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The question of the literary genres has been disputed for centuries. It is one of the most
important matters in the Theory of Literature. While excusing ourselves from the narration of
the historical evolution of the debate, we will present a summary of the problem and of the
solutions we will offer.
Should those solutions seem scandalously new to scholars in the field, we assure that any
attempt to novelty is far from our intention. We have limited ourselves to applying to the study
of an old question the ontological principles which are old as the world.
are they nothing more than mere formal conventions laid down by habit, comfort, and
sometimes by pretentiousness?
certain writers', apparently without realising he's contradicting himself. In fact, were it the way
he puts it, we would have to believe that until someone had the kindness of inventing genres, all
writers lived outside the cosmic rhythm, and that would have been quite a disaster. It is
therefore clear that we must distinguish between the 'cosmic phenomenon' of genres (man's
innate tendency to reiterate certain expressive modules, in obedience to an implacable
regularity of nature) and the formal concept or verbal definition of genres, which simply
translates in logical language the more or less consistent appearance of this phenomenon. The
concept, the verbal definition, may have been invented by men, but the actual phenomenon, if it
comes from nature, was not invented by anyone, unless we are talking about God or we
understand the verb 'to invent' in its original Latin meaning - inveniere meant 'to discover', 'to
find' -, depriving it of all connotation of creation and artificial construction. And the problem in
dispute is precisely that of knowing whether the concept of genres, as it has been set forth by
'certain writers', actually portrays a real relationship between human expressive modules and
the cosmic regularity, or if, on the contrary, genres are nothing but a set of arbitrary rules,
beings of reason with no fundamentum in re. If the relationship exists, genres are a necessity, a
'constant of the human spirit'; and the fact that people eventually write books that do not fit in
any genre does not deny in any way the existence of genres just like the existence of illnesses
does not deny the laws of physiology, rather demonstrating them through a contrario proof: no
matter how occult and disguised they may be under the thick layers of inventive and extravagant
combinations, genres will always remain the fundamental principles of all literary composition.
If, on the contrary, the relationship does not exist, then genres do not reflect any cosmological or
ontological necessity, being nothing but a rule invented after the preferences of a certain time,
which we may follow or not as we please, running no risk at all of subverting the cosmic order.
The whole problem amounts, therefore, to knowing if there are ontological or cosmological laws
of which genres are an extension, a manifestation or expression at the level of the literary and
linguistic microcosm, or if they just do not exist at all.
would never allow itself to be refuted as being wrong, since there would be no criteria for correct
reasoning; and, actually, the study of wrong ratiocinations is part of the science of logic.
The literary genres neither exist 'in themselves', like substances in the scholastic understanding
of the word, neither are a posteriori generalisations obtained from more or less fortuitous
similarities among individual works, neither rules dictated by the arbitrary taste of an age. They
are sets of possibilities5 for the organisation of literary works. Their mode of existence and
action consists in establishing the boundaries of the possibilities of literary invention,
differentiating it in a certain number of directions and orientations which, once taken,
necessarily bring specific consequences to the posterior development of the work, restricting the
author's range of arbitrary decision; and the ability the author possesses to account for these
consequences without distancing himself from his central goal produces a final standard of
internal coherence, which is the means which will render us able to judge the work according to
its own laws, freely chosen by the author among the number of possible genres and
combinations.
We can say that genres exist and differ among themselves like the directions of space. If a man
goes North, he necessarily distances himself from South; and even though he might come and go
as many times he wants, North will always be opposite to South, and perpendicular to East and
West. The pattern of the trail depends on each one's liberty, but it is necessarily staked out by
the extreme directions. Genres are thus the extreme differences among the many possibilities of
literary structuring; as we advance ourselves coherently along one of those lines of direction, the
harder - but never impossible - it becomes to combine it with others: the more the essential
nucleus of a work is strictly committed to the rules of a genre, the harder it will be, in composing
the rest, to escape those rules or to combine them in a creative and effective manner with those
of some other genre. It is like a chess game: once a direction for the game is defined, an ever
greater skill is required to be able to revoke the consequences which threaten to follow
irrevocably suit at every new turn 6 . The artist's ability consists either in coherently following up
to the end the rules of the chosen direction, or in intelligently combining them with other
possible directions7 , creating mixed textures. However, even in the richest and most inventive
mixture, the laws of genres would, at least latently, always remain active as articulating
principles and minimum elements of which the mixture is composed.
