O Spleen de Paris - pequenos poemas em prosa (Le Spleen de Paris)

About Paris Spleen by Baudelaire:

Le Spleen de Paris, also known as Paris Spleen or Petits Poèmes en prose, is a collection of 51 short prose poems by Charles Baudelaire. The collection was published posthumously in 1869 (see 1869) by Baudelaire's sister, and is associated with the modernist literary movement.
Baudelaire mentions he had read Aloysius Bertrand's Gaspard de la nuit (considered the first example of prose poetry) at least twenty times before starting this work. Though inspired by Bertrand, Baudelaire's prose poems were based on Parisian contemporary life instead of the medieval background which Bertrand employed. He told about his work: "These are the flowers of evil again, but with more freedom, much more detail, and much more mockery." Indeed, many of the themes and even titles from Baudelaire's earlier collection Les Fleurs du mal are revisited in this work.
These poems have no particular order, have no beginning and no end and they can be read like thoughts or short stories in a stream of consciousness style. The point of the poems is "to capture the beauty of life in the modern city," using what Jean-Paul Sartre has labeled as being his existential outlook on his surroundings.
Written twenty years after the fratricidal June Days that ended the ideal or "brotherly" revolution of 1848, Baudelaire makes no attempts at trying to reform society he has grown up in but realizes the horrors of the progressing modernizing of Paris. In poems such as "The Eyes of the Poor" where he writes (after witnessing an impoverished family looking in on a new cafe): "Not only was I moved by that family of eyes, but I felt a little ashamed of our glasses and decanters, larger than our thirst...", showing his acknowledgment of the poor conditions in his city, and also showing the feelings of despair that accompanies the acknowledgement.
The title of the work refers not to the abdominal organ (the spleen) but rather to the second, more literary meaning of the word, "melancholy with no apparent cause, characterised by a disgust with everything".^[1]

Table of Contents (from Raymond N. Mackenzie's 2008 translation)

To Arsène Houssaye
1. The Foreigner
2. The Old Woman's Despair
3. The Artist's Confession
4. A Joker
5. The Double Room
6. To Each His Chimera
7. The Fool and Venus
8. The Dog and the Vial
9. The Bad Glazier
10. At One in the Morning
11. The Wild Woman and the Little Mistress
12. Crowds
13. The Widows
14. The Old Mountebank
15. Cake
16. The Clock
17. A Hemisphere in Her Hair
18. Invitation to the Voyage
19. The Toy of the Poor
20. The Fairies' Gifts
21. The Temptations: Or, Eros, Plutus, and Fame
22. Evening Twilight
23. Solitude
24. Plans
25. Beautiful Dorothy
26. The Eyes of the Poor
27. A Heroic Death
28. Counterfeit Money
29. The Generous Gambler
30. The Rope
31. Vocations
32. The Thyrsus
33. Get Yourself Drunk
34. Already!
35. Windows
36. The Desire to Paint
37. The Favors of the Moon
38. Which is the Real One?
39. A Thoroughbred
40. The Mirror
41. The Port
42. Portraits of Mistresses
43. The Gallant Marksman
44. The Soup and the Clouds
45. The Firing Range and the Graveyard
46. Loss of a Halo
47. Mademoiselle Bistouri
48. Any Where Out of the World
49. Let's Beat Up the Poor!
50. Good Dogs

A Few Notable Works in "Le Spleen de Paris"

In “Let us beat up the poor,” Baudelaire makes up a parable about economic and social equality: no one is entitled to it; it belongs to those who can win it and keep it. And he taunts the social reformer: “What do you think of that, Proudhon?” (Hill, 36.)
"At One in the Morning" is like a diary entry, a rundown of the day's events. In it, Baudelaire recognizes that he is part of a society full of hypocrites. His individual self becomes "blurred...by a hypocrisy and perverseness which progressively undermine the difference between the self and others." This is at least partly what Baudelaire meant by "a modern and more abstract life."^[2]
"The Thyrsus" is a piece addressed to composer Franz Liszt. The ancient Greek thyrsus had connotations of "unleashed sexuality and violence, of the profound power of the irrational." Baudelaire believed the thyrsus to be an acceptable object of representation for Liszt's music.
In "The Bad Windowpane Maker" Baudelaire speaks of a "kind of energy that springs from ennui and reverie" that manifests itself in a particularly unexpected way in the most inactive dreamers. Doctors and moralists alike are at a loss to explain where such mad energy so suddenly comes from to these lazy people, why they suddenly feel the need to perform such absurd and dangerous deeds. (Hill, 56.)
The prefatory letter Baudelaire wrote to Arsene Houssaye, the editor of La Presse, was not necessarily intended to be included in the publication. When Baudelaire drew up his table of contents for the projected book form, he did not include the letter. It is possible, then, that the letter only appeared in La Presse as a means of flattery to ensure that Houssaye would publish the poems. (Mackenzie, xiii) Nevertheless, it allows us to understand Baudelaire's thinking about the genre of prose poetry:

Who among us has not dreamed, in his ambitious days, of the miracle of a poetic prose, musical without rhythm or rhyme, supple enough and jarring enough to be adapted to the soul's lyrical movements, the undulations of reverie, to the twists and turns that consciousness takes?

