![]()
Armando Martins Janeira (1914-1988), The Epic and Tragic Sense of Life in Japanese Literature (1969).
![]()
A longa actividade diplomática de Martins Janeira, onde se inclui o desempenho de funções oficiais no Japão como embaixador, não o impediu de produzir diversas obras de carácter histórico e filosófico, embora tenha sido nos estudos literários que mais se distinguiu. Admirador confesso da obra de Wenceslau de Moraes (1854-1929), dedicou muito do seu tempo a investigar aspectos da bio-bibliografia deste autor e muitos dos seus textos à sua obra, tendo prefaciado e anotado as reedições da obra Moraes na década de 1970 (cf. http://blogdaruanove.blogs.sapo.pt/search?q=martins+janeira&Submit=OK).
Na crítica literária, de que este livro é um dos exemplos significativos, a sua obra mais consagrada é, sem dúvida, Japanese and Western Literature, a Comparative Study (1970), que se transformou num clássico e numa obra de referência nos meios académicos internacionais, tendo também sida traduzida para japonês.
Muito embora Martins Janeira chegasse a anunciar a preparação das obras Essential Religious Though e Challenge of Civilizations, o seu último livro publicado em vida foi Japão, Construção de um País Moderno (1985).
De The Epic and Tragic Sense of Life in Japanese Literature transcrevem-se três parágrafos:
"HASEGAWA Nyozekan explains the scarcity of heroic myths in Japan by the fact that heroic gods tended to be relegated to second place and were looked at critically from a purely human standpoint; "the gods of the Japanese mythical age, all possessed human emotions." These gods, unlike the Greek gods, were not a high example for men; they did not contain that radiant force of exaltation that inspires the heroic deeds in which man superates his nature.
The lack of force in the concept of the Japanese gods and their incapacity to inspire epic chants can be explained, according to NAKAMURA Hajime by the fact that the Japanese did not form the idea of God with a human personality. "The imaginative power of the Japanese people," writes Prof. NAKAMURA, "ever since ancient times, has been limited to and has rarely gone beyond the concrete and intuitive world of nature." This poor imaginative power to shape elaborate fantasy "runs through Japanese literature to the present day." And this is why "Japanese people have never developed titanic myths." 8
Looking at this trait from the viewpoint of the European epic, it can help to explain why Catholic poets like Dante and Camoens felt the need of introducing pagan gods in their poems: they needed exceedingly powerful human figures capable of incarnating superhuman feelings of love, hate, courage, treachery, arrogance, scorn, all the gamut of good and evil of human heart, and this could not be expressed through the saint figures of the Church, who are one-sided examples of piety and kindness. When Dante invokes Apollo or the imposing presence of Jupiter, or when Vasco da Gama's navigators are helped by amorous Aphrodite, both Dante and Camoens are using symbols of human power and human passion, which, though superhuman in force, are too impure to justify the invocation of Christian saints. To this must be added, of course, the imposing weight of classic tradition.
8 NAKAMURA Hajime, Ways of Thinking of Eastern Peoples (East-West Center Press, Hawaii, 1964)"
© Rua Onze . Blog