But Wellek and Warren's emphasis on the difference between the mode of existence of
individual works and that of genres still can prove worth a look. Individual works are beings, or
substances, produced by man. They exist because they were written, and they only exist after
being written. Genres, in their turn, are sets of possibilities, and as such exist before and
independently of anyone doing anything whatsoever. For a possibility to exist, it is enough that
it not be impossible - and being theoretically possible, escaping the absolute impossibility even if
through a little tiny fringe of possibility, is certainly easier than actually writing a book, as
anyone who has ever tried knows well. For a set of possibilities to exist, it is enough that it
remains sufficiently distinguishable from other sets; for the mode of existence of a set of
possibilities consists in nothing more than being a clear standard of differentiation between
some possibilities and others; as long as this difference exists, the set exists. If that is so, genres
are indestructible, no matter how many mixed works are written and how difficult it may
become, in practice, to distinguish them inside the mixture. Only the absolute impossibility - in
theory, not in practice - would authorise us to speak of the 'non-existence of genres'. But this will
obviously never happen, because genres derive from an ontological necessity, that is, from the
conditions that stake out and determine the physical cosmos wholly considered; and their
suppression, were it possible, would result in an actual cosmic mess. It is not by chance that the
difficulty to define genres and the following proclamation of their extinction arrive at the peak of
an age that harbours every sort of eschatological omens.
absolutely unjustified by our deeds. Much of the modern attitude towards genres comes simply
from the ignorance of their ontological foundations in the old science.
The metaphysical principal par excellence is the Absolute, or Infinite, or Universal Possibility.
The Infinite - as we will call it from now on - is a necessarily unique principle (for we cannot
conceive of two infinites), unlimited in every direction, necessary by definition (for a contingent
infinite would be a limited infinite, therefore finite). We speak of the metaphysical Infinite and
not of a presumed 'mathematical' infinite, which is limited to quantity and for that very reason is
not an infinite properly speaking, but only a metaphorical one, or of second degree: infinitum
secundum quid, 'infinite under a certain aspect', as used to say the Scholastics 9.
The Infinite comprises and transcends, in its absolutely unlimited possibility, all dimensions
and directions of the finite. And finite beings, being derived from the Infinite, thus can neither
be identical to it, nor be radically different from it, that is, not have any point of contact with it.
Beings are neither identical nor different from Infinite: they are analogous to it. The main
connection between finite beings and the Infinite is the notion of oneness, which is a
characteristic common to both. All that exists has oneness, because if it does not possess
oneness, it is two and therefore has no consistency, no cohesion. The attribute 'being' and the
attribute 'oneness' are, for that reason, said to be mutually convertible: to all that is attributed
being, is also attributed oneness and vice-versa. Ens et unum convertuntur. However, the
oneness of the Infinite is absolute (being inseparable) and simple (not being composed of parts),
whereas that of finite beings is composite (always being constituted of parts or aspects) and
relative (being separable, when the being is extinguished)10.
Hence that every finite being, whatever be its place in the 'great chain of Being', has with Infinite
two kinds of simultaneous relationships: on the one hand, the essential continuity, that is, the
ultimate oneness of its essence with the Infinite's essence, for we could not, without
contradiction, conceive of a being which essence is totally separated from Infinite; on the other
hand, the existential discontinuity, because finite beings, being one with Infinite through their
essence, are distinguished and distanced from it according to their conditions, forms, levels,
planes and modes of existence, which, descending from universality to particularity, from
necessity to contingency, from permanence to fleetingness, compose precisely what is called 'the
great chain of Being'11.
