O bom homem Jesus e o canalha Cristo - livro que vai incomodar

Retirado do Guardian, versão digital, o melhor jornal inglês.
Philip Pullman answers the door. Pale skin and white shirt, he looks like a puff of smoke in the dark of the hallway. Behind him stands a dog on wheels and, further back, two real pugs, bleating, just a little, at this morning's commotion. The photographer is already in the living room. "I have that sort of face that doesn't come out well in photographs," Pullman tells him as the camera snaps away. In fact, he has precisely the type of face that bears being photographed; in pictures, it is somehow easier to focus on him, better to inspect the kindly set of his features and the grey-green of his eyes. In the flesh, you rather suspect that he has developed a subtle way of not being seen.

Pullman, 63, is the former teacher who found fame as the bestselling author of His Dark Materials, a trilogy of fantasy novels that was marketed at young adults, but found equal popularity among older readers. The series, described as an inversion of Milton's Paradise Lost, explored the effects of institutionalised religion and prompted criticism from many Christian groups. This spring, as if to bait the bear further, he has published a new book, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, part of the Canongate Myths series, and a rumination on the life of Jesus, casting him not as one man, but two brothers, the prophet Jesus and his manipulative twin, Christ.

Pullman was inspired, he says, calmer now that the photographer and his camera have departed, by a conversation with the Archbishop of Canterbury, on stage at the National Theatre. "He asked me why I hadn't dealt with Jesus in His Dark Materials. And I said, 'Well you're right, I haven't, so I'd better do a book sometime.'" A while later, he had an idea (best not to call it a vision) of "the two brothers locked in argument in the desert. It was the temptation of Jesus, not by sin, but by Christ. There's the original prophet with the pure vision blazing in his mind and he's being tempted by the organisation man, who's saying, 'Well, we can set something up here, get something permanent going in the world, but we have to make a few compromises.'"

But in truth he had for some while been thinking about Jesus. "Reading around the subject," he says. "I love late antiquity because it's a time of immense competition among religions. The old gods, the Greek and Roman gods, were gradually being replaced by rather fearsome or demanding new gods, such as the one that the Christians were bringing from the region we call Palestine. At the same time, Greek thought had combined with religious feelings from a little further east and produced something then known as gnosticism . . . "

It is at moments like this, that one sees the remnants of Pullman the teacher. "It's the idea that this world is a false creation of an evil demiurge," he continues, voice calm and dry, "and not the real place created by the real God, and that all of us have inside us a sort of spark of divinity that was stolen from the real God and that explains what our task is — we have to escape and get back to the real source." He smiles faintly. "Now that's a hell of a good story because it accounts for so many things: it accounts for why there's evil and suffering and sickness and so on; it accounts for why those who think deeply don't feel at home in the world; and it gives us something to do. It's one of the best stories of all time. But it's not true." He adds a polite qualification: "I don't think."

When did he decide it wasn't true? "Well I went through a very gnostic phase in my 20s," he recalls. "I read a lot of stuff about it and tried to feel the sort of angst appropriate to someone who's a prisoner of a material world. But I don't do angst very well. As the man who wanted to be a philosopher said to Dr Johnson, 'Cheerfulness keeps breaking through.' Heh-HA!" He has a linty sort of laugh, not hearty or loud, but something quickly brushed off.

"And so I came to realise that this world was actually rather a good place, which is full of things that make you laugh and things that make you happy and things that make you feel good physically, and so I gradually abandoned the idea of the evil demiurges who had created this ghastly world, and realised actually that this is our home, it's where we belong, and there ain't no elsewhere." He pauses. "So that's where I am now, spiritually speaking. Which I never do, because I don't like that word." What word would he use? "Um . . ." he ponders. "Philosophically speaking. Intellectually speaking. Emotionally speaking."

By the kitchen door a pug whimpers. "He wants to go and lie on his bed," Pullman says, striding across the living room, littered with Snoopy toys and board games, the paraphernalia of grandparenthood (married for 40 years to Judith Speller, he has two sons and three grandchildren). "All right old boy," he soothes the dog, opening the door. "You have to be very gentle with them. It's not his fault he's old and silly. He's not stupid, he's innocent. Innocent of stupidity."