Major Themes in Le Spleen de Paris

Pleasure

Le Spleen de Paris explores the idea of pleasure as a vehicle for expressing emotion. Many of the poems refer to sex or sin explicitly (i.e. "Double Bedroom," "A Hemisphere in a Head of Hair", "Temptations"); others use subtle language and imagery to evoke sensuality (i.e. "the Artist’s Confiteor"). In both cases, the diction is undeniably sexual; for example, in "Double Bedroom," “Muslin rains abundantly over the windows and around the bed in a snowy cascade. Within this bed is ensconced the Idol, queen of dreams.”^[3] Baudelaire’s obsession with pleasure reflects his love for scandal and wickedness, as well as his philosophy that by seeking pleasure, man taps into his authentic “evil” self.^[4]

Sobriety and Intoxication

Many of Baudelaire’s prose poems openly advocate drinking and intoxication, such as "Be Drunk." Intoxication (or any equal pleasure such as creative work, sex, virtue, etc.) creates a euphoria and timelessness that allows you to transcend the limitations of time and truly live "in the moment." In "Be Drunk," the speaker commands the reader to engage in something intoxicating: "You must be drunk always... Time crushes your shoulders and bends you earthward, you must be drunk without respite."^[5] Sobriety, in contrast, forces you to address the harsh realities of the world around you. However, this interpretation has recently been challenged by some critics, who claim that Baudelaire was actually being ironic in his advocacy for drunkenness. Maria Scott, a literary scholar, claims that Baudelaire believed "artificial toxication was... far inferior to 'successive work' and the 'regular exercise of will,' that artificial stimulants... actually amplify time."^[6] Thus, it is debatable whether intoxication refers to literal drunkenness as an escape or if symbolizes the pleasure found in writing and expressing oneself.

The Artist/Poet

In Le Spleen de Paris, the concept of artist and poet intermingle. Baudelaire saw poetry as a form of art, and thus in many of the prose poems the artist is a substitute for a traditional poet or speaker. In "the Desire to Paint," the artist attempts to depict his beautiful muse with images, just as the poet attempts to express his emotions with language. The relationship between the artist and poet reflects the need to evoke a particular feeling or idea, and this thread is carried through almost every single poem in the text. Ultimately, the artist and the poet become one, since they share the same purpose - to describe beauty. In this sense, the work itself (and every individual poem within) is beautiful, a "work of art" due to its innovative, interesting form. Thus, the poem, according to Baudelaire, is as much an "aesthetic experience" as it is a literary one.^[7]

Women

Women are both admired and ridiculed in Le Spleen de Paris. Some poems, such as "the Desire to Paint," reflect female power and sexuality in a somewhat positive manner. However, a larger portion of the poems in Baudelaire's work debase women as evil, gaudy, and cold. Many are represented as prostitutes, and according to scholars, "the courtesan would seem to be a virtual incarnation, for Baudelaire, of all that is artificial and misleading."^[8] In "the Rope," the speaker's apprentice hangs himself, and his mother comes to collect the rope. The speaker is shocked to discover that she did so not to "preserve them as horrible and precious relics," but to sell them for a morbid profit.^[9] Baudelaire rejects the concept of maternal love and replaces it with a cold economic reality. Still, women are inherently sexual, and in some regards, Baudelaire admires their sensual beauty (connects back to themes of intoxication, pleasure).

Mortality and the Passage of Time

Many of Baudelaire's prose poems are dominated by the concept of time, usually negatively. The speaker in Le Spleen de Paris fears the passage of time and his/her own mortality. As a result, intoxication, women, pleasure, and writing are all forms of escape from this unavoidable hell. "Be Drunk" and "Already!" exemplify Baudelaire's infatuation with the idea of time. In "Already!" the speaker is incapable of matching the infiniteness and simplicity of nature, and at the end, comes face to face with his own death: "I felt pulled down deathwards; which is why, when companions said, 'At last!' I could only cry, 'Already!"^[10] Also, this theme supports Baudelaire's admiration of art and poetry because although man cannot defeat time and death, a work of art can. Art, poetry, life, and death are inextricably linked within Baudelaire's poems, and perhaps reflect a personal obsession with mortality.

The City

For Baudelaire, the setting of most poems within Le Spleen de Paris is the Parisian metropolis, specifically the poorer areas within the city. Notable poems within Le Spleen de Paris whose urban setting is important include “Crowds” and “The Old Mountebank.” Within his writing about city life, Baudelaire seems to stress the relationship between individual and society, frequently placing the speaker in a reflective role looking out at the city. It is also important to note that Baudelaire’s Paris is not one of nice shops and beautiful streets. Instead, Baudelaire focuses on dirty, poverty-stricken areas of Paris with social problems rather than the Paris of the upper class.

