The
presentation of the second romance
of Darcy Ribeiro – “The
Mule”- at the Montes Claros
Academy of Literature, on one of
those languid Friday nights in December,
was an encounter with happiness
and contrasts, with a loved and
respected, even feared, son of the
city, to pour in our ears the honey
and bile of saintly heresies and
virtues. Sometimes tender, dripping
romanticism, loved son of Mrs. Fininha
Silveira, sometimes the demolisher,
pregnant of war, brother of Mario
Ribeiro, sometimes compulsively
creative, a spiritual cousin to
Konstantin Christoff. It’s
because Darcy Ribeiro was born far
from the adapted, calm, tranquil
ways of the people from Minas Gerais,
never able to appreciate silence
or isolation. He was quite the contrary,
bothersome to people who were lazy
of feelings and intelligence, unflinchingly
flailing out with scalpel or whip,
all the while self-proclaiming himself
to be the best of the best.
Contrary
to Cyro dos Anjos, another famous
writer and son of Montes Claros,
this serene, extremely organized,
universal intellectual, well accommodated
to his position of public employee,
enjoying an invisible silence, Darcy
Ribeiro is agitated, fiery and tropically
Brazilian, heated in his body and
soul and displays it to all, in
his daily work and at war, instinctively,
feline as a jaguar. He, the owner
of a savage, unlimited intelligence;
Darcy rationalizes like a hurricane
of love, always tuned to all that
is culture. He was weathered and
molded primitively in the sun and
dust of the hinterland of Montes
Claros, telluric fruit of tenderness
and instinct, of a voluptuous, world
ambition, Darcy is an effervescent
cauldron of ideas, wanting to live
all lives in only one. Mortal, he
wants immortality and immortal he
became by his thousands of realizations.
Darcy
the mule, very Brazilian Latin lover,
brings in his soul, the tastes of
the flesh of all races: the color
of the Indian, the color of the
negro, memories of atavism and mysticism
of the Celts, the warlike force
of the old Godos, the taste for
power of the Iberian soul, a conception
so grand of space and glory that
only Phoenician navigators could
have fathered the blood of the sailors
of old Portugal. There’s more
to it: Darcy is as lascivious as
a new Christian, fiery as a nomad
Arabian horseman. In truth, he is
a man with the heart of all races,
not just Indian, Portuguese and
African peoples, joined together
in the Brazilian melting pot. Darcy
represents the human race, because
he is the bearer of so many virtues
and defects, a well-seasoned soup
of genes cast upon the winds of
time… why he was born in Montes
Claros, I have no idea.
The
“Mule” is this city
bursting with monumental force,
humanly a partner of God and men,
in the distribution of life and
death; divinely eager, thirsty in
the search of love, creatively involved
in the quest of command and power.
Sensual, opportunist, materialist,
religiously mystic, hungry for new
experiences and dreaming of the
future. “The Mule” represents
the part of every creature that
lives totally together with his
own homeland, be it man or woman.
“The Mule” has a lot
of João Valle Maurício
in it, both in word and in subtlety,
a lot of Konstantin, in the opening
of anatomy and in the force of his
drawings; much of Crispim da Rocha,
in the ability of a man of the jungle,
strong and intelligent, a lot of
Filomeno in the need to have and
to command; a lot of Plínio
Ribeiro, in the mysticism, in the
taste of producing thoughts and
ideas, in the to be and not to be
of life. “The Mule”
is Darcy Ribeiro and his brother
Mário, inconsequent and perseverant,
always determined.
“The
Mule”, center of a well romanced
plot of Realism and Naturalism;
Baroque, perhaps due to their contrasts,
it was hereditarily marked by destiny,
fruit of love and no love, feet
unchained, with no origin and no
destiny, product of land and flesh.
“The Mule” in truth,
is all of us, small great creatures,
in suffering and in enjoying life.
…And
God forgive us…Amen!
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