplined, a student, who does the things that need to be done for the assignment, and the other is undisciplined, creative, who produces poetry, who has a more critical mind. So we could think of it this way, as Herman H presents it, as a kind of dichotomy, right?

[00:05:18]So discipline for the protagonist is something emptied of meaning. And that's precisely where Herman Hest's critique lies, directed at the German educational system of the 20th century, of which he is a part. This criticism refers to this rigor, this strictness of the context of the German educational system. So, what do I want to propose for us to think about? So I'm going to bring up other things, other elements for us to think about, so whether knowledge is always a form of freedom or if there is some kind of knowledge that is not freedom.

[00:06:02]In other words, is discipline dichotomous with freedom or not?

[00:06:10]Herman R's novel seems to offer us the answer that there is a dichotomy between discipline and freedom. The discipline that would be [laughs] is receiving specific rules and following those rules in a certain way, including rules of knowledge, this would lead to a lack of freedom, a lack of creation, a lack of poetic initiation, an impoverished conformity.

[00:06:38]But look, what I want to discuss with you is precisely this: we 're in a slightly different context than Herman Hest in Germany, right?

[00:06:48]So, we tend to think of power, of knowledge, as a form of power.

[00:06:54]So that's actually a quote from Bacon, the philosopher, knowledge is power. So there's a whole tradition that holds, on the one hand, that every form of knowledge is a form, therefore every form of discipline is a form of freedom, for example.

[00:07:12]So you might think that a person who is learning to read and write would be freeing themselves from a lack of knowledge.

[00:07:20][snoring] That's one thing. On the other hand, it has a whole tradition within Germany itself. right? So, for example, I thought about bringing this up, but I didn't put our brief description of what I was going to discuss with you, because it would n't fit in there, it wouldn't fit in the synopsis. So, what I want to discuss with you is that there is a form of knowledge that can be its opposite. So, that's what Herman has to say—he's a product of a German tradition, like for example the philosophers of the Frankfurt School—and he's going to talk to us precisely about this form of knowledge that is not freedom.

[00:08:06]This is a very interesting thing for literature, which is what Herman R proposes in the subtext, but it's also interesting for other reflections on society, on philosophy.

[00:08:20]So, let's see if I made myself clear.

[00:08:21]Let's go.

[00:08:23]When we think about these philosophers from the Frankfurt School, briefly, when they consider that there exists a form of knowledge, such as instrumental knowledge, what does that mean? Ah, I know how to build a building, I know how to do mathematical calculations.

[00:08:43]Within this form of knowledge, which is quite precise and pragmatic, there exists something that produces anti-knowledge, something that is not rational, a residue, something that does not serve freedom. So we can consider this to be one of the explanations, for example, from the Frankfurt School regarding the rise of Nazism.

[00:09:08]Herman is in a different context, right?

[00:09:11]But in a way, the romance beneath the wheels doesn't fail to have some... it keeps the vision, it lets [laughs] hint at the issue of Nazism. Why?

[00:09:22]Because he's saying where he's going, where he's going, and that's giving rise to this excessive technical rationality. Where will this student end up who is obedient, does their homework, but lacks creative knowledge, poetry, literature, and critical thinking? So that's what I find interesting, the idea that Herman R... well, he writes a novel that represents a decline, right? I'm going to have to give you a spoiler with this term, sorry, but it 's not a good idea, but it's necessary for you to understand the title, which is where the protagonist goes under the wheels.

[00:10:05]So, because it's a decline, it begins with a student who is subjected to the rules, a student who just does what is necessary, then he meets this person, the friend who is the one who captivates, who has the poetry, the critique. [snoring] And this criticism, or the German education system, causes him to have such a great social inadequacy that he will end up committing suicide. That's the story of the wheeled debate. It shows that his genius, the brilliance of the protagonist, in a way leads to self-destruction, right? And this, this issue of destruction, we can think of it as an allegory, of course, because there is a character there who actually destroys himself, but this is still an allegory of the destruction of something collective, like Nazism. So that's the parallel. I'm not saying that we're talking about Nazism in the book, but I am saying that this dichotomy between discipline and freedom will also appear in the thinkers of the Frankfurt School. In what way? It's not stated that way, but it will appear as a question that is precisely about thinking [snoring] like reason and enlightenment. So, the entire Enlightenment project, which is about knowledge, the expansion of science, the expansion of philosophy, has instead led to an intervention and reversal of reason and myth. What myth is that? This myth that you have a cycle of reason, and that this reason at its peak doesn't lead to progressively greater improvement, it leads to the opposite, which is the rise of a charismatic leader who decides to exterminate part of the population with the support of other people in a certain collective cynicism.