Poverty/Class

In connection with the theme of the Parisian metropolis, Baudelaire focuses heavily on the theme of poverty and social class within Le Spleen de Paris. Important poems from the collection which embody these themes include “The Toy of the Poor,” “The Eyes of the Poor,” “Counterfeit Money,” and “Let’s Beat Up the Poor.” In these poems Baudelaire introduces slightly differing views of the urban poor. In “The Toy of the Poor” Baudelaire heavily stresses the need for equality between social classes in Paris. In comparison, “Counterfeit Money” and “Let’s Beat Up the Poor” seem to use a sarcastic tone to instill empathy in the reader for those people in poverty. In Michael Hamburger’s introduction to his translation, Twenty Prose Poems of Baudelaire, the scholar notes a highly sympathetic view of the poor in Le Spleen de Paris. Baudelaire seems to relate to the poor and becomes an advocate for them in his poetry.

Religion/Good vs. Evil

Many poems in Le Spleen de Paris incorporate a central theme of religion or the relationship between good and evil in human nature. “Cake,” which centers on a moral battle addressing the question of whether humans are inherently good or evil stands out as an especially important poem within the collection. “Loss of a Halo” also incorporates similar themes, literally discussing the role of angels as well as the relationship between mankind and religious ideology, questioning the goodness of Christian ideals. Along these lines, Baudelaire repeatedly addresses the theme of sin within his poetry as well as questioning how the hierarchy of class could affect the hierarchy of goodness, implying that those of higher social class tend not to be morally superior to those of lower classes. Many critics of Baudelaire address the prominent role of religion in the poet’s life and how that might have affected his writing. Some suspect that since Baudelaire internalized Christian practices, he thought himself capable of accurately portraying God in his writing. Yet by representing God’s message within his poetry, Baudelaire placed himself in a position of patriarchal authority, similar to that of the God depicted in Christianity.

Poet/Reader Relationship

The following passage is taken from the preface to the 2008 Mackenzie translation of Le Spleen de Paris, entitled “To Arsène Houssaye”

My dear friend, I send you here a little work of which no one could say that it has neither head nor tail, because, on the contrary, everything in it is both head and tail, alternately and reciprocally. Please consider what fine advantages this combination offers to all of us, to you, to me, and to the reader. We can cut whatever we like—me, my reverie, you, the manuscript, and the reader, his reading; for I don’t tie the impatient reader up in the endless thread of a superfluous plot. Pull out one of the vertebrae, and the two halves of this tortuous fantasy will rejoin themselves painlessly. Chop it up into numerous fragments, and you’ll find that each one can live on its own. In the hopes that some of these stumps will be lively enough to please and amuse you, I dedicate the entire serpent to you. (Mackenzie 3)

While writing Le Spleen de Paris, Baudelaire made very conscious decisions regarding his relationship with his readers. As seen in the preface to the collection, addressed to his publisher, Arsène Houssaye, Baudelaire attempted to write a text that was very accessible to a reader while pulling the most appealing aspects of both prose and poetry and combining them into the revolutionary genre of prose poetry. For Baudelaire, the accessibility of the text and ability for a reader to set down the book and pick it up much later was crucial, especially considering his implied opinions of his readers. Baudelaire’s tone throughout the preface, “The Dog and the Vial” as well as other poems throughout Le Spleen de Paris seem to illustrate Baudelaire’s opinions of superiority over his readers. In “The Dog and the Vial,” a man offers his dog a vial of fancy perfume to smell and the dog reacts in horror, instead wishing to sniff more seemingly unappealing smells, specifically excrement. The poem concludes with the frustration of the speaker with his dog, expressed as the speaker states: “In this respect you, unworthy companion of my sad life, resemble the public, to whom one must never present the delicate scents that only exasperate them, but instead give them only dung, chosen with care” (Mackenzie 14). One can extrapolate this poem to apply more figuratively to the larger themes of the poet-reader relationship, in which Baudelaire deprecates his readers, viewing them as unintelligent and incapable of appreciating his work.

Style

Le Spleen de Paris represents a definitive break from traditional poetic forms. The text is composed of "prose poems," which span the continuum between "prosaic" and "poetic" works. The new, unconventional form of poetry was characteristic of the modernist movement occurring throughout Europe (and particularly in Paris) at the time.^[11] In the preface to Le Spleen de Paris, Baudelaire describes that modernity requires a new language, "a miracle of a poetic prose, musical without rhythm or rhyme, supple enough and striking enough to suit lyrical movements of the soul, undulations of reverie, the flip-flops of consciousness," and in this sense, Le Spleen de Paris gives life to modern language.^[12] Baudelaire's prose poetry tends to be more poetic in comparison to later works such as Ponge's Le parti pris des choses, but each poem varies. For an example of a more poetic poem, see "Evening Twilight"; for a prosaic example, see "The Bad Glazier."