A great deal of Pullman's work seems to deal with the notion of duality. He has compared the plot of His Dark Materials to binary fission, the fundamental theme being "two things that were joined together, and split apart, and becoming two," he says now. "And maybe this new story . . . again it's a sort of binary thing, isn't it?"

The idea of twin brothers sprung from Paul's Epistles. "Paul refers to Christ rather than Jesus; the Gospels call him Jesus rather than Christ," Pullman explains. "And I thought that was significant. Because the Gospels want to tell us about his life, and Paul wasn't interested in his life, he was interested in what its meaning was after he was dead, the meaning of the resurrection, the meaning of this figure having come from God, being part of God, being God himself, really. Christ says at the end of the book, 'However it ends, this story, it will be a tragedy.' Because Jesus's vision could never come about, and the vision that will come about is not his. And that's how it happened."

He read a great deal around the subject before he began: the four Gospels and Paul's Epistles, in three different versions of the Bible. "I'd like to have read them in Greek, but I have no Greek and it would take too long to have learned Greek for this purpose," he says. He read the Pope's book on Jesus, AN Wilson's book on Jesus, and the work of Geza Vermes, the foremost Jesus scholar. He also read Strauss's Life of Jesus, as translated by George Eliot. "You could see what a stir that kind of thinking must have caused to devout Victorians," he says. He decided not to read any more commentators after that. "Because the thing about reading commentators or critics is that if you're in the middle of creating something and you read a very persuasive commentator, it can have a big impression on you and lead you off down an unhelpful path."

The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ was recently reviewed in the Guardian by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, a great supporter of Pullman. "I think he was generous," Pullman says. "Much more generous than might have been expected, but he is a good and kindly man. And predictably, but correctly, in effect he said, 'This wasn't as good as the Bible.'" Several critics have made a similar observation. "I know," he says, a little tetchy. "But I wasn't trying to write an alternative Gospel. What I was trying to do was tell the story of Jesus in a different kind of way. And make a fable out of it." He hopes in fact that his book will lead people back to the Bible itself. "Because then they will see how many contradictions and inconsistencies there are between the gospels," he explains, "instead of this single monolithic story."

We have, he adds, only "a vague impression" of the Bible. "If we have a Christian upbringing, we're told that Jesus was born at Christmas and all the shepherds came, and the wise men, and the little donkey, and there was a star and so on. And then a couple of months go by, and he's betrayed and flogged and crucified and then he rose on the third day and everybody had Easter eggs and there were daffodils around and all that sort of thing. And the rest of the time he went around telling stories and curing people. So that's all we know about him. And we think that the New Testament says that. Well actually, Mark says this and Matthew says that, and Luke says something else and John says something quite different. And we don't know this, because we don't actually read the damned thing."

When does he suppose people stopped reading the Bible? Or did they ever truly read it? "Well . . ." he thinks. "Yes they did. And the history of the reading of the Bible is a book I'd like to read. Because Tyndale and the early translators got into terrible trouble and suffered enormously, because the church disapproved of the Bible in the vernacular; they wanted to keep the story for themselves and allow little bits out very parsimoniously. Eventually it was translated, of course, but the church didn't have very much to fear because most people didn't read, don't read very deeply. They will read the bits they like and ignore the bits they don't understand or don't like."

Pullman recalls reading the Bible in a similar way, growing up, under the influence of his clergyman grandfather. He remembers him as "a wonderful storyteller . . . full of anecdotes, and stories from the Bible and stories about saints and good people he had known. So I remember my childhood being full of stories, both in and out of church. He was also a prison chaplain, at Norwich prison, at a time when they still hanged people. And it was his job to spend the last hour with the condemned man. It was something that affected him deeply and painfully."

But it was not so much his grand- father's sermons, he insists, that affected his own storytelling so much as the years he spent as a teacher. "Telling stories aloud and making up stories. You learn such a lot when you tell great stories like the Iliad or the Odyssey, over and over again. You learn what a good story shape is, you learn how to time it — I used to like getting to a good bit just when I knew the bell was about to go. It gave me great pleasure when they wanted to stay in rather than go out and play." Pullman talks quite tenderly about his past.

