'In 1845 Balzac published his famous novel 'The Unknown Master | Fetishism books (Livros de fetiche) - Society and culture

"In 1845 Balzac published his famous novel 'The Unknown Masterpiece', where an old 17th century painter named Frenhofer, trying to produce a great masterpiece, destroys the image with infinite strokes that overlap and result in a confusing blur.
But inside the nebula, one could perceive a foot, so stupendous that it seemed to live: 'Coming closer, they perceived in a corner of the canvas, a foot that came out of this chaos of colors, tones, undecided nuances, a kind of shapeless fog; but a delicious foot, a living foot! They were petrified with admiration before this fragment escaped a slow and progressive destruction. This foot appeared there like a torso of some Venus in Paros marble that appeared among the rubble of a burning city'.
Balzac's fiction expresses the new sensitivity to the fragments that escaped 'a slow and progressive destruction' and that, in this way, is compared to archaeological findings: 'This foot appeared there like a torso of some Venus in Paros marble that appeared among the rubble of a burned city'. Frenhofer ends up committing suicide, discovering the mistake to which he had taken his perfectionist madness; but the parable can be read inside out: the madness would be to imagine a possible whole. Instead of full lust, fetishism of the part. New times are rather unfinished, and one foot is worth a body." [Jorge Coli; Folha de São Paulo, Jun/2002]
A Obra Prima Ignorada | La Obra Maestra Desconocida #english #português #español