Thus from the absolute limitlessness of Universal Possibility to the most restricted areas of
contingent existence are disposed successive degrees of possibility, or 'worlds'. Each one of these
worlds is therefore defined by a set of limitations or conditions that define what, in their proper
domains,
is
possible
or
impossible.
That which we call 'our world', the world of sensible human experience, is defined by three
conditions: time, space, and number or quantity. There is nothing, in the whole extent of the
physical world, that is not subjected to the imperious law that ordains it to be in some place and
not in other, during some time and no more, and to be limited to a certain quantity under all
aspects12.
These limitations evidently do not befall only on beings, but on all their actions and
manifestations as well. So it is that human intelligence, even though it may even be able to grasp
some mysterious, instantaneous and unexpressed realities that are well above the conditions of
time, space and number (without which it would never be able to grasp the notions of 'Infinite'
or 'essence'), will have to subject itself to these same conditions in order to be able to manifest or
express itself, in the form of thought, speech or action. Now, the written manifestations of the
human mind would not be able to escape these universal conditionings, nor how to exist without
differentiating themselves in patterns defined according to time, space and number. These
patterns are precisely the principle of genres.
The three 'conditions of bodily existence' mentioned by the traditional and particularly Hindu
doctrines frame and shape all structures of human perception and action. For that very reason
there is not, among all functions of perception and action, any one that cannot, ultimately, be
reduced - at least in its logical concept - to some modality of number, space and time (eg. vision
remits us to simultaneity, hearing to succession, walking to succession, apprehension to
simultaneity, generation to number etc.). The same, necessarily, happens with language. From
the basic distinction between name (simultaneity) and verb (succession), everything refers to
combinations and complications obtained from these three principles. Similarly, when man first
began to write down his thoughts, the modalities in which he could do it had to be differentiated
according to the three conditions of bodily existence.
like the discontinued and enigmatic speech of angels and oracles, whereas prose slides along the
ground like the everyday talk of men.
This distinction reflects, therefore, the principles of the essential continuity and the existential
discontinuity between the Infinite and the finite.
The traditional symbol of the circle can make it all the more clear. If we represent Being, unique
and infinite, by a point, the rays that emanate from it represent its distinct possibilities of
manifestations in many directions; they are the qualities or properties that prolong its essence
without being separated from it. If, from this point, we draw many concentric circles, they will
represent the various levels of nearness and farness in which every point and segment of the
rays can be in relation to the central point. The rays represent the essential continuity, and the
circles the existential discontinuity; the rays, the oneness of reality; the circles, the multiplicity
of planes or levels13. This figure applies to the distinction of verse and prose in a double way,
according to the rule of traditional symbolism that always allows for the coexistence of direct
and inverse symbolism14. We can say, on the one hand, that the rays express the continuous flow
of prose, and their sectioning by the concentric circles the rhythm of verse. On the other, we can
see the figure in reverse sense, and say that prose revolves or goes about continuously like
planets in their orbit, and that the rays of verse section or scan rhythmically these circles
according to the directions of space.
The possible combinations of distinct shades of verse and prose must not make us lose the
essential distinction, because every combination, no matter how complex, will always be made
of continued and discontinued elements.
The most recent critical trend is to forget the key role of the quantitative factor - metric or
rhythmic - in the distinction of verse and prose, and to search for a semantic type of distinction.