[00:12:18]So, I wanted to bring this up, and I also wanted to offer another reflection for your discussion, right? It reminds me of a film I watched recently, and I'd say it's a rather different film, which is why it deserves to be remembered. It 's a 1995 film called Queitá, the Legacy of the Griô, by Dani Cuayatê, a film from Burkina Fa, and it happens to be available on YouTube with subtitles. It has the original languages, but it's available with Portuguese subtitles for anyone who wants to look for it. This film, this issue of the griot, illustrates very well the discussion we are having here about the dichotomy, or lack thereof, between discipline and freedom, because the griot is a master, a shaman, a master of the tradition of the original African tribes. So, in this film there's a scene where the children are at school, they're learning French, they're learning about the geography of the colonizer, they're learning lessons about France and about French grammar.

[00:13:41]So, that would be the discipline, right?

[00:13:43]They are the good students, so they will leave knowing how to speak French, the capitals and the countries that were colonized by France. And then, at the same time, what happens to the protagonist? He drops out of school, he stops attending those classes, and instead he listens to the stories of the griot.

[00:14:03]Why does this have an interesting parallel with Herman Rees? Because this very act of listening to the traditional narrative of the Griot shows that the protagonist, as in the film I'm talking about, does not submit to a discipline that dictates the French knowledge, that is, traditional knowledge.

[00:14:28]He seeks the knowledge of the griot, which is an original knowledge. And this original knowledge, we could say, is closer to poetics, creativity, and imagination, as was the case in Herman R.'s work, with that question of the friend's knowledge that impresses, that impresses our protagonist. So, to say what this issue is, again, I think, in the 1995 film, which is Cri's legacy, there's also a dichotomy between discipline and freedom.

[00:15:02]And what that could mean, in specific issues or practical examples, I don't know how to put it, so you understand it in another way. That is to say, this means your little one, for example, that a good student at a school, regardless of nationality, can, in that subject, not develop a critical form of knowledge. Knowledge is not synonymous with discipline; it is calculative knowledge, mathematical knowledge, practical knowledge, and does not necessarily coincide with freedom.

[00:15:40]So, what aspect of this discipline can be considered freedom? That's the issue that seems to have been put under the rug by Herman R, as we have an ending in the book that is a decline and shows the protagonist dead, right? So he shows an irreconcilable conflict between these two characteristics, between him having a poetic brilliance and him having this irreconcilable characteristic of having a genius, a poetic brilliance, and him having social adequacy. It shows that this conflict for the protagonist does not have a favorable outcome, there is no reconciliation.

[00:16:30]But I brought another novel by Herman Hess, which is Siddhartha, perhaps the best known to the Brazilian public, Siddhartha. So we need to think about how Herman R handles this in other stories, how he develops the characters, how he manages these antagonistic forces. In another story, Siddhartha, as many of you know, is a novel that is an ascension. So the initiatory rite of Sidata's protagonist is precisely to have freed himself from the shackles, let's call them, of Western dictates.... and having performed an enlightenment ritual through Eastern knowledge, right? The very name of the book, Siddhartha, refers to this. So, it's knowledge related to Eastern wisdom, right? And he has an ascension rite, so he has an enlightenment, he manages to resolve some conflicts that he was experiencing, the protagonist of Siddhartha, he manages to resolve these conflicts through this knowledge from the East, knowledge that we could call Buddhist today, from this tradition.

[00:17:49]So this initiation rite of Sidata shows that Herman Rest hints at valuing non-Western forms of knowledge, right? That's why I brought the film "Queal: Legacy of the Griot," which is an African film, because Sidarta, in this rite of ascension, achieves this ascension precisely by possessing knowledge that is not Western. The problem he's facing, the lack of meaning he experiences, the protagonist dates, is the everyday life of the Western world. So there he is, a young man without much direction, unsure where he can find meaning in his life. If we broke it down, simplifying it a lot. Now, the reason this appreciation of non- Western knowledge appears is because the rite is one of ascension. So he's saying, ah, hinting, right, Herman R. If we have a Western knowledge that takes away, deprives, creates an existential void, an original or Eastern form of knowledge, or a non-Western form of knowledge, can deal with these conflicts in another way.

