Moacyr Scliar was a famous Brazilian writer. He was born in the city of Porto Alegre, on March 23, 1937. Later, he studied Medicine at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul. And he reconciled his profession as a writer with that of a doctor, working in the public health network.
The author, who died on February 27, 2011, in Porto Alegre, is a famous novelist, short story writer and chronicler of contemporary Brazilian literature. And his works present themes associated with the Jewish question and emigration. Another recurring element in the writer's narratives is fantastic realism.
Read too: Luis Fernando Verissimo — another author of contemporary Brazilian literature
Topics of this article
- 1 - Summary about Moacyr Scliar
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2 - Biography of Moacyr Scliar
- → Moacyr Scliar at the Brazilian Academy of Letters
- 3 - Characteristics of Moacyr Scliar's work
- 4 - Works by Moacyr Scliar
- 5 - Chronicles of Moacyr Scliar
Summary about Moacyr Scliar
Gaucho author Moacyr Scliar was born in 1937 and died in 2011.
In addition to being a writer, he was also a physician and professor at the Catholic Faculty of Medicine.
Scliar is the author of books that are part of contemporary Brazilian literature.
His works feature Jewish themes, fantastic realism and irony.
Biography of Moacyr Scliar
Moacyr Scliar was born on March 23, 1937, in Porto Alegre, in the state of Rio Grande do Sul. He was the son of Russian-Jewish immigrants. The Bom Fim neighborhood, in Porto Alegre, was where the author lived most of his childhood. There also lived other Jewish families.
The writer learned to read from his mother, who was a teacher. From 1943 he studied at the School of Education and Culture. In 1948, he was transferred to Colégio Rosário. As a teenager, he wrote his first short stories.. In 1952, he entered the Júlio de Castilhos State College, and his short story “O Relógio” was published in the newspaper People's Mail.
In 1955, he began to study M.medicine at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul. In 1958, he participated in the Jewish Youth Movement, with leftist ideology. And he graduated in 1962, starting his residency the following year. Soon he started to work as a doctor in the public network.
Do not stop now... There's more after the publicity ;)
He was also a professor, from 1964, at the Catholic Faculty of Medicine. In 1968, he published the book of short stories the carnival of animals, winner of the Academia Mineira de Letras award. In 1969, he started working at the State Department of Health in Porto Alegre. Like this, the author reconciled his career as a doctor with that of a writer.
In the year 1970, he did postgraduate studies in Israel. Years later, in 1984, he gave lectures at universities in Germany. In 1988, he received his first Jabuti award. The following year, the award House of the Americas. From the 1990s, he also started to participate in literary events.
He served as a visiting professor, in 1993, at Brown University, in the United States, the same year he received his second Jabuti. In 1999, he completed his PhD in Public Health. The following year, he got his third Jabuti, won again in 2009. Although, in January 2011, he suffered a stroke and died on February 27 of that year, in Porto Alegre.
→ Moacyr Scliar at the Brazilian Academy of Letters
Elected on July 31, 2003, Moacyr Scliar took seat number 31 from the Brazilian Academy of Letters, when he took office on October 22 of that same year.
Characteristics of Moacyr Scliar's work
Scliar is an author of contemporary Brazilian literature, and his works have the following characteristics:
Jewish theme;
reflections on emigration;
social realism;
sense of humor;
fragmentation;
fantastic realism;
lyricism;
denunciation of inequality and prejudice;
historical elements;
sociopolitical criticism;
opposition between Judaism and Christianity;
themes associated with medicine and public health;
consideration of ethical issues;
unusual characters;
allegorical elements;
ironic character.
Works by Moacyr Scliar
the carnival of animals (1968) — short stories
The War at Good End (1972) — romance
The one man army (1973) — romance
Rachel's Gods (1975) — romance
the water cycle (1975) — romance
The Ballad of the False Messiah (1976) — short stories
Stories of the Trembling Earth (1976) — short stories
naughty dogs month (1977) — romance
The dwarf on TV (1979) — short stories
Doctor Mirage (1979) — romance
the volunteers (1979) — romance
The centaur in the garden (1980) — romance
Max and the Felines (1981) — romance
Horses and obelisks (1981) — juvenile
the party at the castle (1982) — juvenile
The strange nation of Rafael Mendes (1983) — romance
Memoirs of an Apprentice Writer (1984) — juvenile
the japanese masseuse (1984) — chronicles
the enigmatic eye (1986) — short stories
On the path of dreams (1988) — juvenile
the uncle who floated (1988) — juvenile
The Horses of the Republic (1989) — juvenile
A country called childhood (1989) — chronicles
Tiny life scenes (1991) — romance
I tell you (1991) — juvenile
tropical dreams (1992) — romance
A story just for me (1994) — juvenile
A dream in an avocado pit (1995) — juvenile
The Farroupilha River (1995) — juvenile
Unusual Traveler's Dictionary (1995) — chronicles
My mother doesn't sleep until I arrive (1996) — chronicles
Madonna's lover (1997) — short stories
The short story writers (1997) — short stories
The Majesty of the Xingu (1997) — romance
Stories for (almost) all tastes (1998) — short stories
Camera in hand, Guarani in the heart (1998) — juvenile
The Woman Who Wrote the Bible (1999) — romance
The Hill of Sighs (1999) — juvenile
Kafka's Leopards (2000) — romance
the book of medicine (2000) — children and youth
The Mystery of the Green House (2000) — children and youth
P command attack. Q. (2001) — children and youth
the everyday imaginary (2001) — chronicles
Father and son, son and father (2002) — short stories
The hinterland will turn to sea (2002) — juvenile
That strange colleague, my father (2002) — juvenile
Eden-Brazil (2002) — juvenile
The brother who came from afar (2002) — juvenile
Neither this nor that (2003) — juvenile
Learning to love and heal (2003) — juvenile
ship of colors (2003) — juvenile
a farroupilha story (2004) — romance