That is, with or without metrics and rhyme, a text is considered to be 'poetic' or 'prosaic'
according to whether a 'connotative' or 'denotative' use of language prevails; verse is supposed
to speak in modo obliquo and prose in modo recto 15. This new distinction arose from the need to
account for the great amount of works written without any commitment to metric. But, on one
side, denotation and connotation are nothing but the semantic equivalents of continuity and
discontinuity, as we can see from the direct or indirect - continued or discontinued - reference
from signifier to signified. On the other, this is a derived and secondary distinction, and not a
primary one. For millennia, poetic works have possessed metrics and rhyme, being either
connotative or denotative (even treatises on science and philosophy, which semantically we
would call prosaic, were written in poetic forms, without calling the attention of anyone). We
could admit, so as to wrap up the question, a fourfold classification, patterned after the crossing
of semantic and phonetic criteria: thus, we would have continued-connotative and continued-
2. If genres are bodies of possibilities, and if these bodies are distinct from each other, then each
body defines itself as a principle or rule for the structuring of matter taken as a whole, while
verse and prose are principles for the structuring of the smallest parts - sentences and periods separately considered. A tragedy is a tragedy because the totality of the events narrated
necessarily concurs for a tragic outcome according to the rule of tragedy, even though there may
be, here and there, along the work, pleasurable or comic elements. But verses are verses because
their sentences are sectioned and sewn, one by one, according to some kind of reiterative
module; and prose is prose because its sentences follow each other in a continuing flow, with no
commitment to reiteration. In order to know whether a work is written in verse or prose, it is
enough to read some paragraphs, or even to just look at the text's disposition in the page,
whereas to know whether a work is a comedy or a tragedy, unless it is stated on the cover, we
must read it entirely and get to know the intimate connections among its elements and levels of
meaning.
Genres, as we were saying, are bodies of possibilities for the combination of literary matter, and
these bodies distinguish themselves from each other as they reflect in their inner structure the
two other great dimensions of bodily existence: time and space. Hence the first great division of
genres: the temporal or successive mode is expressed in the narrative genres, and the spatial or
simultaneous mode in the expository genres. The internal subdivisions of these genres - or, if
you will, their species - will be defined, therefore, according to the many modalities of space and
time, modalities which, in their turn, are distinguished by number: continued and discontinued.
Continued - or unterminated - time, discontinued - or terminated - time: such is the criterion for
the distinction of the narrative genres. Continued space - or encompassing totality -,
discontinued space - or subdivided in distinct places -: such is the criterion for the distinction of
the expository genres.
In order to understand what we are about to say it is necessary to bear in mind that these
principles of genres are ontological and not psychological; they need not be present in the
author's mind as he writes his work; they stay, so to speak, behind the act of literary creation,
staking out its field of possibilities. Any author who is deeply aware of these principles certainly
can make deliberate use of them as technical elements; however, even if he does not have the
slightest idea about them, they will nevertheless exercise their delimitating action. It may also
happen that the artist harmonises himself with them in a totally unconscious way, sufficing that
he remains faithful to the formal intention that is his inspiration, for making art is but to give
form, and man cannot give form but according to his own form of existing, perceiving, and
making.
We say that the narrative genre expresses the dimension of time not because all narratives
elapse in a uniform flow of time, but rather because even though they may consist of a continued
duration, or of a crossing of psychological lapses of time, or of comings and goings between past
and present, or of moments of minimum and indefinite extension atomistically taken, and not
mattering the immense variety of the modes for the treatment of time in historical or fictional
narratives, the most important structuring factor of the narrative is time, and the narrative is the
narrative because of it and of nothing else.
The eventual interference of expository or spatial elements - as it happens, for example, in the
description of settings, in the profiles of characters, or even in the small philosophical essays
that authors such as Tolstoi and Dostoievski insert in their novels - does not deprive the work of
anything of its narrative character; their presence is explained, ultimately, by the fact that for
man there is no other way to perceive and represent time than through the reference of a spatial
frame and some movement in it, as anyone who possesses a clock may realise. Strictly speaking,
there is no 'pure narration', made only of succession, without any reference to space or
simultaneity. Time is time and space is space, but man is man, and in him these two dimensions
cross, articulated by number or order.
Likewise, expository genres are 'spatial' to the extent that they reflect the simultaneousness of
the elements in a logical (or ontological, for it is the same thing) hierarchy. The expository genre
is shaped by logical order, abstracting itself, in principle, from the temporal element, from
chronological succession. However, just like there is no 'pure narrative', there is no 'pure
exposition', because the oral or written exposition of an idea, even when this idea has been
grasped in a completely simultaneous way, demands that it be successively unfolded in the
forms of reason and speech. Here, impurity too comes from the nature of things: being symbols
or manifestations of the cosmic dimensions of space and time, genres could not possess all the
notes that define these dimensions, because in that case they would be identical, and not
analogous17.
apprehensible by the cognitio imaginativa the archetypes that stake out possibilities of the
temporal world19.