[00:19:07]Otherwise, it doesn't mean he resolved everything, that's not it, but he didn't die, he didn't have an irreconcilable conflict that led to suicide, to death. So this gives us a glimpse, a glimpse, right? These are keys to understanding the novels that, in both "Under the Wheels" and "The Novel Is Dated," involve a question of knowledge that is not Western.

[00:19:38]How does this show up under the wheels?

[00:19:41]It appears precisely because he's saying that discipline— we could compare it to school discipline, what you learn in school, what you learned, right, in German schools—this rigorous knowledge was what?

[00:19:58]Western knowledge. Ah, so the person will learn everything that was known up to the 20th century about history, everything that was known about geography, all the mathematical knowledge. This is Western knowledge, this is discipline. And freedom is critical thinking.

[00:20:13]We could make that connection. And what would freedom be? Ah, creativity, original knowledge, which comes in as an issue that antagonizes this Western discipline. That's the hypothesis I came up with in the novel Under the Wheels, which is often also seen as a critique of the strict German educational system of that time, right?

[00:20:44]So, but I think that if we frame it as this dichotomy between discipline and freedom, it helps us to think about issues, as I said, perhaps it wasn't so clear and now I'm going to return to the issue that in a tradition like Herman R's, this dichotomy between discipline and freedom appears in my reading, a dichotomy between discipline and freedom beneath the wheels. For example, another area of ​​this dichotomy would be the philosophy of the Frankfurt School. So, when we read Adorno and Horkheimer's Dialectic of Enlightenment, they are authors who believe there is an opposition between a form of Western knowledge that is mathematized, a form of knowledge that relates [snoring] to ends to be achieved.

[00:21:34]So, it needs to be verifiable, it always needs to be fact- checked.

[00:21:44]What do they relate this form of knowledge to? There is a progressive, indeed progressive, realization of the enlightenment project, but at the same time a growth of a residue of totalitarianism that culminates in Nazism. So we could then consider that the Frankfurt School also had this interpretation of antagonism. On one hand, there is discipline, which is traditional, formal, mathematical, and biological knowledge, and on the other hand, there is freedom, which comes from critical thinking. Then you'll tell me: "But then, is this a critique of reason for reason's sake in the Frankfurt School?

[00:22:24]That's not a critique of reason for reason's sake, it's not an aporia." Yes, it is an aporia. And I think it is an aporia. What does an aporia mean? Maybe... uh... no, no, you don't know... no, no, no problem. The theory means that there's no way out. It's as if we were saying: "Ah, so I'm criticizing reason for reason's sake." "So I have to throw away part of the reason and keep another part, still with the possibility of criticism." Yes, because the only possibility of making criticism is reason. But this very reason that is being criticized, uh, it is also the target of criticism. That 's the idea of ​​aporia. It's an aporia. It's like a thought that does n't have an 'and' and isn't circular like a logically flawed thought.

[00:23:15]It's circular because it's a practical contradiction. The contradiction of this aporia is history. It's not a contradiction that you think, uh, for example, 'ah, so there's a contradiction between [snoring] the reason of Nazism and the Enlightenment project.'

[00:23:32]This contradiction is a historical contradiction, it's not simply a vision of two ideas that, in someone's mind, are antagonistic, right? So, I think that's what's interesting, to think of aporia as two uh, two antepositions that arise because history, the historical interpretation of these thinkers from the Frankfurt School, shows that this aporia and this way of explaining the world is... The only possible one, right? So we're going back to Herman Hesk's text, with that thought, and I'll open it up for discussion shortly, but I also wanted to bring something more relevant to the Brazilian reality. If we consider that I brought up Bacon's point, that quote from Bacon, that knowledge is power. And I wanted us to reflect on this because generally, in a context like Brazil, where educational opportunities are so scarce, we tend to immediately associate knowledge with a form of freedom. "Ah, so I learned to write and I became free," right? So, perhaps in our context, Herman Hesk is thinking about the rigorous German educational system; perhaps this issue is different here, really.

[00:25:01]So, thinking of an author like Paulo Freire saying that the relationship between education and emancipation might make sense in a country like ours, where people have scarce resources of knowledge.