"And you learn what you can do and what you can't do," he adds. "I can't do funny stories. Can't do them at all. I can do them on the page, but I can't deliver them. There's something I haven't got. And I've tried, but I haven't got it. But I can do tension and suspense and action, and I can paint a scene so that it comes clearly before the listeners."


It reminds me of a conversation that takes place in The Good Man Jesus, where Christ visits a prostitute and afterwards discusses his brother, depicting him as a man of passion, while all he can do is describe what happens. "Ah," smiles Pullman, "his postcoital self-analysis." Does he see himself as the passionate being or the describer? "Oh I'm the describer," he says firmly, resolutely. "That's what I do." Has he always felt that way? "Oh yeah," he says. "I've always noticed things, watched how they happen and how people deal with them. And then gone over them in my mind, made them better, shaped them, cut out the extraneous stuff. There's part of me that looks at everything, always, that's always on duty. Maybe that's true of everyone," he says brusquely, "and they just call it daydreaming."

But is there anything in his life that carries him away? Any passion or obsession that forces him to put aside his describing self? He thinks for a long, silent while. "Well I get very exercised about politics and civil rights," he says eventually. "But, as I've learned, if you just say the first thing that comes into your head you get carried away by a wave of passion, you tend to spout nonsense and gibberish, so it's much better to be dispassionate about it ahead of time. It's not the fury you remember afterwards; it's cool words that are said by somebody who has thought about them." He admires especially Clive Stafford-Smith as a contemporary orator. "But do we have people of that stature in British politics?" he asks, pre-empting my question. "No, not one."

He will be voting for Evan Harris, his local Liberal Democrat MP. He has been voting for him since 1997, "when I wanted a Labour government after 18 years of the wretched Tories, but the stupidity of our voting system is that if I wanted a Labour government I had to vote against the Labour candidate in my constituency." He bridles. What does he think of the Tories' latest incarnation? "Oh they're very smooth and personable," he smiles. "But I don't trust them as far as I could throw them."

The other subject of his vitriol is the Catholic church. "It's been caught with its trousers down, in many different ways, hasn't it?" he says of the recent abuse scandals. "They didn't expect this sort of thing to happen, this sort of thing to come out; they didn't expect to have to account for themselves in the way that they've had to. But this is what happens, always, when you have an organisation whose authority derives from something that may not be questioned.

"Now," he continues, "when you get that sort of authority, in any set-up, the potential for corruption is wide open. And when it comes to looking after children or people who are incapable or helpless, well human beings are tempted. And of course part of the reason it happens is priestly celibacy. They'll deny it and say it's nothing to do with that, but of course it is, of course it is. That's not to say that married men are free from temptation or never given way to it, because of course they have, but the level of frustration and unhappiness and unfulfillment that must build up in a man who's denied one of the most important aspects of his humanity, it'll get bad."

I ask him if he thinks the scandal will change the Catholic church. "I hope so," he says quickly, and then draws back. "Well why do I hope so? In one way, I hope the wretched organisation will vanish entirely. So I'm looking on with a degree of dispassionate interest." He does not, at this moment, seem so dispassionate.

I wonder if he now feels a responsibility to write about religion. "No," he says firmly. "I write when my imagination prompts me. I don't write out of will or out of conscience or anything else. When my imagination is next engaged about religion I shall write about it again." But it is impossible not to wonder if he rather enjoys the reputation as a well- regarded critic of the church. "Well I don't know what my reputation is," he answers flatly. "A humourless, tedious atheist probably."

• The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ by Philip Pullman is available now in hardcover (£14.99), ebook (£12.99), audiobook (16.99)and App (£9.99) from Canongate.

Tostão e o anão Dunga

Retirado da Folha de S. Paulo. Dr. Eduardo continua craque.