Eternity is the realm of the divine by excellence, from where descend, through the mediation of
the Logos or Divine Intelligence, the determinations which, taking live forms progressively
defined in the funnel of perenniality, are finally crystallised as irreversible facts in the temporal
order. Eternity is fiat; temporality, factum; and perenniality, the perpetual in fieri.
Structurally, therefore, the narrative must express - not necessarily in its content nor in its
technique, but always in the principle or establishing rule that makes this technique possible either perenniality or temporality, because the imperative, the 'amr', is above the possibility of
being narrated, or can only be narrated by the mediation of its image in perenniality.
So, just as the temporal order is the realm of particular facts, and perenniality the realm of
myths and symbols which group these facts in categories that remit to Universal Possibility, the
first division of the narrative genres is that existing between factual narratives and symbolic
narratives. Factual narratives express what has already happened, is already finished and cannot
return. Symbolic narratives express events which, even though they may be metaphorically
placed in the past (as they must be in modern languages, deprived of aoristo or mudari), in
reality represent possibilities destined to be reactualised. This division corresponds more or less
to that which is imprecisely called 'historical' narrative and 'fictional' narrative; we say
'imprecisely' because what distinguishes these two species is not properly the real or fictional
nature of events, but rather the fact that the reality of the historical narrative is in that the
events have really happened in a past moment, whereas the 'reality' of fictional narrative is in
the possibility of a psychological reactualisation of its symbols in the act of reading. When
Carlyle tells the story of the death of Louis XV, he wants to make clear that this has already
happened and will not happen again; however, when the evangelist tells the story of Christ's
death, what he has in mind is not the finished fact, but rather the possibility of its ritual
reactualisation in the soul of the Christian; and Desdemona's death, which in fact never
happened, is intended to happen in the soul of the spectator when he watches the play. Now,
Christ's death was a historical fact as much as the death of Louis XV; the difference is that the
evangelist talks about it as a symbol, as a repeatable archetype, while Carlyle only speaks of a
past fact. Thus, the narrative of the Gospel and of Carlyle are both historical, while that of
Desdemona is fictional; but the Gospel and Othello are symbolical narratives, while Carlyle's
book is a factual narrative.
The factual narrative comprises thus all the facts which, belonging to the order of temporality
and irreversibility, are narrated as such. This includes the works of testimony, chronicles, and
memoirs as well as works of History itself. The difference between memoirs and works of
History is in the interference of a spatial factor, the narrator's point of view. The writer of
memoirs tells things from his own point-of-view, while the historian collects various testimonies
(among which can evidently be his own). We can still bring in another spatial difference between
the books of memoirs and those of testimony or chronicle, because the first are narrated from
the point of view of the author of the actions, whereas the latter are narrated from an observer's
point of view. Even though these divisions are spatial in principle, they also have a temporal
counterpart to the extent that there is a differentiation between a subjective or personal
temporality and a social chronology - being therefore intersubjective.
The symbolic narrative species are also divided according to the continued and the
discontinued, the terminated and the unterminated. The unterminated species is drama, which,
even though narrating an action metaphorically placed in the past, reproduces it in the present
by means of the actors' performance on stage.20 The terminated modality is what we call epic, or
properly narrative (myth, legend, novel, etc.), which does not reproduce the action in the
present, but simply evokes it or narrates it as past21.
The species of drama is also divided according to the terminated and the unterminated. The
terminated subspecies reports itself to the factum, the time that unfolds in the direction of the
irreversible concatenation of causes and consequences: it is tragedy, celebrating the victory of
necessity and fate over man. When, on the contrary, the chain of factum can be broken by
Providence, returning to man initial possibilities which would be lost under the effect of
irreversibility, we have the subspecies of comedy22.