[00:25:16]School knowledge is very limited, and progress in the sciences is very limited. Now, if we think about... In a context like Germany, the project of enlightenment—which is what? The one in the title of *Dialectic of Enlightenment*, the project of the Enlightenment— was realized in a way that, uh, the project of the Enlightenment means what? Human emancipation through knowledge, through science, through study, through knowledge. So, this project of human emancipation in a country like Germany, where the system is very rigorous and a student who wants to be a little more creative, a little more inventive, has no space, as is the case with our protagonist, who is extremely repressed in his manifestations of genius, brilliance. So this shows uh, this difference between countries, right? So there it would make sense to think that this rigorous educational system leaves no room for other forms of knowledge. Perhaps in Brazil someone would say: "Ah, but Herman Has's critique of the dichotomy between discipline and freedom makes no sense at all, because people need access to knowledge, which is basic before questioning whether excessive access to knowledge, whether excessive access "Knowledge is an antagonist of freedom." I agree. So, for example, if someone were to say to me: "Ah, here in Brazil we're thinking of education and emancipation as a whole and there's no room for thought." That education may not be emancipation, right? There's no room for that. But Ran R is bringing up a discussion that's historically situated in 20th-century Europe, and I wanted to bring up that background, that issue, along with the film, right? Because the film, I'm going to revisit a bit of the film, the legacy of the Griô, which is the legacy of the Griô. When a student stops being a student, he stops going to class and learning [laughs] French, learning the geography of countries that were colonized by France, he would be, as we have this debate that exists today, he would be anti-colonial, decolonial.

[00:27:39]So, in listening to the Greô, who is the most experienced person in the tribe, recounting the oral narratives of Africa, of the origins, of the native populations, he would be precisely the one who represents decolonization. He would have genuine critical thinking skills, which isn't simply about being disciplined and conforming to the colonizer's wishes. So this scene appears in this film that tells the story of the Griô's legacy.

[00:28:12]And it's very interesting to note that.

[00:28:13]So, for example, when we have a quote like the one from Bart, in the courses at the Collège de France, according to which language is fascist, we can think about what that would mean.

[00:28:27]But I think that what we can do is create an enigma, right?

[00:28:32]We can offer an interpretation.

[00:28:35]When that student from the film Legacy of the Griot stops learning French grammar to listen to his griot, who is a keeper of the past, telling the original language, the original stories, he is being [clearing his throat] precisely that, he is being precisely that which is decolonial. He's thinking differently from the school's perspective, which expects him to know French. When he says Roland Bart, that the language is fascist, what is he thinking? For this student to speak French, right? He would be using a language that is fascist, because it's an imposition that he has at school, a language that colonized his country.

[00:29:28]So, let's think about this—and this reflection is indeed valid for Brazil—which is to consider that when we say "the language is fascist," I'm saying it here in Portuguese, in the Portuguese language, the language is fascist. This statement is a statement written in the Portuguese language. And how many native languages ​​have been hidden, right, and are hidden in my speech so that I read, so that I speak Portuguese as the only official language, when there are still hundreds of native languages, indigenous languages ​​spoken in Brazil. So this is an issue that goes quite far beyond Herman H., in fact, but these are issues that he hints at; he plants a seed that is an interpretative key to the opposition between discipline and creativity, which could lead to various avenues of philosophical reflection, political reflection, and literary reflection as well.

[00:30:37]So I think that this is the possibility of non-dichotomy, as I said, right? There is no dichotomy between discipline and freedom; that would be the Brazilian example, as I said, which perhaps leads us to say: "Wow, there is a dichotomy between discipline and freedom." But I always imagined that studying or gaining knowledge was a form of freedom. For us, in common sense, knowledge is freedom, in the national common sense. And Herman H goes against this common sense, even as a form of philosophical astonishment, when he shows, through the protagonist's decline, the way things are going from under the wheels. that the protagonist's discipline was a safeguard for his continued survival. When he begins to have freedom, when he begins to be critical, when he begins to develop poetry and creativity— poetic, literary, something more connected to the order of emotions, something critical of that system he was part of, the educational system he was a part of—he begins a decline, and then, as you all know, as I told you, and those who have read it know, " This under the wheels" is also a metaphor, because the wheels have a mechanism. See? So, it's as if the social gears of a system that functions in a certain way subjugate the protagonist, relegating him to the ground because he is crushed, his subjective uniqueness is crushed by these dictates that attempt to make all people the same, as if they could be equal, when they are not. No. So it is a device of homogenization that attempts to remove the singularities of subjects, like a cog in a wheel. And he, who is a uniquely creative, poetic being, goes into decline and ends up dead, literally dead, because of this mechanism that tries to equalize him and to which he doesn't fit, right? So, this is also another issue that Herman R brings up in the routes debate, that there could have been a reconciliation, right? That's perhaps what we were hoping would happen, that on the one hand he could develop critical thinking skills, and on the other hand he could be a well-rounded student.