A igrejinha de Dunga

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A presença do auxiliar Jorginho e de vários atletas evangélicos e obedientes facilita o estilo rígido de Dunga
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DUNGA DISSE novamente, dessa vez na Academia Brasileira de Letras, que, no futebol e na vida, o que importa é o resultado.
Fique tranquilo. Dunga foi apenas convidado. É um hábito da Academia chamar pessoas de destaque na sociedade para um encontro.
Dunga não é candidato ao cargo de imortal, mesmo se o Brasil for campeão e ele escrever mais um original livro sobre como ser um vencedor. Ricardo Teixeira faria o prefácio, e o auxiliar Jorginho, a orelha. Dunga só não pode publicar antes da Copa, como fez Parreira em 2006.
O que é ter resultados na vida, fora do futebol?
Se tornar um profissional vitorioso, rico e famoso, mesmo que seja por meios não muito legais e éticos? Aparecer e ser campeão no "Big Brother"?
Ou ser um homem simples e bom, sem nenhuma pretensão de ser herói?
Dunga e Jorginho formam uma boa dupla. Estão entrosados e já mostraram que têm bons conhecimentos técnicos e táticos. É a união do técnico mal-humorado, tosco, que não aceita críticas, com o auxiliar evangélico e tranquilo.
Se qualquer outro treinador dissesse que só interessa o resultado, ninguém se incomodaria, já que todos os times do mundo, de todas as épocas, entram em campo para vencer. Já Dunga dizendo isso, por seu habitual comportamento, gera outras leituras.
Depois de tantos bons resultados, a maioria concorda com o jeito pragmático de Dunga. Vivemos em uma sociedade consumista, competitiva, do espetáculo, em que a única coisa importante é a vitória, a glória e a fama. As pessoas não querem ser amadas. Querem ser vencedoras, admiradas e bajuladas.
Muitos acham ainda que, para dirigir uma seleção na Copa, é necessário, além de ser operatório e disciplinado, que o treinador seja rígido e nacionalista, uma mistura de um ditador com um Policarpo Quaresma. Para esses, com Dunga, não se repetiria o fracasso de 2006, quando Parreira foi chamado de bonzinho e frouxo por permitir tantas arruaças.
Dunga nunca vai entender por que a seleção de 1982, eliminada pela Itália, é mais elogiada que a de 1994, campeã do mundo.
Dunga passa a impressão de que a vitória lhe proporciona mais sofrimento que prazer e que ainda pode xingar os críticos, como fez em 1994, ao levantar a taça. Para ele, perder jogando bem deve ser muito pior que perder jogando mal. Sofre mais.
Apesar de não ter admiração pelo estilo de Dunga, reconheço sua eficiência no comando da seleção.
A maioria dos jogadores prefere técnicos rígidos e que tomam todas as decisões. É uma maneira de os jogadores transferirem para o técnico a responsabilidade pelas derrotas e pelas vitórias.
A presença de vários atletas evangélicos e obedientes na equipe facilita o trabalho do treinador. É a igrejinha de Dunga.
Se o Brasil ganhar ou perder, o motivo principal será Dunga. Isso já está decidido. É valorizar demais o treinador, seja quem fosse. É também uma maneira estreita de se analisar futebol, um esporte que, com frequência, é decidido, entre equipes do mesmo nível, pelo acaso e por fatores inusitados, que vão além da racionalidade doentia de Dunga.

A Ganso o que foi de Ademir da Guia

Nunca, na história "desse país", houve alguém como Ademir da Guia. Filho do gênio Domingos, ele gênio também foi. Eis que surge alguém como ele - passadas largas, diabolicamente lento, preciso, clássico como uma sonata, mortífero feito cobra. Paulo Henrique Ganso é Ademir redivivo. Enxerga o campo como um marechal de guerra, mata a bola como um Pelé, passa como um Gerson, surge na área como Coutinho; não enche o pé: coloca; lança feito flecha, mortal. Eis um craque que a besta do Dunga não levará à Copa. Prefere Josué, Kleberson et all. Paulo Henrique lembra em tudo e por tudo o gênio Ademir da Guia. João Cabral faria a ele um poema como fez a Ademir. Ademir da Guia e Paulo Henrique Ganso forévis.


Ademir impõe com seu jogo
o ritmo do chumbo (e o peso),
da lesma, da câmara lenta,
do homem dentro do pesadelo.