Likewise, terminated narrative or epic genres are divided according to the modality of time that
informs them:
1. The mythical subspecies expresses events that occurred 'in that time' (in illo tempore), that is,
in the mythical time of perenniality and of the mundus imaginalis. This is the real time of the
Biblical and Koranic narratives, as well as of the Greek myths.
2. At the other end, we have the novelesque genre (novels and short stories), which is definitely
delimited by terrestrial temporality (no matter how creative is technical treatment the narrator
gives to time).
3. Between both, we can admit an intermediate species, composed of jests and legends, which,
dealing essentially with the divinisation of a human hero, establish a bridge between temporality
and perenniality. Novels of 'initiatic' content are evidently likely to offer difficulties for
classification, hesitating between the novelesque and the legendary. What's best, in almost all
cases, is to call them legends disguised as novels.
The enormous development of the novelesque species in the modern age, parallel to the
retraction of legends, is a sign of the progressive loss of the sense of perenniality in our
civilisation. This loss occurs concomitantly to the spread of modern European languages
deprived of aoristo, and to the loss of symbolical understanding of the universe in favour of a
more terrestrial experience, temporalised and empirical, in the transition from the medieval
worldview to that of the Renaissance.
On the other end, we have the works patterned after the idea of part or aspect. These are works
which focus on a specific phenomenon, or group of phenomena, an idea or a particular group of
ideas, without the purpose of creating a system of total knowledge. But even this approach to the
part can be done according to two modalities: inclusion or exclusion.
On one side, there are the works which, dealing with a particular subject, intend to insert it in a
pre-existent body of knowledge, which has already been systematised. For example, when
Apolonius of Perga writes his treatise on Cones, he does not intend to build a complete
geometric system, nor to just throw a few ideas: he intends to fit these ideas in a precise place of
the pre-existent body of geometric science; and this goal directs and informs the treatment he
gives to his subject, which must be a systematic treatment according to the concepts and norms
admitted in Geometry. This species of works is denominated thesis, which comes from a Latin
verb that means 'to put'. He who makes a thesis is putting a piece in a pre-existent frame, and
the piece's shape must be perfectly adjusted to the specific hole it intends to fill.
However, if the idea to be presented has no formal or decisive commitment with a pre-existent
system of knowledge, then what the author does is to freely add one more idea to the extensive
and vague repertoire of human ideas. This is precisely what the species essay does.
The differentiation of the expository species may thus go on indefinitely, by means of the sheer
application of the criteria of whole and part, inclusion and exclusion. There is an infinity of
possible mixtures as well. It is unnecessary to proceed with the enumeration, for we believe to
have proved the effectiveness of the criteria. Just to give an idea of the possibilities of
developments: the essay species can be subdivided according to whether the essay is more or
less committed to some pre-existent scientific criteriology: Science as Vocation, Politics as
Vocation and other works collected in Weber's Essays of Sociology differ thus from Montaigne's
Essays because the first are closer to 'exclusion' and the second to 'inclusion'. And so on. It is not
necessary, at this moment, to carry the criteria forward to more detailed applications.
derived from space and time, from continuity and discontinuity, from the successive and
simultaneous, is what defines precisely the limits of the humanly expressible and the mutual
annihilation of time and space in the crossing of the 'point' or 'moment'.
Lyric is, therefore, the purest expression of relation, or order, or number, that is, the dimension
that articulates, comprises and contains space and time.
The literary genres, strictly speaking, are archetypical realities: they frame and guide the
multiplicity of facts in literary history, without ever being manifest in their whole purity - for
temporality imitates perenniality without being able to identify with it - and also without ever
totally vanishing away, no matter how unrecognisable they may be behind the usually confusing
multitude of particular facts and variations. The difficulty felt by the contemporary man in
understanding genres and recognising them in the midst of the confusion of empirical data is
exactly the same he has to find any archetypal meaning in the facts of a daily life that has been
entirely trivialised and reified, cut from the realm of archetypes by the smoke and the noise of
commercial and industrial instantaneousness, as well as by the polluting distortions the mass
communications industry criminally introduces in the world of images and symbols. The
difficulty in seeing in the subject and not in the object.