[00:33:31]Now, the narrative exaggerates to show the dilemma I faced between discipline and freedom, demonstrating that it's an irreconcilable conflict that will end with the protagonist's death.

[00:33:42]His genius is not understood. There's no middle ground between this genius and submission to school rules.

[00:33:52]He will be largely repressed regarding his artistic expressions and will end up with the rest of the ground, the rest of the ground under the wheels. So, these are the discussions I wanted to bring to you, and I think maybe I went through some things a little quickly because our time is limited, but I just wanted to reinforce one last point.

[00:34:23]So, there's also the issue, thinking about the 20th century, the question of civilization, which is the inescapable aspect of civilization: repression. So, to think that knowledge is always freedom would be a bit like disregarding Freud's legacy, for example, when thinking about civilization and its discontents, that every form of knowledge, every form of sociability has a burden of repression, right? So Herman Hess, he's involved in these trends of 20th-century philosophy and psychoanalysis, and he expresses them in literature because his form of expression is literary. And he then shows that knowledge cannot be immune to these repressive tendencies, because we are in a civilization.

[00:35:20]So, it's a bit like it's impossible to have freedom of knowledge without a little repression.

[00:35:29]Rest shows that this form of repression, this form of freedom, is practically, let's say, impossible, right? It's impossible, and this leads to the protagonist's conflict, which ultimately results in his death.

[00:35:45]So I brought this up for you, but I just wanted to reinforce that, for example, when we talk about a form of critical thinking, it's very difficult to define what that would be, but it's a form of thinking, perhaps counter-hegemonic, right? Perhaps a good synonym would be either decolonial or anticolonial, or something that returns to original knowledge, autochthonous knowledge, or something that returns artistic knowledge, artistic skills, poetry, literature as central forms, different from what I mean by discipline, sedimented Western knowledge, such as science, mathematics, which has as its standard the measurement of a means to an end. What does that mean? Measuring a means to an end. The possibility of measuring how much an intermediate action favors a final situation. So, for example, I do a calculation that I know will give a final result for constructing a building. This is a type of instrumental reason in the nomenclature of the dialectic of enlightenment of Adame Rorcânio.

[00:37:00]This question of instrumental reason is also being eclipsed by reason. So, to think about this, to prioritize instrumental reason, the reason that can be freedom, is something that Herman R does, proposing, as I'm saying, this dichotomy between discipline and freedom in the novel "Under the Wheels," which can also be understood in a contrasting reading, in turn, of ascension in the novel "Siddhartha," where traditional Eastern knowledge allows the protagonist to resolve conflicts. So, he manages to avoid an irreconcilable issue that would lead to death, as happens in the novel Beneath the Roads. So, that's what I wanted to present to you. Maybe I spoke a little too fast, but that's why I'm giving us some time to talk, so you can tell me if you have any questions.

[00:38:02]Pedro showed up here. Thank you very much, Pedro. I'm going to mute my microphone for a bit.

[00:38:08]No problem, Luana. Well, first of all, thank you very much for the introduction. That's quite a lot to think about, isn't it? Finally, I'm here, I imagine that, like the audience, I'm pondering a little, still digesting a little, in order to formulate my questions. I have a few, some more ready than others. One thing I'd like to ask you, Luana, concerns this question of how literary creation emerges. I'm going to ask you to focus specifically on what's happening under the wheels and on Sidarta, right? Finally, regarding this issue, but specifically about the novels, and I'm asking about this as well, because these are novels that I don't know, and, well, you mention this opposition between instrumental knowledge and a more poetic knowledge. How does this actually appear within the novels themselves? What kind of poetry do these protagonists create? If you can generalize a bit, tell us a little about it.

[00:39:20]So, Pedro, thank you so much for the question.

[00:39:24]In the novel "Under the Wheels," this poetry, I could say, appears more as a form of disobedience.

[00:39:33]Like this?

[00:39:34]The friend of literary inspiration, uh, of poetic inspiration, causes our protagonist to stop going to classes, to lose interest in formal content, and to start reading literature instead.