Ritmo líquido se infiltrando
no adversário, grosso, de dentro,
impondo-lhe o que ele deseja,
mandando nele, apodrecendo-o.

Ritmo morno, de andar na areia,
da água doente de alagados,
entorpecendo, e então atando
o mais irriquieto adversário.

Aqui é o país do futebol

Neste domingo, se prevalecer a lógica deste magnífico esporte sem lógica, o Coritiba sagrar-se-á campeão paranaense, o Santos conquistará o título paulista (eu sei que ainda é a semifinal, mas contra Santo André ou Grêmio Prudente, não tem, né?)e o Botafogo erguerá a Taça Rio e o título carioca. Entonces, dia de títulos que será, lembremo-nos da bela canção (quando havia canções) de Milton e Fernando. Bom domingo à meia dúzia que lê esta merda.

Brasil está vazio na tarde de domingo, né?
olha o sambão, aqui é o país do futebol
Brasil está vazio na tarde de domingo, né?
olha o sambão, aqui é o país do futebol

No fundo desse país
ao longo das avenidas
nos campos de terra e grama
Brasil só é futebol
nesses noventa minutos
de emoção e alegria
esqueço a casa e o trabalho
a vida fica lá fora
dinheiro fica lá fora
a cama fica lá fora
família fica lá fora
a vida fica lá fora
e tudo fica lá fora

Brasil está vazio na tarde de domingo, né?
olha o sambão, aqui é o país do futebol
Brasil está vazio na tarde de domingo, né?
olha o sambão, aqui é o país do futebol

No fundo desse país
ao longo das avenidas
nos campos de terra e grama
Brasil só é futebol
nesses noventa minutos
de emoção e de alegria
esqueço a casa e o trabalho
a vida fica lá fora
dinheiro fica lá fora
a cama fica lá fora
a família fica lá fora
a vida fica lá fora
o salário fica lá fora
e tudo fica lá fora

Brasil está vazio na tarde de domingo, né?
olha o sambão, aqui é o país do futebol
Brasil está vazio na tarde de domingo, né?
olha o sambão, aqui é o país do futebol

No fundo desse país
ao longo das avenidas
nos campos de terra e grama
Brasil só é futebol
nesses noventa minutos
de emoção e alegria
esqueço a casa e o trabalho
a vida fica lá fora
dinheiro fica lá fora
a cama fica lá fora
a mesa fica lá fora
salário fica lá fora
a fome fica lá fora
a comida fica lá fora
a vida fica lá fora
e tudo fica lá fora

Quebra tudo, Santos

Apesar da baixaria... Eis o que a torcida jovem do Santos vai cantar neste domingo. Existe time mais bacana que o Santos hoje? Existiu time mais bacana que o Santos? Tipo Gilmar, Lima, Dalmo, Mauro e Calvet; Zito, Megálvio e Ele; Dorval, Coutinho e Pepe.
Tipo Gilmar; Carlos Alberto, Ramos Delgado, Joel e Rildo; Zito, Mengálvio e Ele; Dorval, Coutinho e Pepe.
Sem falar no time dos anos 80, que tinha (só pra citar) no ataque Nilton Batata, Juari e João Paulo, com Pita e Ailton Lira vindo de trás?
E hoje? Felipe; Pará, Edu Dracena, Durval e Léo; Arouca, Marquinhos, Wesley e Paulo Henrique Ganso; Neymar e Robinho. E o Brasil todo torcendo por eles.
Mas lá vai o canto de guerra dos malacos santistas:

Domingo eu vou na Vila Belmiro.
Vou ver o time que admiro.
Eu vou levar maconha e poeira,
naum vai ser de brincadeira,
ele vai ser Campeão.
Não vou cheirar na cadeira numerada,
eu vou de arquibancada
pra sentir mais emoção.
Por que meu time bota pra fuder,
e o nome dele são vocês que vão dizer.
Ooooooooooooooooo...
Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh... SANTOS

Dinossauros forévis

Retirado do www.granma.cu

Banderas y vítores colmaron el lugar. A 49 años de aquel 16 de abril, el pueblo de Cuba recordó este viernes, en la capitalina esquina de 23 y 12, el día en que Fidel declaró el carácter socialista de la Revolución.