Notas
1 Croce, Benedetto. Estetica come Scienza dell'Espressione e Linguistica Generale. 11th edition.
Bari: Laterza, 1965. I:IV, pp. 40-44
2 Wellek, Ren and Warren, Austin. Theory of Literature, 3rd. ed. New York: Harcourt, Brace &
World, 1956. pp. 226-227
3 Moiss, Massaud. A Criao Literria. Introduo Problemtica da Literatura. 5a ed. So
Paulo: Melhoramentos, 1973. p.37
4 Staiger, Emil. Conceptos Fundamentales de Potica. Spanish translation. Madrid: Rialp, 1966.
p. 213, quoted in Moiss, p. 37
5 On the notion of 'sets of possibilities', see Santos, Mrio Ferreira dos. A Sabedoria dos
Princpios, So Paulo: Matese, 1968.
6 Carlos Bousoo (Teoria de la Expresin Potica. 4th ed. Madrid: Gredos, 1966. pp. 31-32)
remarks: 'Each sentence the author conceives as definitive grants the poematic movement an
irrevocable direction which naturally excludes, simply by the means of its existence, many
others possible at the moment, from which different impulses could have arisen, and which now
are inaccessible. The poem, in its development, ordains in growing proportion the general
arrangement of its unfolding, and all the poet does is to particularise this arrangement, to pick a
card that is offered to him from the board, less and less thick at every moment.'
7 Purism and an intelligent combination of different genres can both deliver good results. The
two greatest literary works of the Portuguese literary renaissance - Antonio Ferreira's Castro and
Lus de Cames's Os Lusadas - follow each one these two strategies, respectively. Ferreira
wished to write a tragedy that attained in the strictest fashion to Aristotelian rule, and with that
he obtained the tremendous dramatic concentration that makes his play one of the works of
greatest impact in Portuguese language. Cames, in his turn, unable to follow by the book the
model of mythical (Homeric) epope in face of the chosen historical topic, articulated mythical
narrative with historical chronicle, producing a work with two parallel strata without match in
world literature. On Os Lusadas as an 'impure epope', see Saraiva, Antnio Jos. 'Os Lusadas
e o ideal da epopia'. Para a Histria da Cultura em Portugal. 5th ed. Lisbon: Bertrand, Vol.I, pp.
81 ss.
8 See our 'Introduction to the concept of traditional sciences', in Astrologia e Religio. So
Paulo: Nova Stella, 1987, Cap. IV: 'Traditional sciences are the body of methods and knowledge
which, in every known civilisation - including the West up to the sixteenth century - unfold in
coherent manner in every direction from a central core of metaphysical principles, and which
intend to reveal, on all more or less contingent orders of reality, the eternal and immutable
validity of these same principles' (p. 53).
9 On the distinction between 'infinite' and 'mathematical infinite' or 'indefinite', see Gunon,
Ren. Les Principes du Calcul Infinistsimal. Paris: Gallimard, 1946. Chap. 1. The distinction
was also highlighted by Descartes on 27 of Philosophy Principles.
10 For an exposition of Oneness from the logical and ontological point-of-view, see Santos,
Mrio Ferreira dos. A Sabedoria da Unidade. So Paulo: Matese, 1968; from the point-of-view of
the mystic and sapiential doctrines, see Burckhardt, Titus. An Introduction to Sufi Doctrines.
Wellingborough: Thorsons, 1976, Chap. VII.
11 On the concepts of essential continuity and existential discontinuity, see Schuon, Frithjof.
Forme et Substance dans les Rligions. Paris: Dervy-Livres, 1975, pp. 53-86.
12 The traditional astronomical and astrological symbolism is the integral representation of the
coexistence of these three conditions. See Burckhardt, Titus. Clef Spirituelle de l'Astrologie
Mussulmane. Milano: Arch, 1978; and also our work 'Natural and Spiritual Astrology', in
Astrologia e Religio, op. cit., Cap. II.