[00:39:52]He, as happens in the film I mentioned, is about leaving a space, you know, to produce other things.

[00:40:02]So this genius that he shows is a poetic genius, because as I said, he will start to be an absent student, a student who will present seminars whose way of doing things is repressed by the teachers, and will have grades that are not satisfactory.

[00:40:21]So, in the novel, beneath the wheels, this poetic act, it clashes with the formal knowledge of being in the classroom as the good student he was before his poetic contact with this friend. Now in Sidarta this appears in a different way. This poetic practice I'm mentioning isn't exactly poetic; it's more like poetry in an etymological sense, right? Poetry as creation. So, Sidata creates another version of himself, right?

[00:40:55]So he's like a young person like us, maybe I'm a little younger now, but he 's a young man in his early twenties, Sidarta, who starts to have existential doubts, doubts about the direction of his life, let's call it that, using Western terminology. He goes through a rite of enlightenment in which he abandons the social context he is part of, as if I were a young person who today went to India in search of enlightenment, leaving behind material possessions and Western daily life. So this poetics isn't exactly a poetics of literary creation. In the case of the citizen, I meant that it's a form of traditional, Eastern knowledge, right? So, there's a kind of poetry in this self-creation, in this disobedience of Western dictates. That's the point I wanted to propose, this connection between the two novels.

[00:41:53]Perfect, thank you very much. And then Mariana Oliveira, who if I'm not mistaken is the Mariana Oliveira you exchanged emails with, right? The organizer of our workshop here, she brought up a question. The question she wrote is very detailed, so it's a bit long. I'm going to put the first part here on the screen, and then I'll read the rest. If you need it, Luana, I can show you the other comments that continue this line of thought.

[00:42:24]Just ask. But anyway, since she's taking advantage of my question, could you comment a little more on the literary construction of the two novels you mentioned? So you touched on the symbolic image of the wheel, which appears in the title of "Under the Wheels" and ends up gaining strength, right, in the protagonist's ending. And beyond this symbolism, this idea of, well, descent, of ascension, uh, of the protagonists, do you see any difference in the language itself, in the form of the novels that reinforce these different trajectories? They, finally, the text is articulated. I'm trying to paraphrase a little bit what I believe Mariana's question is.

[00:43:13]If I'm exaggerating, Mario, we're close enough for you to correct me too. Well, how does this difference in narrative structure, in narrative arc, appear in the text? They are very different novels, but are they similar in terms of the author's language? What would you say, Luana?

[00:43:41]What about the language? So, for those of us who have a Brazilian experience like Guimarães Rosa, who is an experimenter with languages, right? I wouldn't say that Herman Rest deals specifically with language, with experimentation, right? Well, the difference is that there's a decline at the bottom of the ladder and an increase at Sidata. What we can see, and also the translation, is by Herbert Caro. So, I haven't read it in German, because it's been a long time since I've had contact with those works, but I could try now, as a student of German literature, to read it in German, but I haven't done that.

[00:44:24]So, uh, this original flavor would have to be tested to see if it makes that distinction in the German language.

[00:44:32]Herbert Caro's translation, on the other hand, which is undoubtedly an excellent translation of superior quality, does not make this distinction regarding language. What happens?

[00:44:43]Language ends up being a support for explaining these stories. [snoring] So, when it comes to that difference in narrative, I wouldn't say it's in the language like, uh, in the adjectives or nouns or anything like that. She's in a different narrative, right? So, it's about how he tells the stories, but not that, for example, the adjectives are necessarily dark under the wheels and more open in Sidarta. No, that's not the point. He is an author who has a very simple language, I would say, that [snoring] and also that has a very important role for young people, if there are young people, very young people, because it is literature that is easy to access, that is enchanting, so that we become captivated by the story. And I would say that the way to do this is narrative, not through the way the language is articulated, right?

[00:45:54]Perfect. Thank you very much, Luana. Uh, I have one last question I'd like to ask you. If there are any more questions in the chat after this one, I'll move on. Otherwise, it might be the final question.

[00:46:10]Well, because one, actually, well, that was one of the allusions you brought up during your initial speech, I'd like to add a little more context and ask you if this aligns with your reading of the novels, how you would fit these pieces together, that you mentioned Bart's class, right, which even has the book, it's not here with me because I'm at my mother's house today, but it's one of the ones that's usually right up here on my bookshelf.