"Un día antes las garras del imperio derramaron su soberbia inescrupulosa sobre los aeropuertos cubanos en el intento de desmantelar los pocos aviones con que contaba la Revolución. La agresión militar era inminente, pero no había lugar para el enemigo", destacó Lázara Mercedes López Acea, primera secretaria del Partido en Ciudad de La Habana.

La suerte de la Revolución estaba echada, señaló, y si aún quedaba alguna duda, aquel 16 de abril en el acto de homenaje a las víctimas de los bombardeos, nuestro Comandante en Jefe declaraba el carácter socialista de la Revolución. "Honramos hoy a los que dignamente defendieron nuestra independencia y nuestra dignidad", dijo.

En aquellos días de abril también se celebraría la primera gran derrota del imperialismo en América. Hoy, indicó López Acea, un Girón nuevo se impone. Este "es de ideas, de convicciones, de destruir patrañas, de desenmascarar mentiras, de demostrar la firmeza de todo el pueblo".

Ahora, con mucho más poder, el imperialismo yanki fabrica nuevos mercenarios. "Los grandes medios de comunicación a su servicio expanden mentiras sobre Cuba tratando de socavar el prestigio que ha ganado la Revolución con su humanismo, su actuación solidaria y su estricto apego a los principios", resaltó.

Estuvieron presentes en el encuentro —que celebró también el Día del Miliciano—, Misael Enamorado, miembro del Buró Político; Olga Lidia Tapia y Víctor Gaute, miembros del secretariado del Comité Central del Partido; la general de brigada Delsa Esther Puebla (Teté); Juan José Rabilero, coordinador nacional de los CDR y Juan Contino, presidente de la Asamblea Provincial del Poder Popular en Ciudad de La Habana, entre otros.

José Régio forévis

"Vem por aqui" — dizem-me alguns com os olhos doces
Estendendo-me os braços, e seguros
De que seria bom que eu os ouvisse
Quando me dizem: "vem por aqui!"
Eu olho-os com olhos lassos,
(Há, nos olhos meus, ironias e cansaços)
E cruzo os braços,
E nunca vou por ali...
A minha glória é esta:
Criar desumanidades!
Não acompanhar ninguém.
— Que eu vivo com o mesmo sem-vontade
Com que rasguei o ventre à minha mãe
Não, não vou por aí! Só vou por onde
Me levam meus próprios passos...
Se ao que busco saber nenhum de vós responde
Por que me repetis: "vem por aqui!"?


Prefiro escorregar nos becos lamacentos,
Redemoinhar aos ventos,
Como farrapos, arrastar os pés sangrentos,
A ir por aí...
Se vim ao mundo, foi
Só para desflorar florestas virgens,
E desenhar meus próprios pés na areia inexplorada!
O mais que faço não vale nada.


Como, pois, sereis vós
Que me dareis impulsos, ferramentas e coragem
Para eu derrubar os meus obstáculos?...
Corre, nas vossas veias, sangue velho dos avós,
E vós amais o que é fácil!
Eu amo o Longe e a Miragem,
Amo os abismos, as torrentes, os desertos...


Ide! Tendes estradas,
Tendes jardins, tendes canteiros,
Tendes pátria, tendes tetos,
E tendes regras, e tratados, e filósofos, e sábios...
Eu tenho a minha Loucura !
Levanto-a, como um facho, a arder na noite escura,
E sinto espuma, e sangue, e cânticos nos lábios...
Deus e o Diabo é que me guiam, mais ninguém!
Todos tiveram pai, todos tiveram mãe;
Mas eu, que nunca principio nem acabo,
Nasci do amor que há entre Deus e o Diabo.

Ah, que ninguém me dê piedosas intenções,
Ninguém me peça definições!
Ninguém me diga: "vem por aqui"!
A minha vida é um vendaval que se soltou,
É uma onda que se alevantou,
É um átomo a mais que se animou...
Não sei por onde vou,
Não sei para onde vou
Sei que não vou por aí!