In the night of the womb (2005) — romance
card jealous (2006) — romance
The Temple Vendors (2006) — romance
the magic word (2006) — romance
Handbook of Lonely Passion (2008) — romance
Book of all, the mystery of the stolen text (2008) — juvenile
Stories the Newspapers Don't Tell (2009) — short stories
I hug you millions (2010) — romance
See too: Milton Hatoum — another well-known writer of contemporary Brazilian literature
Chronicles of Moacyr Scliar
in the chronicle The poetry of simple things, the author honors the chronicler Rubem Braga (1913-1990). Thus, it is a metalinguistic text, a chronicle whose theme is the chronicle. In addition, he analyzes the social importance of the newspaper, without missing the opportunity to make sociopolitical criticism:
Everyone knew him as “the old Braga”; and this, I think, since he was a young journalist. And since he had always been “the old Braga”, Braga was expected to always stay with us, even when he was old. But not. This disastrous year of 1990 proved to be stronger than this, and other, illusions, and it took us the man who transformed the chronicle, traditionally seen as a minor genre, into a literary category of in this country. There are those who judge the newspaper as an inadequate vehicle for literature; the book, it is said, has permanence (even if this permanence sometimes only benefits the moths) whereas the newspaper is a disposable object: nothing older than yesterday's newspaper, something that is only good for wrapping fish (which, again, was only valid when public health allowed it - and when you could buy fish). Braga, however, never believed in this “Macluhanesque” logic. He preferred to follow the path of Machado and Lima Barreto, and turned everyday life into raw material for a literary work of the first magnitude. In “O homem rouco”: “The professional journalist Rubem Braga, son of Francisco de Carvalho Braga, portfolio 10836 series 32The, registered under number 785, Book II, pages 193, lifts his weary head and inhales with some force. In this air that he breathes, the common reality of things enters his chest, and his eyes no longer contemplate distant dreams, but only a clothesline with a shirt and swimming trunks and, in the background, the laundry tub in his narrow backyard, of this rented house where he is now suing for eviction”.
That was Braga: a man who treated words with sensitivity, wisdom and mastery. [...]
This kind, somewhat withdrawn man knew how to see poetry in simple things. And the shirt that was waved in the wind, on a backyard line, now says goodbye to one of our greatest writers.
Already in the chronicle Three coats and their stories, the chronicler narrates a banal, everyday fact, that is, the purchase of three coats. However, ironically:
I don't know how it is for you, but for me buying clothes — and that's why I rarely do it — is always an adventure with unpredictable results. I'm thinking, for example, of three coats I bought, all three in the United States (this is not snobbery: it's just that It's really cold there and we end up needing it) each of which would make, if not a novel, at least a short story.
The story of the first coat took place on my first trip to Uncle Sam country. It was winter and I arrived already beating my chin. The Brazilian coat simply didn't protect me from a New York temperature several degrees below zero. So I went out in search of an American coat. I went into several stores — at these times the spirit of the indecisive Hamlet takes hold of me, always with that question of to be or not to be (in this case, to buy or not to buy). Finally, in a small establishment whose owner seemed to have left Bom Fim, I found a coat that I thought was convenient. It was warm, it was just the right size, it was even elegant. I was about to pay when the damned question occurred to me: what if, in some other store, there was a better coat waiting for me? What if I was being rash?
[...]
[...]. What is an intriguing American habit: they waste horrors, but suddenly decide to sell used things. They might ask for a penny for an old ballpoint pen and they'll be there all morning to sell it, but that's the ethics of capitalism that can't be contradicted. Well, among the things on display in that “garage sale”, there was a coat, an old velvet coat. I tried it on: it was exactly my size. I paid the requested five dollars and left completely sheltered from the cold. When I arrived at the university, I told the department secretary what had happened. The girl turned pale: so I didn't know that could be a dead man's coat?
No, I hadn't thought of that possibility. That didn't scare me, on the contrary. I found it more than fair. After all, at least once the death of an American benefited a Brazilian. Poetic justice or funerary justice, the truth is that from then on I didn't get colder.
[...]
It was perfect [the third coat]. Amazing: it turned out perfect. Puzzled, I checked the number. Forty. A forty misplaced there. And that I had picked it up, entirely by chance.
God exists. It is usually in heaven. But eventually he works at Filene's. In the coat section.
image credits
[1] j. Freitas / Agência Brasil / Wikimedia Commons (reproduction)
[2] Publisher L&PM Editores (reproduction)
Sources
ARRUDA, Angela Maria Pelizer de. Humor in short stories by Moacyr Scliar: a representative of contemporary fiction. Maaravi Archive, Belo Horizonte, vol. 6, no. 11, 2012. Available in: https://periodicos.ufmg.br/index.php/maaravi/article/view/14139.
NEVES, Fabio Luis Silva. When it is necessary to narrate the incommunicable: narration, focus, atmosphere and allegory in In my dirty head, the Holocaust, by Moacyr Scliar. miguilim, v. 6, no. 2, p. 111-130, 2017. Available in: http://periodicos.urca.br/ojs/index.php/MigREN/article/view/1350/0.
SCLIAR, Moacyr. The poetry of simple things. In: SCLIAR, Moacyr. The poetry of simple things. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2012.
SCLIAR, Moacyr. Three coats and their stories. Zero hour, Porto Alegre, 14 July. 2002. Available in: https://www.moacyrscliar.com/arquivos/cronicas/tres-casacos-e-suas-historias.pdf.
ZILBERMAN, Regina. The writer. Moacyr Sciliar, c2018. Available in: https://www.moacyrscliar.com/sobre/o-escritor/.
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