Non mutauisti

Lá vem rastejando a revolução cultural. Não bastavam os festivais estivais como o Pessimus Alive a promoverem ipsis verbis a "luta contra a reacção", enquanto decapitam o capital cognitivo entre outros da nossa juventude, agora a Nasty, aquela água suja de sabor dúbio que palia o Verão de alguns, lançou uma campanha de marketing pela mudança e destruição da nossa querida língua vernácula, aquela que o outro reconhecia como sua pátria. Querem pedir ao Ministério da Sciência, Technologia e Ensino Superior que se introduza uma palavra estúpida "nos dicionários da Língua Portuguesa - começando por aquele compilado pela Academia de Ciências de Lisboa "-, razoando desvairados que "hoje são imensas as palavras insignificantes com sentidos imperceptíveis como “opidano”, “ingresia” ou “exaurir” que se mantêm presentes nos dicionários da Língua Portuguesa", palavras estas já reunidas numa lista a que chamaram lixionário. Também oferecem CDs para os miúdos aprenderem a escrepver mal.

Para a metodologia da Revolução da Linguagem talvez seja útil um desses livros recentes, lúcidos o suficiente para aprofundarem o problema da anthropologia negativa, mas não a ponto de oferecerem a sua solução: a Christificação do Homem, única esperança razoável. Mille nongenti octoginta quattuor, in quinto capitulo primæ partis:

«'How is the Dictionary getting on?' said Winston, raising his voice to overcome the noise.

'Slowly,' said Syme. 'I'm on the adjectives. It's fascinating.'

He had brightened up immediately at the mention of Newspeak [Novilíngua]. He pushed his pannikin aside, took up his hunk of bread in one delicate hand and his cheese in the other, and leaned across the table so as to be able to speak without shouting.

'The Eleventh Edition is the definitive edition,' he said. 'We're getting the language into its final shape--the shape it's going to have when nobody speaks anything else. When we've finished with it, people like you will have to learn it all over again. You think, I dare say, that our chief job is inventing new words. But not a bit of it! We're destroying words--scores of them, hundreds of them, every day. We're cutting the language down to the bone. The Eleventh Edition won't contain a single word that will become obsolete before the year 2050.'

He bit hungrily into his bread and swallowed a couple of mouthfuls, then continued speaking, with a sort of pedant's passion. His thin dark face had become animated, his eyes had lost their mocking expression and grown almost dreamy.

'It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words. Of course the great wastage is in the verbs and adjectives, but there are hundreds of nouns that can be got rid of as well. It isn't only the synonyms; there are also
the antonyms. After all, what justification is there for a word which is simply the opposite of some other word? A word contains its opposite in itself. Take "good", for instance. If you have a word like "good", what
need is there for a word like "bad"? "Ungood" will do just as well--better, because it's an exact opposite, which the other is not. Or again, if you want a stronger version of "good", what sense is there in having a whole string of vague useless words like "excellent" and "splendid" and all the rest of them? "Plusgood" covers the meaning, or "doubleplusgood" if you want something stronger still. Of course we use those forms already. but in the final version of Newspeak there'll be nothing else. In the end the whole notion of goodness and badness will be covered by only six words--in reality, only one word. Don't you see the beauty of that, Winston? It was B.B.'s idea originally, of course,' he added as an afterthought.

A sort of vapid eagerness flitted across Winston's face at the mention of Big Brother. Nevertheless Syme immediately detected a certain lack of enthusiasm.

'You haven't a real appreciation of Newspeak, Winston,' he said almost sadly. 'Even when you write it you're still thinking in Oldspeak. I've read some of those pieces that you write in "The Times" occasionally. They're
good enough, but they're translations. In your heart you'd prefer to stick to Oldspeak, with all its vagueness and its useless shades of meaning. You don't grasp the beauty of the destruction of words. Do you know that
Newspeak is the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year?'