Translations

It is rather beneficial to find proper translations to Baudelaire's poetry. However, each translation provides a different facet of the poem. Thus, it is important to acknowledge the differences between both the translators and their translations. If a reader is searching for translations in bulk, a collection of translations from a variety of translators can be found in "Fleurs du mal." Translations from William Aggeler, Roy Campbell, Robert Lowell, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Lewis Piaget Shank provide different interpretations and styles of the same poem.
A suggested translator, however, is Edna St. Vincent Millay. Her translations are separate works themselves as they provide distinct insights into her own personal interpretations of both Baudelaire's poems and Baudelaire himself. She speaks about her own personal beliefs about his work in regard to his mental state and personal life in the preface of her collection: "Baudelaire's 'flowers of evil' are flowers of doubt, flowers of grief... forced on the sterile bought of the mind's unblossomy decay." Furthermore she describes Baudelaire as "tortured" and "idealistic." It is important to note that Millay's perspective is amplified in her translations; however, her translations are interesting and thought provoking nonetheless. Millay's translations are recommended in comparing translations, debating translations, and defending translations, as it has such a strong, clear opinion.

Publication history, influences, and critical reception

Baudelaire’s Le Spleen de Paris is unique in that it was published posthumously by his sister in 1869, two years after Baudelaire died. In fact, it was not until his waning years, plagued by physical ailments and the contraction of syphilis that he created a table of contents for the book. Baudelaire spent years 1857-1867 working on his book of poems that chronicled daily life in the city of Paris. These poems aimed at capturing the times in which they were written, from the brutally repressed upheavals of 1848 (after which the government censored literature more than ever), the 1851 coup d’état of Louis Bonaparte and generally Paris of the 1850s, demolished and renovated by Napoleon III’s prefect, Baron Haussman. In displaying the social antagonisms of the age, Baudelaire drew influence from many great artists of the time. In fact, an active critical essayist himself, his critical reviews of other poets “elucidate the recesses of the mind that created Les Fleurs du Mal and Le Spleen de Paris.”
Influence: While there is much speculation regarding direct influence and inspiration in the creation of Le Spleen de Paris, the following colleagues seem to have clearly influenced the book of small poems:
Edgar Allan Poe: “Indeed, Poe illustrates his claim with several examples which seem to summarize with uncanny precision the temperament of Baudelaire himself (Poe 273-4). The affinity between the two writers in this regard seems beyond dispute…Moreover, ‘Le Démon de la perversité is less a tale than a prose poem, and both its subject-matter and its movement from general considerations to specific examples leading to an unexpected conclusion may have influenced Baudelaire in his creation of Le Spleen de Paris.”
Aloysius Betrand’s “Gaspard de la nuit”: Baudelaire himself is quoted as citing this work as an inspiration for Paris Spleen
Gustave Flaubert: Magazine article “No ideas but in Crowds: Baudelaire’s Paris Spleen” cites similarities between the writers in that like Baudelaire, Flaubert held the same motives and intentions in that he too wanted “ to write the moral history of the men of my generation--or, more accurately, the history of their feelings."
Critical Reception:
The way in which the poem was received certainly lends to understanding the climate in which Baudelaire created Le Spleen de Paris, in that “It appears to be almost a diary entry, an explicit rundown of the day’s events; those events seem to be precisely the kind that Charles Baudelaire would have experienced in the hectic and hypocritical world of the literary marketplace of his day.”
Notable Critical Reception: In order to truly understand how Le Spleen de Paris was received, one must first be acquainted with Baudelaire’s earlier works. The repressions and upheavals of 1848 resulted in massive censorship of literature, which did not bode well for Baudelaire’s perhaps most famous work, Les Fleurs du Mal. Society was so shocked by the satanic references and sexual perversion in the book that at the time it was a critical and popular failure. This put the anticipated reception of Le Spleen de Paris at a disadvantage. Like “Flowers of Evil,” it wasn’t until much later that Paris Spleen was fully appreciated for what it was, a masterpiece that “brought the style of the prose poem to the broader republics of the people.” That being said, just four years after Arthur Rimbaud used Baudelaire’s work as a foundation for his poems, as he considered Baudelaire a great poet and pioneer of prose.
Appearance in Media: A 2006 film "Spleen," written by Eric Bomba-Ire, borrowed its title from Baudelaire's book of prose poems. Baudelaire expressed a particular feeling that he called Spleen which is a mixture of melancholy, rage, eros, and resignation, which ties in well with the movie's darkly woven tale of love, betrayal and passion.^[13]

Extracts Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Spleen_de_Paris

More: http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Petits_Po%C3%A8mes_en_prose - http://archive.org/details/petitspomesenp00baud

Os Paraísos Artificiais (Les Paradis Artificiels)

About Artificial Paradises by Baudelaire:

Les paradis artificiels (Artificial Paradises) is a book by French poet Charles Baudelaire, first published in 1860, about the state of being under the influence of opium and hashish. Baudelaire describes the effects of the drugs and discusses the way in which they could theoretically aid mankind in reaching an "ideal" world. The text was softly influenced by Thomas de Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium-Eater and Suspiria de Profundis.

