“Uselessly we seem great,” or Adrift – Notes on the Metaphor of the Shipwreck, by Hans Blumberg

Abstract

The present paper presents a reflection on the idea that Humanity needs risks in order not to stagnate. From such a perspective –and based on the book Shipwreck with Spectator, by Hans Blumberg – I will discuss how art presents invocative-elements of a “decomposer” barbarism not only of the subject, but of each and every civilization, so to point it as a paradoxical condition for man to experience his great aspirations. For such, I will use as a corpus for reflection fragments by two twentieth-century Portuguese poets, Ricardo Reis and Fiama Hasse Paes Brandão, in addition to the painting “The Raft of the Medusa,” by Theodore Géricault, and also the novel Shipwrecks.