Winston did know that, of course. He smiled, sympathetically he hoped, not trusting himself to speak. Syme bit off another fragment of the dark-coloured bread, chewed it briefly, and went on:

'Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that
can ever be needed, will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten. Already, in the Eleventh Edition, we're not far from that point. But the process will still be continuing long after you and I are dead. Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller. Even now, of course, there's no reason or excuse for committing thoughtcrime. It's merely a question of self-discipline, reality-control. But in the end there won't be any need even for that. The Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect. Newspeak is Ingsoc [doutrina oficial do Partido, a orthodoxia] and Ingsoc is Newspeak,' he added with a sort of mystical satisfaction. 'Has it ever occurred to you, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now?'

'Except----' began Winston doubtfully, and he stopped.

It had been on the tip of his tongue to say 'Except the proles,' [o povo oprimido, não pertencente ao Partido] but he checked himself, not feeling fully certain that this remark was not in some way unorthodox. Syme, however, had divined what he was about to say.

'The proles are not human beings,' he said carelessly. 'By 2050--earlier, probably--all real knowledge of Oldspeak will have disappeared. The whole literature of the past will have been destroyed. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron--they'll exist only in Newspeak versions, not merely changed into something different, but actually changed into something contradictory of what they used to be. Even the literature of the Party will change. Even the slogans will change. How could you have a slogan like "freedom is slavery" when the concept of freedom has been abolished? The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking--not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.'

One of these days, thought Winston with sudden deep conviction, Syme will be vaporized. He is too intelligent. He sees too clearly and speaks too plainly. The Party does not like such people. One day he will disappear. It is written in his face.

(...)

Syme had fallen silent for a moment, and with the handle of his spoon was tracing patterns in the puddle of stew. The voice from the other table quacked rapidly on, easily audible in spite of the surrounding din.

'There is a word in Newspeak,' said Syme, 'I don't know whether you know it: DUCKSPEAK, to quack like a duck. It is one of those interesting words that have two contradictory meanings. Applied to an opponent, it is abuse, applied to someone you agree with, it is praise.'

Unquestionably Syme will be vaporized, Winston thought again. He thought it with a kind of sadness, although well knowing that Syme despised him and slightly disliked him, and was fully capable of denouncing him as a
thought-criminal if he saw any reason for doing so. There was something subtly wrong with Syme. There was something that he lacked: discretion, aloofness, a sort of saving stupidity. You could not say that he was
unorthodox. He believed in the principles of Ingsoc, he venerated Big Brother, he rejoiced over victories, he hated heretics, not merely with sincerity but with a sort of restless zeal, an up-to-dateness of information, which the ordinary Party member did not approach. Yet a faint air of disreputability always clung to him. He said things that would have been better unsaid, he had read too many books, he frequented the Chestnut
Tree Cafe, haunt of painters and musicians. There was no law, not even an unwritten law, against frequenting the Chestnut Tree Cafe, yet the place was somehow ill-omened. The old, discredited leaders of the Party had been used to gather there before they were finally purged. Goldstein himself, it was said, had sometimes been seen there, years and decades ago. Syme's fate was not difficult to foresee. And yet it was a fact that if Syme
grasped, even for three seconds, the nature of his, Winston's, secret opinions, he would betray him instantly to the Thought Police. So would anybody else, for that matter: but Syme more than most. Zeal was not enough. Orthodoxy was unconsciousness.»