Extract Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Paradis_artificiels

More: http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Les_Paradis_artificiels

About Baudelaire:

Charles Pierre Baudelaire (French: [ʃaʁl bodlɛʁ]; April 9, 1821 – August 31, 1867) was a French poet who produced notable work as an essayist, art critic, and pioneering translator of Edgar Allan Poe. His most famous work, Les Fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil), expresses the changing nature of beauty in modern, industrializing Paris during the 19th century. Baudelaire's highly original style of prose-poetry influenced a whole generation of poets including Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud and Stéphane Mallarmé among many others. He is credited with coining the term "modernity" (modernité) to designate the fleeting, ephemeral experience of life in an urban metropolis, and the responsibility art has to capture that experience.^[1]

Baudelaire the poet

Who among us has not dreamt, in moments of ambition, of the miracle of a poetic prose, musical without rhythm and rhyme, supple and staccato enough to adapt to the lyrical stirrings of the soul, the undulations of dreams, and sudden leaps of consciousness. This obsessive idea is above all a child of giant cities, of the intersecting of their myriad relations.

—Dedication of Le Spleen de Paris

Baudelaire is one of the major innovators in French literature. His poetry is influenced by the French romantic poets of the earlier 19th century, although its attention to the formal features of verse connect it more closely to the work of the contemporary "Parnassians". As for theme and tone, in his works we see the rejection of the belief in the supremacy of nature and the fundamental goodness of man as typically espoused by the romantics and expressed by them in rhetorical, effusive and public voice in favor of a new urban sensibility, an awareness of individual moral complexity, an interest in vice (linked with decadence) and refined sensual and aesthetical pleasures, and the use of urban subject matter, such as the city, the crowd, individual passers-by, all expressed in highly ordered verse, sometimes through a cynical and ironic voice. Formally, the use of sound to create atmosphere, and of "symbols", (images which take on an expanded function within the poem), betray a move towards considering the poem as a self-referential object, an idea further developed by the Symbolists Verlaine and Mallarmé, who acknowledge Baudelaire as a pioneer in this regard.
Beyond his innovations in versification and the theories of symbolism and "correspondences", an awareness of which is essential to any appreciation of the literary value of his work, aspects of his work which regularly receive (or have received) much critical discussion include the role of women, the theological direction of his work and his alleged advocacy of "satanism", his experience of drug-induced states of mind, the figure of the dandy, his stance regarding democracy and its implications for the individual, his response to the spiritual uncertainties of the time, his criticisms of the bourgeois, and his advocacy of modern music and painting (e.g., Wagner, Delacroix).

Influence

Baudelaire's influence on the direction of modern French (and English) language literature was considerable. The most significant French writers to come after him were generous with tributes; four years after his death, Arthur Rimbaud praised him in a letter as 'the king of poets, a true God'.^[39] In 1895, Stéphane Mallarmé published a sonnet in Baudelaire's memory, 'Le Tombeau de Charles Baudelaire'. Marcel Proust, in an essay published in 1922, stated that along with Alfred de Vigny, Baudelaire was 'the greatest poet of the nineteenth century'.^[40]
In the English-speaking world, Edmund Wilson credited Baudelaire as providing an initial impetus for the Symbolist movement, by virtue of his translations of Poe.^[41] In 1930, T. S. Eliot, while asserting that Baudelaire had not yet received a "just appreciation" even in France, claimed that the poet had "great genius" and asserted that his "technical mastery which can hardly be overpraised... has made his verse an inexhaustible study for later poets, not only in his own language".^[42] Eliot also alluded to Baudelaire's poetry directly in his own poetry. For example, he quoted the last line of Baudelaire's 'Au Lecteur' in the last line of Section I of 'The Waste Land.'
At the same time that Eliot was affirming Baudelaire's importance from a broadly conservative and explicitly Christian viewpoint,^[43] left-wing critics such as Wilson and Walter Benjamin were able to do so from a dramatically different perspective. Benjamin translated Baudelaire's Tableaux Parisiens into German and published a major essay on translation^[44] as the foreword.
In the late 1930s, Benjamin used Baudelaire as a starting point and focus for his monumental attempt at a materialist assessment of 19th century culture, Das Passagenwerk.^[45] For Benjamin, Baudelaire's importance lay in his anatomies of the crowd, of the city and of modernity.^[46] François Porche published a poetry collection called Charles Baudelaire in memory of Baudelaire.
In 1982, avant-garde performance artist and vocalist Diamanda Galás recorded an adaptation of his poem The Litanies of Satan (Les Litanies de Satan).
The Baudelaires, protagonists of Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, were named after him.^{[citation needed]}
Currently, Vanderbilt University has "assembled one of the world’s most comprehensive research collections on...Baudelaire."^[47]

Extracts Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Baudelaire

Kafka Para Principiantes

Info On Franz Kafka:

Franz Kafka (German pronunciation: [fʁants ˈkafka]; 3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was an influential German-language author of novels and short stories. Contemporary critics and academics, including Vladimir Nabokov,^[2] regard Kafka as one of the best writers of the 20th century. The term "Kafkaesque" has become part of the English language.
Kafka was born to middle class, German-speaking, Jewish parents, in Prague, Bohemia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The house in which he was born, on the Old Town Square next to Prague's Church of St Nicholas, now contains a permanent exhibition devoted to the author.
Most of Kafka's writing, including the large body of his unfinished work, was published posthumously.^[3]

