Verum ipsum factum. (We only know what we create.) Giambattista Vico What I cannot create, I cannot understand. Richard Feynmann

A arte acabou na Grécia. O resto é repetição.

“...whenever men have no true idea about things which are unfamiliar and distant, or must explain them to others who have no such idea, they describe them in terms of their similarity to things which are familiar and nearby.” Giambattista Vico, New Science

I am obsessed with Vico and watching this video repeatedly.

A Academia Brasileira de Letras, para minha surpresa, ao menos em seu canal no YouTube, está associada a algo que preste.

First time using #Primal on Android. All my deleted messages were not deleted and there is no option to delete them. There is no option even to cancel a repost. Why? It would be very nice having an option to make notes ephemeral in clients.

Vico is a challenging thinker and understanding his New Science seems a doomed endeavor, so I looked for help in commentators and stumbled upon Benedetto de Croce's book The Philosophy of Giambattista Vico. I'm still lost but Croce is less obscure than Vico and he can highlight some important ideas as in the following beautiful excerpt about Vico's vision for poetry: He criticised at once the three doctrines of poetry as a means of adorning and communicating intellectual truth, as merely subservient to pleasure, and as a harmless mental exercise for those who can do it. Poetry is not esoteric wisdom: it does not presuppose the logic of the intellect: it does not contain philosophical judgments. The philosophers, in finding these things in poetry, have simply put them there themselves without realising it. Poetry is produced not by the mere caprice of pleasure, but by natural necessity. It is so far from being superfluous and capable of elimination, that without it thought cannot arise: it is the primary activity of the human mind. Man, before he has arrived at the stage of forming universals, forms imaginary ideas. Before he reflects with a clear mind, he apprehends with faculties confused and disturbed: before he can articulate, he sings: before speaking in prose, he speaks in verse: before using technical terms, he uses metaphors, and the metaphorical use of words is as natural to him as that which we call “natural.” So far from being a fashion of expounding metaphysics poetry is distinct from and opposed to metaphysics. The one frees the intellect from the senses, the other submerges and overwhelms it in them: the one reaches perfection in proportion as it rises to universality, the other, as it confines itself to the particular: the one enfeebles the imagination, the other strengthens it.

Ismália Quando Ismália enlouqueceu, Pôs-se na torre a sonhar... Viu uma lua no céu, Viu outra lua no mar. No sonho em que se perdeu, Banhou-se toda em luar... Queria subir ao céu, Queria descer ao mar... E, no desvario seu, Na torre pôs-se a cantar... Estava perto do céu, Estava longe do mar... E como um anjo pendeu As asas para voar... Queria a lua do céu, Queria a lua do mar... As asas que Deus lhe deu Ruflaram de par em par... Sua alma subiu ao céu, Seu corpo desceu ao mar... Alphonsus de Guimarães

Daqui desse momento, do meu olhar pra fora O mundo é só miragem A sombra do futuro, a sobra do passado Assombram a paisagem Quem vai virar o jogo e transformar a perda Em nossa recompensa? Quando eu olhar pro lado Eu quero estar cercado só de quem me interessa Lenine, É o que me Interessa