RCAAP Repository

Resenha a: SOUZA, Laura de Mello e. O diabo e a Terra de Santa Cruz: feitiçaria e religiosidade popular no Brasil Colonial. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2009.

Jonas

Sião

This article aims to analyze the romance Cágada, Gladstone Osorio Mársico, to show the comic activators that cause laughter and often reflection. We seek to understand the reason for the mood to fulfill a key role in social and political criticism. For this, we investigated how the character building allows for comic effect and satire to the history of Jewish settlement in Rio Grande do Sul and the military coup of 1964.

Moacyr Scliar es heredero de la literatura urbana gaucha dela década de 30, pero, diferentemente de los autores de este período, presenta una Porto Alegre llena de espacios plenos de afecto y memoria, haciendo con que la ciudad asuma otros aspectos demás de los de un ambiente degradado. El barrio Bom Fim es el responsable por tal movimiento y a partir de él se puede reconocer una estética de la ciudad, creada por el arte de narrar y por la arquitectura contemporánea.

My aim is to present in this article the fiction of Clarice Lispector, one of the exponents of contemporary Brazilian literature as bonded to Judaism, however she does not lead the reader to any data that points to it. Besides the Jewish background, there is also the Christian influence, in addition to popular beliefs, suggesting her commitment to integrating within the particular framework of Brazilian religious experiences, which is marked by syncretism. So, it is certain that the Bible has been as a basis to her, and my purpose here is to check, in face of the law, how the recurrence to this source has a weight in the work of the author.

The two tales that make up Contos amazonenses, 1981, reflect much of the passion of Esaguy for the Amazonia jungle and its culture as well as the intertwining of Jewish culture with the present, from the traces in his texts. In this book, as well as in other Aleijadinho, 1982, and Enxuga as lágrimas e segue o caminho que te determinaste, 1999, the background of the stories is always the lush beauty and grandeur of the Amazonia rainforests. The variety of animals and their behaviors are elements that populate the fictional universe of the author, beyond the frames in which his characters, shifting cultivators, hunters and riparian face jaguars “atrevidas e sanhudas”,as the narrator defines them.

This article analyses the tale “O que foi que ela disse?”, of Jacó Guinsburg, in the light of the rehearsals “Teses sobre o conto”, of Ricardo Piglia, and “O que foi que ela disse?”, of Berta Waldman. From these two reviewers it is expected to understand the construction of the tale as a double text, a surface in which underlying a subliminal history, narrated fragmentarily, for ellipses.

This article discusses the Jewish-Kabbalistic references in A hora da estrela, by Clarice Lispector, from interpretative-Kabbalistic metaphors built by the Lurianic cosmogonic process: Tzimtizum, Shevirah and Tikkun, treated by Harold Bloom in his book Kabbalah and criticism. In order to accomplish that, we take a few excerpts from A hora da estrela that were extracted and analyzed in light of these metaphors, in order to demonstrate, despite Lispector’s resistance, vestiges of the Jewish-Kabbalistic tone in the architecture of her literature, in this case, A hora da estrela.

This article discusses on the vital and ideological trajectory of writer Stefan Zweig from his book El mundo que yo vi: mis memorias, written in 1942. It shows a Fascism view that had benefited from the intellectualism, the Holocaust’s drama, and the horror of Adolph Hitler’s anti-semit politics as well. The moment allowed the emergence of issues about Brazilian politics during Getúlio Vargas'ʹ age and Fascism. The discussion reveals the enthusiasm mysteries, and life and death of Stefan Zweig during the 1930s and 1940s in Brazil.

Devil’s mythological figure is a recurring element in folklore as well as its portrayal in Western literature, in which it represents evil. However, over Minas Gerais’ colonial period the devil started to be perceived as a symbol, in the form of books, of the French Enlightenment ideals, beyond its religious context. This paper aims to analyze, under the scope of the Inconfidência Mineira – Brazilian independence movement – and through the critical reading of the essay “O diabo na livraria do cônego”,by Edward Frieiro, and the short story “1789-1790”, by Maria Joséde Queiroz, the references to books and to the devil, as an allegory to the libertarian ideology, as well as their relationship with the library’s space.

Este artículo analiza “Yo, judío”, de Jorge Luis Borges. Un pequeño texto que trajo al contexto político y social de Argentina de la década de 1930, uno de los testimonios más importantes de Borges sobre su admiración por la tradición judía y por Israel. El episodio que dió lugar al texto “Yo, judío”, fué un artículo en la revista Crisol, de fecha 30 de enero de 1934, plagado de antisemitismo, en el que Borges es acusado de tener en su árbol genealógico “Sangre judía”. En respuesta a esta “acusación”, el escritor crea una red de referencias y citas, rasgo recurrente en su obra, en el que se identifican abuelos y bisabuelos, portugueses y españoles, judíos sefardíes.

The decade of 1990's gave us a multi-angular vision of the Second World War. The motion pictures have shown us strong scenes and denunciated to the audience the greatest ever sample of barbarism committed by men's rage. The massacre suffered by the Jews has become a fact known almost universally, although many people do not understand rightly the motivations for such crime, and not even know who really the Jews are. The present work aims to enlighten the peculiarities of the Jewish people, considering the influence of the post-Second World War period on the construction of the Jewish cultural identity today. After understanding the elements, which are fundamental for the Jewish identity, an analysis will be developed focusing on the relevance of the Jewish cultural memory for the construction of the main character in the novel Everything is illuminated, by Jonathan Safran Foer. As theoretical basis, this work is reasoned upon studies of Jonathan Sacks (2002) about Jewish culture, and also upon considerations by Stuart Hall (2006).

This essay reads Argentine poet Juan Gelma's 1994 bilingual Ladino-­Castellano book Dibaxu in light of its intertextual relationship with Franco-­Bosnian author Clarisse Nicoïdski's work, especially her 1986 bilingual Ladino-­English poetry collection Lus ojus, las manus, la boca. I return to Gelman's text, written in a foreign, diasporic, and Jewish language in order to acknowledge Nicoïdski'ʹs work not only as a pre-­text, but as a fundamental intertextual source for Dibaxu. In doing so, I observe the different reasons these two poets have to use the Ladino language: while Nicoïdski seeks to establish a link with her Sephardic community, Gelman uses the language to escape the limited trappings of a national identity. Both, however, work towards the maintenance, or survival, of Ladino.

The recent publication of 3 books, Samuel Rawet: Contos e novelas reunidos (Civilização Brasileira, 2004), Samuel Rawet: fortuna crítica em jornais e revistas (Caetés, 2008) and Samuel Rawet: ensaios reunidos (Civilização Brasileira, 2008), allowed a qualitative leap for the researchers which have Rawet’s work in their horizon, inasmuch as those books offered a comprehensive overview that puts in evidence some characteristics which pervade his work. This article focuses on the ambiguous relationship between the Jew and Christian world, which recurs in Rawet’s fictional work. Even the Jew born in Brazil, perfectly acculturated and integrated, feels threatened in his Jewish particularity, compelled to abandon the last traces which link him to his people’s culture and traditions, and, at the same time, fascinated and attracted to Christianity. In Rawet’s world view, Christianity provokes in the Jew a strong repulsion, simultaneously with a strong attraction

Memória

Pequeno almanaque das palavras protegidas

Resenha a: OZ, Amós. Uma certa paz. Tradução de Paulo Geiger. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2000. 393p.

Resenha a: ARAUJO, Tarcisio Caixeta de. Urim Tumim: introdução ao hebraico. Belo Horizonte: Edição do autor, 2010. 312p.  

Voo, de Vlad Eugen Poenaru.