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Kafka

Info On Robert Crumb:

Robert Dennis Crumb (born August 30, 1943)—known as Robert Crumb and R. Crumb—is an American artist, illustrator, and musician recognized for the distinctive style of his drawings and his critical, satirical, subversive view of the American mainstream.^[1]
Crumb was a founder of the underground comix movement and is regarded as its most prominent figure. Though one of the most celebrated of comic book artists, Crumb's entire career has unfolded outside the mainstream comic book publishing industry. One of his most recognized works is the "Keep on Truckin'" comic, which became a widely distributed fixture of pop culture in the 1970s. Others are the characters Devil Girl, Fritz the Cat, and Mr. Natural.
He was inducted into the comic book industry's Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 1991.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Crumb

More: http://pt.livra.com/item/kafka-para-principiantes/8825205

Metamorfose - Livros do Brasil (Edições Especiais Ilustradas)

Info On The Book:

The Metamorphosis (German: Die Verwandlung, also sometimes termed The Transformation) is a novella by Franz Kafka, first published in 1915. It is often cited as one of the seminal works of fiction of the 20th century and is widely studied in colleges and universities across the western world. The story begins with a traveling salesman, Gregor Samsa, waking to find himself transformed into a monstrous insect-like creature.

Plot summary

Part I

One day Gregor Samsa, a traveling salesman, wakes up to find himself transformed into a giant insect. Confused, he looks around his room which appears normal. He decides to fall asleep again and forget what happened in the hope that everything will revert to normal. He tries to roll over to his right but discovers that he cannot due to his new body - he is stuck on his hard, convex back. He feels an itch on his stomach and tries to touch the area with his leg. He retracts immediately as the area was highly sensitive.
He reflects on how dreary life as a traveling salesmen is and how he would quit his job if his family were not dependent on his income. He looks at the wall clock and realizes that he has overslept and missed his train for work. Gregor's mother knocks on the door and he answers her. She is concerned for Gregor because he is late for work, which is unorthodox for Gregor. Gregor answers his mother and realizes that his voice has changed, but his answer is short so his mother does not notice the voice change. His sister, Grete, to whom he was very close then whispers through the door and begs him to open the door. All his family members think that he is ill and ask him to open the door. He tries to get out of bed but he is incapable of moving his body. While trying to move, he finds that his office manager has showed up to check up on him. He finally rocks his body to the floor and calls out that he will open the door shortly.
Feeling offended by Gregor's delayed response in opening the door, the manager warns him of the consequences of missing work. He adds that his recent performance has been unsatisfactory. Gregor disagrees and tells him that he will open the door shortly. Nobody on the other side of the door could understand a single word he uttered (Gregor was unaware of the fact that his voice has also transformed) and conclude that he is seriously ill. Finally, Gregor manages to unlock and open the door with his mouth. He apologizes to the office manager for the delay. Horrified by the sight of Gregor's appearance, the manager bolts out of the apartment. Gregor tries to catch up with him but his father drives him back into the bedroom with a cane and a rolled newspaper. Gregor injures himself squeezing back through the doorway, and his father slams the door shut. Gregor, exhausted, falls asleep.

Part II

Gregor wakes and sees that someone has put milk and bread in his room. Initially excited, he quickly discovers that he has no taste for milk, once one of his favorite foods. He settles himself under a couch. The next morning, his sister comes in, sees that he has not touched the milk, and replaces it with rotting food scraps, which Gregor happily eats. This begins a routine in which his sister feeds him and cleans up while he hides under the couch, afraid that his appearance will frighten her. Gregor spends his time listening through the wall to his family members talking. They often discuss the difficult financial situation they find themselves in now that Gregor can’t provide for them. Gregor also learns that his mother wants to visit him, but his sister and father will not let her.
Gregor grows more comfortable with his changed body. He begins climbing the walls and ceiling for amusement. Discovering Gregor’s new pastime, Grete decides to remove some of the furniture to give Gregor more space. She and her mother begin taking furniture away, but Gregor finds their actions deeply distressing. He tries to save a picture on the wall of a woman wearing a fur hat, fur scarf, and a fur muff. Gregor’s mother sees him hanging on the wall and passes out. Grete calls out to Gregor—the first time anyone has spoken directly to him since his transformation. Gregor runs out of the room and into the kitchen. . The father throws apples at Gregor, and one sinks into his back and remains lodged there. Gregor manages to get back into his bedroom but is severely injured.

