A custom of intellectuals, now gone, resides in weekly visits to bookstores. With the increase in electronic texts and the crisis in printed materials, the more than pleasant inspection of store shelves is rare. There is no more time and leisure for conversations with intellectuals (from various academic or worldly sectors) who brought useful bibliographical information while looking through the volumes on display. I remember the excellent Livraria Duas Cidades, run by a disciple of Father Lebret, founder of the Economy and Humanism movement. Frei Benevenuto de Santa Cruz offered readers of all beliefs and ideologies the most recent and in-depth analyzes of the political, cultural and religious world, in addition to a safe dialogue about the sources and authors. In their small space, galaxies of knowledge had an appointment with orthodox or heterodox thinkers, such as Antonio Candido and others.
If we walked a little further in the direction of the Mário de Andrade Library (itself a home of intellectuals who made a mark on national life, including Mauricio Tragtemberg) we would enter the Livraria Italiana, where thousands of volumes brought fresh air to artistic, historical and philosophical research. The trip could end at Sebo do Brandão and other similar establishments, close to Largo de São Francisco. There, entire collections of classics, romantics, modernists and other labels of the spirit were offered at affordable prices. The habit of frequenting second-hand bookstores marks the effective intellectual. Right here, in Barão Geraldo, I accompanied a great writer on excursions to the shelves. The name of that precious essayist is known throughout Unicamp: Eustáquio Gomes.
But before arriving at the second-hand bookstores in São Paulo, a long stop at the Livraria Francesa was mandatory. There, in its alleys overcrowded with books, the most substantial of human culture was offered to the brain that wanted to think with others. In addition to the owners, themselves well educated academically and humanly, they served employees with more erudition than many doctors today. Daise, a Japanese woman who perfectly masters literature and forms of historical, anthropological and philosophical thought, helped a lot in researching rare or new texts. From the bags in that bookstore came the balm against the psittacism that always threatens debates in Brazil.
On such a visit to the store, located on Rua Barão de Itapetininga, one day I found the medicine for one of the worst illnesses in national life. This is about the enormous hypocrisy and fanaticism hidden in the “fight against corruption”. Yes, the theft of politicians and their business accomplices is a perennial threat to the common good. It is part of a system of power that has plagued us since 1500. But one of its side effects is to generate supposed fights against corrupt practices, which are themselves a virulent corrosion.
Brazil knows spasms of such corrupt moralism. From the campaigns of the UDN (National Democratic Union) that raised the ghost of the “sea of mud” against Getúlio Vargas, to recent situations, the implacable people of empty ethics attack opponents and rulers with lips full of slogans in favor of public morals. But on the first occasion that they have the opportunity to reach State positions (in the three powers), they reveal immense greed for official wealth for their private coffers. It turns out that, as in all fascism, such spasmodic movements of morality sow hatred, intolerance and authoritarianism. In the mouths of moralists one finds the worst insults against democracy, human rights, tolerance towards those who are different. They are always willing to support truculent leaders who promise to clean the public scene of the “corrupt”, by definition those who think differently than them.
Oh! Yes! The antidote I found at the French Bookstore? This is the book published in 2008 by psychoanalyst Marie-Laure Susini with the title Praise of Corruption (Paris, Ed. Fayard). There the author traces the genealogy of moralism that disguises itself as politics. Firstly we have the magnificent treatment of G. Orwell and his attack on the saviors of the world who want to decide people's futures by making their present hell and distorting their past. Then comes the analysis of Jacobinism that had Robespierre at the head of the Terror “which purifies everything”. Susini goes down to Tomás Morus and his utopia of a clean State, inside and outside of men. And finally she discusses the seed of Western purity, in the thoughts of Paul the apostle.
From spiritual purity to purity of intentions and will, and from there to ideological and racial purity, the movement is continuous, with a merciless logic. Susini slaps the face of the hypocrites who assume the nickname “incorruptible”, until the moment they cross the squares and settle in the palaces. In an acute moment of Brazilian collective hysteria, in which the propaganda of the “well intentioned” tries to overturn the rights of defense and plural thought, it is worth consulting the volume of that courageous writer. In each of his sentences, the reader will recognize speeches and actions, in addition to the figures, of those who today consider themselves to be cleaners of society and the State. There is no one in Brazil to remind the aforementioned washers: medicine, cure you ipsum. To the wise, half a word is enough.