13 Cf. Bakhtiar, Laleh. Sufi. Expressions of the Mystic Quest. London: Thames & Hudson, 1979.
pp. 10-11; and Gunon, Ren. Symboles de la Science Sacre. Paris: Gallimard, 1962. Chap. VIIIXIII.
14 Gunon, Ren. Le Rgne de la Quantit et les Signes des Temps. Paris: Gallimard, 1945.
Chap. XXX.
15 The exclusively semantic distinction is argued by Massaud Moiss, op. cit., Chap. IV.
16 See our work 'Questions of Geometrical Symbolism', in Astrologia e Religio, op. cit., Chap.
V; and especially the study by Ananda K. Coomaraswamy about the number zero, to be quoted
later. See also Kandinsky, Wassily. Point-Ligne-Plan. Contribuition l'Analyse des lements
Picturaux. Paris: Denoel, 1970, which, very much to our purpose, defines the geometrical point
as 'the ultimate and unique union of silence and word' (p. 33).
17 On the subject of analogy, see our work 'Symbolical Dialectics', in Astros e Smbolos. So
Paulo: Nova Stella, 1985. Chap. II, and also Santos, Mrio Ferreira dos. Tratado de Simblica.
So Paulo: Logos, 1964. Tema III, art. 5.
18 Sfady, Jamil. A Lngua rabe. So Paulo: Sfady, 1950. p. 120. See also on this point Gardet,
Louis. 'Concepes muulmanas sobre o tempo e a histria', in Paul Ricoeur et al. Brazilian
translation. As Culturas e o Tempo. Petrpolis: Vozes, pp. 229-262; especially p. 232. For an
explanation on Greek verbal tenses, see Horta, Guida Nedda Barata Parreira. Os Gregos e seu
Idioma. Rio de Janeiro: di Giorgio, 1983. Vol. I, pp. 152-153. Aoristos literally means 'indefinite',
'undetermined'. It is derived from orisma, meaning 'limit', 'frontier', 'term' and 'definition', from
which are also derived the words 'hour' and 'horizon'. The study of Greek myths related to the
horizon as limit between Heavan and Earth shows the inseparable link between the
'unterminated' verbal tense - aoristo - and the perennial time of mythology. Cf. Souza, Eudoro
de. Horizonte e Complementaridade. So Paulo: Duas Cidades, 1978.
19 On 'triple time', see Coomaraswamy, Ananda K.. French translation. Les Temps et l'Eternit.
Paris: Dervy-Livres, 1976, especially the appendix 'Kha et autres mots signifiant 'zro' dans leurs
rapports avec la mtaphysique de l'espace', pp. 117 ss.; and Gunon, Ren. La Grande Triade.
Paris: Gallimard, 1957. Chap. XXII. On the restoration of possibilities, see Eliade, Mircea. Le
Mythe de l'Eternel Retour. Archtypes et Rpetition, Paris: Gallimard, 1969. Chapters. I and II.
On the mundus imaginalis and its perfectly real inhabitants, see Corbin, Henry. En Islam
Iranien. Aspects Spirituels et Philosophiques. Paris: Gallimard, 1971. T.I, pp. 167-185.
20 It is therefore obvious that film narrative is included in the subspecies 'symbolic
unterminated species'.
21 It is also obvious that romances and short stories written in the present tense are inspired in
a technique that is ultimately cinematographic; and that, as in them the present tense of verbs
does not grant real actuality to events which are really just being narrated and not shown, the
supposed 'present time' is metaphorical and not real as in theatre. But, in a certain way, the
'present time' of film is also metaphorical, because the actors are not really acting at the moment
the spectator watches the movie.
22 We see no need to deepen in the essence of every particular genre, for this is not the purpose
of our work; we only intend to show the ontological foundation of the very idea of genres. Maybe
it would be interesting for the reader to compare our arrangement with that of Northrop Frye in
Anatomy of Critic, Chapter IV, whose angle is different from ours, but not opposed.
23 See note #16.