Part III

One evening, the cleaning lady leaves Gregor’s door open while the boarders lounge about the living room. Grete has been asked to play the violin for them, and Gregor creeps out of his bedroom to listen. The boarders, who initially seemed interested in Grete, grow bored with her performance, but Gregor is transfixed by it. One of the boarders spots Gregor and they become alarmed. Gregor’s father tries to shove the boarders back into their rooms, but the three men protest and announce that they will move out immediately without paying rent because of the disgusting conditions in the apartment.
Grete tells her parents that they must get rid of Gregor or they will all be ruined. Her father agrees, wishing Gregor could understand them and would leave of his own accord. Gregor does in fact understand and slowly moves back to the bedroom. There, determined to rid his family of his presence, Gregor dies.
Upon discovering that Gregor is dead, the family feels a great sense of relief. The father kicks out the boarders and decides to fire the cleaning lady, who has disposed of Gregor’s body. The family takes a trolley ride out to the countryside, during which they consider their finances. Months of spare living as a result of Gregor’s condition have left them with substantial savings. They decide to move to a better apartment. Grete appears to have her strength and beauty back, which leads her parents to think about finding her a husband.

Characters

Gregor Samsa

Gregor is the main character of the story. He works as a traveling salesman in order to provide money for his sister and parents. He wakes up one morning as a large insect-like creature. After the metamorphosis, Gregor is unable to work. This prompts his family to begin working once again.
The name "Gregor Samsa" appears to derive partly from literary works Kafka had read. The hero of The Story of Young Renate Fuchs, by German-Jewish novelist Jakob Wassermann (1873–1934), is a certain Gregor Samsa. The Viennese author Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, whose sexual imagination gave rise to the idea of masochism, is also an influence. Sacher-Masoch (note the letters Sa-Mas) wrote Venus in Furs (1870), a novel whose hero assumes the name Gregor at one point. A "Venus in furs" literally recurs in The Metamorphosis in the picture that Gregor Samsa has hung on his bedroom wall.^[1] The name Samsa is similar to Kafka in its play of vowels and consonants: "Five letters in each word. The S in the word Samsa has the same position as the K in the word Kafka. The A "is in the second and fifth positions in both words."^[2]
Gregor Samsa appears to be based upon Kafka himself. As when Kafka suffered from insomnia he feared he was repulsive and a burden to his family, during this time his sister was his caretaker.^[3]

Grete Samsa

Grete is Gregor's younger sister, who becomes his caretaker after his metamorphosis. Initially Grete and Gregor have a close relationship but this quickly fades. While Grete initially volunteers to feed him and clean his room, she grows more and more impatient with the burden and begins to leave his room in disarray out of spite. She plays the violin and dreams of going to the conservatory, a dream Gregor had intended to make happen. Gregor planned on making the announcement on Christmas Day. To help provide an income for the family after Gregor's transformation, she starts working as a salesgirl.

Mr. Samsa

Mr. Samsa is Gregor's father. After the metamorphosis, he is forced to return to work in order to support the family financially. His attitude towards his son is harsh; he regards the transformed Gregor with disgust and possibly even fear. Mr. Samsa may have been based on Kafka's father, who treated Kafka harshly.

Mrs. Samsa

Mrs. Samsa is Grete and Gregor's mother. She is initially shocked at Gregor's transformation, however she wants to enter his room. This proves too much for her, thus giving rise to a conflict between her maternal impulse and sympathy and her fear and revulsion of Gregor's new form.


Above Extracts & Below Image: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Metamorphosis

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A Voz Subterrânea

Notes From Underground:

Notes from Underground (Russian: Записки из подполья, Zapiski iz podpol'ya) (also translated in English as Notes from the Underground or Letters from the Underworld) is an 1864 novella by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Notes is considered by many to be the first existentialist novel. It presents itself as an excerpt from the rambling memoirs of a bitter, isolated, unnamed narrator (generally referred to by critics as the Underground Man) who is a retired civil servant living in St. Petersburg. The first part of the story is told in monologue form, or the underground man's diary, and attacks emerging Western philosophy, especially Nikolay Chernyshevsky's What Is to Be Done?.^[1] The second part of the book is called "Àpropos of the Wet Snow," and describes certain events that, it seems, are destroying and sometimes renewing the underground man, who acts as a first person, unreliable narrator.