[00:46:47]Save the translation by Leila Perrone Moisés, which is also very good.

[00:46:51]One detail I've always found interesting in his statement about language being fascist is that he says: "Language is fascist not because it censors, because it prevents or silences something, but because it compels one to speak."

[00:47:11]This seems to resonate with the points you made about the novels, and this tension between everyday language and literary language. I believe Bart's interpretation is precisely that literature is not only interesting but important because it is this language that contradicts language itself. In the same way that criticism is reason that contradicts reason itself. For Bart, literature is this: this way of finding cracks in the rigid structure that is everyday language.

[00:48:10]How do you agree with my interpretation? Do you think this is relevant for us to consider Res's novels? And tell me a little about how you see this issue, Luana. I agree with your interpretation, and I was thinking while you were making this brilliant point... I thought that, well, there are spaces, right?

[00:48:35]Thinking like that, the fascist language, it may not hide another, but when I say one word I can't say another at the same time. There's a question of submission to space-time, let's call it that. So, I think that in R.'s novel this appears as a place. How so? He's not in the classroom.

[00:48:59]This gives space to other types of creation. So, when we speak, as in the example I gave, I wouldn't necessarily think, as you said, that speaking the Portuguese language is an erasure. It's not necessarily an erasure, as you said, it's an obligation. Because I can suddenly say, "Luana, like in that one—I forgot the name of the novel, now speaking off the cuff is difficult—by Lima Barreto, where the person who has there, I forgot the title of the novel, but there's a protagonist who decides not to speak Portuguese anymore, he gives up, says: 'No, now I'm going to speak an indigenous language.'" And I also forgot which one he chooses. But in fact, when the People do this, it's not an individual choice. I have an obligation to the language, an obligation to the Portuguese language, which is the language of everyday life, right, in our country. Now, literature creates a space that is totally different. That's where I would say it's a space of freedom, right? That's why I think there's the metaphor of the protagonist under the wheels, him creating poetry, artistic creation, as a space of freedom, in fact. And I agree with you that everyday language can be fascist, right? It's a hypothesis to be verified, but that literary language may not be fascist is a hypothesis I would bet on more. I would say that I would bet on both, but more that literature is a space of freedom, a space of freedom from the non- retention of a space of greater experimentation, and that it wouldn't be a fascist space. It could be, right, but in essence it wouldn't be. These are hypotheses that we would have to verify. Right? And there are fascist novels, for example, when someone writes an autobiography like Hitler's, and then, well, we could say that's not literature, maybe it's a way of... But there's a discussion, I think the interesting thing is that we 're exercising critical thinking of freedom, right? Precisely because we 're not in the model of instrumental reason that subjects the verification of what we're saying to pre-given standards.

[00:51:44]That would be the problem, right? Having a pre-given parameter and not being able to exercise critical or literary thought, or that the novel had to submit to pre-given forms. Then it wouldn't be a novel of freedom, there wouldn't be room for experimentation in literature, right? So I think we leave these questions because they are very interesting and they don't have a right answer. That's the point, right? I think the most important thing is to know that there are countless questions and the answers are not unique, there are multiple possible interpretations.

[00:52:28]Perfect. Thank you very much, Ana. I think I agree quite a bit, especially with this spirit of curiosity that you bring to the discussion. Literature. That's what made me prefer literature back in the day, and from the time when I chose this branch for my studies, and I think it resonated quite a bit with our audience as well. Including the last comment here, the last contribution from an internet user. It 's not a question, but a direct compliment. Mário Pio Júnior said: "Congratulations, Professor Luana, you piqued our curiosity, we're going to research the author and his novels, and so on. I don't know about you, but for me this is the ultimate achievement of our study work, which is to provoke more thought, more reflection."

[00:53:19]And with that, I say goodbye, Luana.

[00:53:22]Thank you very much for your contribution to our workshop, and to Lero, for providing this opportunity. And I leave the final word to you to conclude, in short, any comment, anything you would like to say to end our conversation here, feel free.

[00:53:46]I would also like to take this opportunity to thank Lero for the opportunity.

[00:53:51]Well, I've wanted to give a workshop at the Sursomance Lab for quite some time now, and finally I've had the opportunity. I'm very happy. I am grateful to Pedro, Mariana, and others I spoke with via email. It's a very organized team, and thank you so much for this work; it's so important.

[00:54:12]Perfect. Good evening, everyone. Until next time. Ciao. Ciao.