A taste for violence

On 10 February 1355, St Scholastica Day, two students at the University of Oxford got into a dispute with the landlord of the tavern at which they had been drinking. The quality of the wine, they felt, was not up to snuff. The landlord disagreed. In response, the students threw a quart pot of wine in his face and proceeded to beat him senseless. The mayor of Oxford asked the chancellor of the university to arrest the students, but 200 other ‘scholars’ turned out in their defence. Three days of rioting followed, with the townsfolk, from the mayor downwards, calling in local villagers to help defeat the students. Around 63 were killed, as were 30 locals. Many more were injured, and massive damage was done to university property. This really was town versus gown.

Oxford in the 14th century was a pretty dangerous place, even without this type of incident. A study of coroners’ rolls from the 1340s suggests a homicide rate of 120 per 100,000 of the population – compared with around 1 per 100,000 of the population today for England, Wales and Scotland, meaning you were 100 times more likely to be murdered in medieval Oxford than you are in modern Britain. And homicide in 14th-century Oxford, for both perpetrators and victims, was an overwhelmingly male affair, whereas now a third of all homicide victims are women. Some of the victims were simply unlucky: in a case of mistaken identity from 1319, Luke de Horton, probably a townsman, was cut down in the course of a student feud when he left his house to urinate in the street. More commonly, homicides arose from arguments between young adult men, whether townsfolk, students or members of Oxford’s transient population. The truism that, if you want to avoid violence, don’t go to bars where young men drink had already been established in 14th-century Oxford. But in most other respects, this medieval city presents us with a violence which was unlike, and running at a much higher level than, the current experience in Britain.

Os fãs de Lewis entendem.

Interior

Peter Ilsted, Interior from Liselund, 1916.

Mudar

O afecto. José António Pinto nunca teve medo dele. No seu "manual para a intervenção social emancipatória" - livro "para qualquer gajo que queira ser um assistente revolucionário" que gostava de escrever um dia - teria de compor um capítulo sobre isso. "Criar afecto, o primeiro passo." É um capital demorado e em permanente construção: ouvir, valorizar, acreditar, lutar. Para depois informar, esclarecer, capacitar, consciencializar, politizar. Mudar.

Mariana Correia Pinto, Porto, última estação.

As regras são para ser quebradas

São longas e delicadas as tardes das terças-feiras. Chalana tem calo de décadas, mas ainda chega exausto ao fim do dia. O Lagarteiro já não é o bairro onde chegou em 1997, explicado numa pichagem que era cartão de visitas: "Bem-vindos ao inferno." Ele sentia-se nele. Seringas no chão, o tráfico a crescer, a SIDA a matar, assaltos, tiros, prostituição, pobreza. A cada pedido, perdia-se um pouco mais: uma casa nova, um emprego, uma vaga no infantário, dinheiro para pagar o supermercado e medicamentos. A angústia de não poder resolver os problemas era corrosiva. "Pensei muitas vezes: não consigo fazer isto." Tinha então 30 anos. Estava entre a paixão da luta e a busca do equilíbrio - não tinha ainda decidido que as regras, quando são injustas, são para ser quebradas.

Mariana Correia Pinto, Porto, última estação

Tudo parece ter sido ontem.

Na ferrovia, o orgulho de pertença anda numa frequência distinta dos calendários, como se a passagem dos anos jamais pudesse diminuir sentimentos. Júlio, crescido já fora da estação sem nunca a perder é também prova disso. Naquela geografia, mais do que noutra qualquer, habitam emoções prosaicas agigantadas. O barulho constante, de silvos e de gente, e o fumo, sempre o fumo. Das máquinas a vapor, a carvão, a lenha, e depois ainda a óleo, as mais temidas pela avó, sempre a correr a recolher a roupa da corda do quintal. Tudo parece ter sido ontem. O gato Nico a fugir para os telhados da estação, as visitas do barbeiro a casa, o "polícia do canário", que trabalhava na gare e um dia lhe ofereceu um pássaro, os melões vindos de Almeirim e vendidos em vagões à porta da estação, a senhora muito malcriada com quem aprendeu muitas asneiras.

Mariana Correia Pinto, Porto, última estação.

Thom Gunn dixit

The huge wound in my head began to heal
About the beginning of the seventh week.
Its valleys darkened; its villages became still:
For joy I did not move and dare not to speak,
Not doctors would cure it, but time, its pacient skill.

And constantly my mind returned to Troy.
After I sailed the seas I fought in turn
On both sides, sharing even Helen's joy
Of place - and growing up - to see Troy burn
As Neoptolemus, that stubborn boy.

I lay and rested as prescription said.
Manoeuvred with the Greeks, or sallied out
Each day with Hector. Finally, my bed
Became Achilles' tent, to which the lout
Thersites came reporting numbers dead.

I was myself: subject to no man's breath:
My own commander was my enemy.
And while my belt hung up, sword in the sheath,
Thersites shambled in and breathlessly
Cackled about my friend Patroclus' death.

I called for armour, rose, and did not reel.
But, when I thought, rage at his noble pain
Flew to my head, and turning I could feel
My wound break open wide. Over again
I had to led those storm-lit valleys heel.

Thom Gunn, "The Wound", Cambridge Book of English Verse 1939-1975.

Outono

Félix Vallotton, The blossoming field, 1912.