Plot summary

The novel is divided into two parts.
Part 1: "Underground"
It consists of an introduction, three main sections and a conclusion. (i) The short introduction propounds a number of riddles whose meanings will be further developed. (1) Chapters two, three and four deal with suffering and the enjoyment of suffering; (2) chapters five and six with intellectual and moral vacillation and with conscious "inertia"-inaction; (3) chapters seven through nine with theories of reason and logic; (c) the last two chapters are a summary and a transition into Part 2.
War is described as people's rebellion against the assumption that everything needs to happen for a purpose, because humans do things without purpose, and this is what determines human history.
Secondly, the narrator's desire for happiness is exemplified by his liver pain and toothache. This parallels Raskolnikov's behavior in Dostoyevsky's later novel, Crime and Punishment. He says that, due to the cruelty of society, human beings only moan about pain in order to spread their suffering to others. He builds up his own paranoia to the point he is incapable of looking his co-workers in the eye.
The main issue for the Underground Man is that he has reached a point of ennui^[2] and inactivity.^[3] Unlike most people, who typically act out of revenge because they believe justice is the end, the Underground Man is conscious of his problems, feels the desire for revenge, but he does not find it virtuous; this incongruity leads to spite and spite towards the act itself with its concomitant circumstances. He feels that others like him exist, yet he continuously concentrates on his spitefulness instead of on actions that would avoid the problems he is so concerned with. He even admits at one point that he’d rather be inactive out of laziness.
The first part also gives a harsh criticism of determinism and intellectual attempts at dictating human action and behavior by logic, which the Underground Man mentions in terms of a simple math problem two times two makes four (see also necessitarianism). He states that despite humanity’s attempt to create the "Crystal Palace," a reference to a famous symbol of utopianism in Nikolai Chernyshevsky’s What Is to Be Done?, one cannot avoid the simple fact that anyone at any time can decide to act in a way which might not be considered good, and some will do so simply to validate their existence and to protest and confirm that they exist as individuals. For good as a general term is subjective and in the case of the Underground Man the good here he's ridiculing is enlightened self interest (egoism, selfishness). It is this position being depicted as logical and valid that the novel's protagonist despises. Since his romantic embracing of this ideal, he seems to blame it for his current base unhappiness. This type of rebellion is critical to later works of Dostoyevsky as it is used by adolescents to validate their own existence, uniqueness, and independence (see Dostoyevsky's The Adolescent). Rebellion in the face of the dysfunction and disorder of adult experience that one inherits when reaching adulthood under the understanding of tradition and society.
In other works, Dostoyevsky again confronts the concept of free will and constructs a negative argument to validate free will against determinism in the character Kirillov's suicide in his novel The Demons. Notes from Underground marks the starting point of Dostoyevsky's move from psychological and sociological themed novels to novels based on existential and general human experience in crisis.

Part 2: "Apropos of the Wet Snow"
The second part is the actual story and consists of three main segments that lead to a furthering of the Underground Man's consciousness.
The first is his obsession with an officer who physically moves him out of the way without a word or warning. He sees the officer on the street and thinks of ways to take revenge, eventually deciding to bump into him, which he does, finding to his surprise that the officer does not seem to even notice it happened.
The second segment is a dinner party with some old school friends to wish Zverkov, one of their number, goodbye as he is being transferred out of the city. The underground man hated them when he was younger, but after a random visit to Simonov’s, he decides to meet them at the appointed location. They fail to tell him that the time has been changed to six instead of five, so he arrives early. He gets into an argument with the four after a short time, declaring to all his hatred of society and using them as the symbol of it. At the end, they go off without him to a secret brothel, and, in his rage, the underground man follows them there to confront Zverkov once and for all, regardless if he is beaten or not. He arrives to find Zverkov and company have left, but, it is there that he meets Liza, a young prostitute.
The story cuts to Liza and the underground man lying silently in the dark together. The underground man confronts Liza with an image of her future, by which she is unmoved at first, but, she eventually realizes the plight of her position and how she will slowly become useless and will descend more and more, until she is no longer wanted by anyone. The thought of dying such a terribly disgraceful death brings her to realize her position, and she then finds herself enthralled by the underground man’s seemingly poignant grasp of society’s ills. He gives her his address and leaves.
After this, he is overcome by the fear of her actually arriving at his dilapidated apartment after appearing such a "hero" to her and, in the middle of an argument with his servant, she arrives. He then curses her and takes back everything he said to her, saying he was, in fact, laughing at her and reiterates the truth of her miserable position. Near the end of his painful rage he wells up in tears after saying that he was only seeking to have power over her and a desire to humiliate her. He begins to criticize himself and states that he is in fact horrified by his own poverty and embarrassed by his situation. Liza realizes how pitiful he is and tenderly embraces him. The underground man cries out “They — they won't let me — I — I can’t be good!”
After all this, he still acts terribly towards her, and, before she leaves, he stuffs a five ruble note into her hand, which she throws onto the table. He tries to catch her as she goes out onto the street but cannot find her and never hears from her again. He tries to stop the pain in his heart by "fantasizing", "And isn't it better, won't it be better?...Insult — after all, it's a purification; it's the most caustic, painful consciousness! Only tomorrow I would have defiled her soul and wearied her heart. But now the insult will never ever die within her, and however repulsive the filth that awaits her, the insult will elevate her, it will cleanse her..." He recalls this moment as making him unhappy whenever he thinks of it, yet again proving the fact from the first section that his spite for society and his inability to act like it makes him unable to act better than it.
The concluding sentences recall some of the themes explored in the first part, and the work as a whole ends with a note from the author that while there was more to the text, "it seems that we may stop here."

Literary significance and criticism

Like many of Dostoyevsky's novels, Notes from Underground was unpopular with Soviet literary critics due to its explicit rejection of utopian socialism^[4] and its portrait of humans as irrational, uncontrollable, and uncooperative. His claim that human needs can never be satisfied, even through technological progress, also goes against Marxist beliefs. Many existentialist critics, notably Jean-Paul Sartre, considered the novel to be a forerunner of existentialist thought and an inspiration to their own philosophies.
The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche was very impressed with Dostoyevsky and claimed that he was "one of the few psychologists from whom I have learned something," and that Notes from Underground "cried truth from the blood."^[5]


Source Material: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notes_from_Underground