ABRUPTO

11:20 (JPP)

POEIRA DE 28 DE MARÇO

Hoje, há setenta e quarto anos, o homem que mais mudou as coisas com leis, Mustafá Kemal, dentro de uns anos conhecido como Ataturk, mudou o nome de uma pequena vila asiática, cheia de carneiros, de Angora para Ankara, e o nome de um dos centros do mundo, antigamente chamado de Constantinopla ou Bizâncio, para Istambul.

Hoje, há setenta e três anos, Virgínia Woolf sentou-se para escrever o seu diário. Na noite passada morrera Arnold Bennett. Sobre ele escreve estas linhas terríveis e contraditórias:

"A loveable genuine man; impeded, somehow a little awkward in life; well meaning; ponderous; kindly; coarse; knowing he was coarse; dimly floundering and feeling for something else; glutted with success; wounded in his feelings; avid; thicklipped; prosaic intolerably; rather dignified; set upon writing; yet always taken in; deluded by splendour and success; but naïve; an old bore; an egotist; much at the mercy of life for all his competence; a shopkeeper's view of literature; yet with the rudiments, covered over with fat and prosperity and the desire for hideous Empire furniture, of sensibility, Some real understanding of power, as well as a gigantic absorbing power. “

E continua:

“I remember his determination to write 1000 words daily; and how he trotted off to do it that night, and feel some sorrow that now he will never sit down and begin methodically covering his regulation number of pages in his workmanlike beautiful but dull hand. Queer how one the dispersal of anybody who seemed - as I say - genuine: who had direct contact with life - for he abused me; and I yet rather wished him to go on abusing me; and me abusing him. An element in life - even in mine that was so remote - taken away. This is what one minds.”