Em memória de Sigmund Freud... 23 de setembro

No dia em que se comemora a morte de Freud(23/09/1939), uma "Elegia", a de W.H.Auden, no seu poema "In memory of Sigmund Freud".

In memory of Sigmund Freud          

by W.H.Auden*

When there are so many we shall have to mourn,

when grief has been made so public, and exposed

     to the critique of a whole epoch

   the frailty of our conscience and anguish,

of whom shall we speak? For every day they die

among us, those who were doing us some good,

     who knew it was never enough but

   hoped to improve a little by living.

Such was this doctor: still at eighty he wished

to think of our life from whose unruliness

     so many plausible young futures

   with threats or flattery ask obedience,

but his wish was denied him: he closed his eyes

upon that last picture, common to us all,

     of problems like relatives gathered

   puzzled and jealous about our dying.

For about him till the very end were still

those he had studied, the fauna of the night,

     and shades that still waited to enter

   the bright circle of his recognition

turned elsewhere with their disappointment as he

was taken away from his life interest

     to go back to the earth in London,

   an important Jew who died in exile.

Only Hate was happy, hoping to augment

his practice now, and his dingy clientele

     who think they can be cured by killing

   and covering the garden with ashes.

They are still alive, but in a world he changed

simply by looking back with no false regrets;

     all he did was to remember

   like the old and be honest like children.

He wasn't clever at all: he merely told

the unhappy Present to recite the Past

     like a poetry lesson till sooner

   or later it faltered at the line where

long ago the accusations had begun,

and suddenly knew by whom it had been judged,

     how rich life had been and how silly,

   and was life-forgiven and more humble,

able to approach the Future as a friend

without a wardrobe of excuses, without

     a set mask of rectitude or an

   embarrassing over-familiar gesture.

No wonder the ancient cultures of conceit

in his technique of unsettlement foresaw

     the fall of princes, the collapse of

   their lucrative patterns of frustration:

if he succeeded, why, the Generalised Life

would become impossible, the monolith

     of State be broken and prevented

   the co-operation of avengers.

Of course they called on God, but he went his way

down among the lost people like Dante, down

     to the stinking fosse where the injured

   lead the ugly life of the rejected,

and showed us what evil is, not, as we thought,

deeds that must be punished, but our lack of faith,

     our dishonest mood of denial,

   the concupiscence of the oppressor.

If some traces of the autocratic pose,

the paternal strictness he distrusted, still

     clung to his utterance and features,

   it was a protective coloration

for one who'd lived among enemies so long:

if often he was wrong and, at times, absurd,

     to us he is no more a person

   now but a whole climate of opinion

under whom we conduct our different lives:

Like weather he can only hinder or help,

     the proud can still be proud but find it

   a little harder, the tyrant tries to

make do with him but doesn't care for him much:

he quietly surrounds all our habits of growth

     and extends, till the tired in even

   the remotest miserable duchy

have felt the change in their bones and are cheered

till the child, unlucky in his little State,

     some hearth where freedom is excluded,

   a hive whose honey is fear and worry,

feels calmer now and somehow assured of escape,

while, as they lie in the grass of our neglect,

     so many long-forgotten objects

   revealed by his undiscouraged shining

are returned to us and made precious again;

games we had thought we must drop as we grew up,

     little noises we dared not laugh at,

   faces we made when no one was looking.

But he wishes us more than this. To be free

is often to be lonely. He would unite

     the unequal moieties fractured

   by our own well-meaning sense of justice,

would restore to the larger the wit and will

the smaller possesses but can only use

     for arid disputes, would give back to

   the son the mother's richness of feeling:

but he would have us remember most of all

to be enthusiastic over the night,

     not only for the sense of wonder

   it alone has to offer, but also

because it needs our love. With large sad eyes

its delectable creatures look up and beg

     us dumbly to ask them to follow:

   they are exiles who long for the future

that lives in our power, they too would rejoice

if allowed to serve enlightenment like him,

     even to bear our cry of 'Judas',

   as he did and all must bear who serve it.

One rational voice is dumb. Over his grave

the household of Impulse mourns one dearly loved:

     sad is Eros, builder of cities,

   and weeping anarchic Aphrodite. 

* Wystan  Hugh  Auden nasceu em 21 de fevereiro de 1907 na Inglaterra e morreu em  28 de setembro de 1973.  Homossexual  assumido  em 1935 casou-se por procuração com a filha do escritor  Thomas Mann ,para possibilitar-lhe obter passaporte  britânico e  fugir da Alemanha de Hitler. Em 1937 alistou-se na Brigada Internacional para combater na Espanha ”vou ser provavelmente  um péssimo  soldado mas como posso   falar  por eles sem ser um deles...”.  Não foi soldado  nem dirigente de ambulância como pretendia ,sendo  designado para divulgar o movimento republicano, que lutava contra o exército e era  apoiado  pela Burguesia e pela  Igreja Católica  .

Visitou a Alemanha, China e em 1939 mudou-se para os Estados Unidos, tornando-se, mais tarde, cidadão americano. Suas crenças mudaram muito entre o período de sua jovem carreira na Inglaterra (onde era adepto do socialismo e da psicanálise Freudiana) e sua fase posterior, na América, quando sua principal preocupação passou a ser o cristianismo e a teologia do protestantismo.

Auden começa sua elegia ”Em memória a Sigmund Freud”  apontando para   um momento  histórico , onde as consciências e as  angustias de  governantes e governados  se tornam públicas frente as ameaças de uma  guerra mundial .   No  período que antecede a morte de Freud ,1939, a revolução espanhola  foi responsável  por milhares de mortes  e    no mês em que Freud  morreu  a Polônia  foi invadida  e iniciada a política de  perseguição e extermínio dos   judeus . Os versos de Auden inserem a morte de Freud  nesse contexto  :

 “Só o Ódio ficou feliz, na esperança de aumentar

Sua clínica e então sua sórdida clientela

 Que pensa  curar-se  matando

E cobrindo  os jardins com cinzas “

A herança  psicanalítica se mostra em outros  momentos  do poema, fazendo alusão aos desejos reprimidos  que, como ‘faunas da noite’ ,"não estão mortos em nosso sentido da palavra, mas apenas como as sombras na Odisséia, que acordou para algum tipo de vida, logo que tinha gosto de sangue"(Freud) ;   ou ainda   fazendo    analogia entre a poesia e a psicanálise, quando compara  o método  analítico a uma lição de poesia assim se exprimindo: “dizer ao Presente infeliz que recitasse o Passado qual uma lição de poesia”.Auden profundamente preocupado pela perda da  identidade  individual e a ascendência de ciências  como a estatística  via em  Freud um aliado dos poetas    contra as formas homogêneas   de  conhecimento.Considerava que o trabalho social da psicanálise como  da poesia deveria  proceder ao nível do individuo  e que  a  tarefa da psicanálise  ou da arte não era  dizer às pessoas como se comportar, mas chamar a atenção, para o que o inconsciente impessoal estava  tentando dizer-lhes,  aumentando assim  o seu conhecimento do bem e do mal.Conhecimento que  poderia torná-las     mais capazes  de escolher e mais responsáveis pelos seus destinos Por esta razão, a psicanálise e a arte se opõe a todas as generalizações. 

 Colaboração e pesquisa de Lucia Frota