Wednesday, July 13, 2011

More Pessoa

When grammar defines usage, it makes legitimate and false divisions. For example, it makes some verbs transitive and others intransitive. A man who knows how to speak often has to make a transitive verb intransitive in order to photograph what he feels instead, as usually happens with the common human animal, of seeing his feelings darkly. If I want to say that I exist, I would say, "I am." If I want to say that I exist as a separate soul, I would say, "I am I." But if I want to say that I exist as an entity that directs and forms itself, how can I use the verb "to be" unless I suddenly make it transitive? So I triumphantly, antigrammatically supreme, would say, "I'm me." I will have spoken a philosophy in two small words. Isn't this better than saying nothing in forty sentences?

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