Preocupação paronóide e exagerada, esta a do ataque à nossa língua? Bom recurso para saber de como já avança a revolução linguística em Portugal é um livrito sobre "o ensino do Português", que podeis comprar por 3,15€ em qualquer pingo doce ou online, escrito por uma profissional do assunto mas legível por leigos. A autora chama-se Maria do Carmo Vieira, é professora, e entre outros já publicou alguns trabalhos sobre Pessoa e coordenou a fixação do texto da Vária História de Cousas Notáveis do Oriente, de Fr. João dos Santos, por ocasião das comemorações dos descobrimentos portugueses. Ao longo do ensaio, cita Olga Pombo, António Bracinha Vieira, Séneca, António Borges Coelho, Fernando Pessoa, Bernardo Soares, Alberto Caeiro, Madalena Sá e Costa, Danièle Sallenave, Leo Tolstoi, Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt, Almada Negreiros, Karl Popper, George Orwell, Vercors, Albert Camus, Aintoine Saint-Exupery, António Damásio, Stig Dagerman, André Gorz, Carlos Drummond de Andrade, António Marques, Álvaro Gomes, Jorge Morais Barbosa, João Andrade Peres, Vital Moreira, José Portela, Carlos Ceia, Luís de Camões, Gil Vicente, Aníbal Pinto de Castro, Padre António Vieira, Henri Thoreau, Nathalie Sarraute, Santo Agostinho, António Nobre, Manuela Castro Alves, Carmelinda Pereira, Vieira da Silva, Yehudi Menuhin, Jacques Muglioni, Michel Serac, Maria de Lourdes Paixão, Baudelaire, para além do servil e europeísta Ministério da Educação.

"A situação do ensino da disciplina de Português, decorrente da execução da nova reforma, e excluindo as suas especificidades próprias, não difere substancialmente daquela em que se encontram as restantes disciplinas, tratando-se, pois, de um problema geral do ensino.

Historicamente, a «mudança» iniciou-se no pós-25 de Abril, com a preocupação em destruir tudo o que se relacionasse com a ditadura, numa atitude irreflectida, a que se juntaram algumas situações ditadas por mero oportunismo. (...)

Adicionando a estas circunstâncias, próprias de um momento de vivência revolucionário, quase impossíveis de controlar, a entrada em cena de teorias pedagógicas, decorrentes das Ciências de Educação, já contestadas e analisadas nos seus efeitos nefastos, nos anos 50 e 60 nos EUA, estavam criadas as condições para a instalação dessa «mudança», que nos vários capítulos demos a conhecer, aplicada à disciplina de Português. No mesmo sentido se veio a revelar o programa «Educação e Formação 2010», elaborado pela Direcção-Geral de Educação e Cultura da Comissão Europeia."

A auctora denuncia as doutrinas pedagógicas dos facilitismo e miserabilismo, a redefinição o papel do professor, cuja formação na área specífica é menosprezada, e da escola, que deixa de "transmitir o conhecimento, (...) de fomentar outros interesses, na convivência com a cultura e com a arte, e de formar a humanidade dos alunos, no sentido de transformar e de aperfeiçoar o seu carácter", iludida de que preparar os alunos para as tarefas comezinhas do dia-a-dia é melhor do que criar neles um spírito crítico.

A não-correcção dos erros ortográficos (ou outros) dos alunos, a superficialidade da análise literária e a substituição dos clássicos da literatura por outros textos não-literários sem qualquer valor formativo (e.g. etiquetas da roupa), a desvalorização da memória, o esquecimento da História e da Filosofia, a destructuração da grammática tradicional com a invasão da nova terminologia linguística, confusa e impráctica, a redução do vocabulário, o apagamento do Latim e do Grego, a infantilização do grau da exigência, o culto das mediocridade e bestialidade do mundo do espectáculo, a ilusão da maturidade inexistente, a primazia do lúdico na pedagogia, &c. não podem ser encaradas se não como meio de impedir a formação de cidadãos livres e responsáveis, para ao invés deixar a população vulnerável à mais reles e abjecta das propagandas. Puro controlo de massas.

A escolarização universal, que poderia ser (e foi) a tábua de salvação para tantas crianças desfavorecidas sem outro meio de sair dos meios viciados onde cresceram nem de os rehabilitar, está a transformar-se num forte aliado desta força maligna autodestructiva que puxa para baixo e que cada um carregará consigo até à morte, a concupiscência, hipotecando o Homem Perfeito e Completo que poderia vir a ser.

Façamos pois por ter uma escola útil para as nossas crianças. Compremos-lhes bons livros, tenhamo-los cá em casa ao seu alcance, leiamo-los com elas. Muitos livros, os antigos também.

Ó Boa Mãe, que ensinastes a Palavra de Deus a falar, rogai por nós.