1. First Fragment
João Clímaco Bezerra was born in
Lavras da Mangabeira on 30th March, 1913 to Raimundo Nonato Bezerra
and Maria da Costa Bezerra. He started learning how to read and write in his
hometown at the old ‘School Group’ with teachers Amélia Braga and Rosária Mota.
In Lavras he worked in the local
trade. Later he moved to Fortaleza where
he studied at São João and Liceu do Ceará schools, from where he left to enroll
at the Federal University of Ceará Law School.
He graduated in 1950.
He graduated in accountancy at
the Padre Champagnat School of Commerce, where he started his career as a
professor. He also worked as a professor at the Justiniano de Serpa Institute
of Education, at the School of Philosophy, at the School of Economics and
Business Administration Sciences at the Federal University of Ceará, and at the
School of Business Administration of the State of Ceará.
He occupied important positions
in the government of the State of Ceará, such as technical director at the
Ceará Secretariat of Education, chief of public affairs at the Bank of
Northeast, and technical assistant at the National Industry Conference in Rio
de Janeiro, where he moved to.
He
debuted in 1948 with the novel Não Há
Estrelas no Céu (A Starless Sky), which was well acclaimed by the critics,
and with this book he joined the group of writers considered to have been the
creators of the cearense novel. He left indelible imprints from his childhood
in this book.
His second novel – Sol Posto (Sunset) – was published in
1952, and just like the first one, was published by the Editora José Olympio
publisher, from Rio de Janeiro. The novel Longa
é a Noite (Endless Night) is also published in 1952, considered by Sânzio
de Azevedo a Machado de Assis like fiction with an almost enigmatic plot.
The third
edition of this novel, now in book format, was published in 2007 by the Edições Poetaria publisher under my
responsibility. I, therefore, am proud to have accomplished this great project.
In the field of chronicles and
short stories he wrote the following books: O
Homem e Seu Cachorro (The Man and His Dog) (Rio, MEC Documentation Service,
1959) and O Semeador de Ausências
(Sower of Absences) (Rio, Record Publisher, 1967); and for the collection Our
Classics by AGIR Publisher, João Clímaco Bezerra wrote the essays on Juvenal
Galeno (1959) and Humberto de Campos (1965).
A Vinha dos Esquecidos (The Vineyard of the Forgotten) novel dates
from 1980. However, one of his most important books, the long fiction Os Órfãos de Deus (God’s Orphans), remains
unpublished, challenging his readers and admirers’ expectations.
As a journalist, João Clímaco held
the position of editor at the Unitário
newspaper in Fortaleza for a long time. He
wrote a daily chronicle for the newspaper and was also very successful in his
practice of writing book reviews and essays.
Acclaimed by the national
critics, João Clímaco Bezerra was also an essayist and novelist; he was a
member of the Cearense Literary Academy where he occupied chair n. 9 which has
Fausto Barreto as patron. He died in Rio
de Janeiro on 4th February, 2006.
2. Second
Fragment
As the author of high
performance novels, as is the case with Sol
Posto (Sunset) (1952) and Não Há
Estrelas no Céu (Starless Sky) (1948), this writer may be placed, according
to the critics, in an intermediary line between Domingos Olímpio and Rachel de
Queiroz.
According to Artur
Eduardo Benevides, João Clímaco was probably “a highly qualified master”. Benevides also acknowledges the author of the
A Vinha dos Esquecidos (The Vineyard
of the Forgotten) (1980), “as having absolute mastery of the writing technique
and of changing people’s facts and destiny, many times tragic, into a novel, hoping
to interpret the pain of living and the time lost”.
Acclaimed at his
debut as one of the revelations of the Brazilian novel by writers such as Jorge
Amado, Graciliano Ramos, Érico Veríssimo and Tristão de Athayde, João Clímaco,
who consolidated the purest literary intentions and forms of the cearense
novel, would pass into posterity as one of the writers who, in Brazil, assumed
literature as their vocation and destiny.
Be it in the above
mentioned novels or in the chronicles and essays he wrote for the prestigious Nossos Clássicos (Our Classics)
collection, by AGIR publisher, on Juvenal Galeno (1959) and Humberto de Campos
(1965), João Clímaco Bezerra always showed, in a consistent manner, that
literature had been his great mirage and his mission among the living.
Therefore, now in 2013, when the author
of O Homem e Seu Cachorro (The Man
and His Dog) (1959) celebrates his 100th birthday, the impression
his work has on me is that it continues to strongly impose itself as a project
that resists time and the plural winds with which the readers and the critics
have examined it.
João Clímaco Bezerra
is probably the novelist from Ceará who has reached the greatest universal
scope and who has the most spontaneous and exquisite literary style. His
linguistic construction makes reference to the legacy left by writers such as
Adolfo Caminha and Oliveira Paiva, and by short story writers such as Moreira
Campos and Juarez Barroso.
His text is dense
and highly refined. The psychological
density of his characters is supreme, in spite of the atmosphere of solitude
and abandonment which haunts the construction of A Vinha dos Esquecidos (The Vineyard of the Forgotten), probably a
late and unnecessary novel in his bibliography.
As an attentive reader of this great
Brazilian writer’s works, who honored me with his friendship, I had the
privilege to read the originals of his most ambitious novel: Os Órfãos de Deus (God’s Orphans),
inexplicably unpublished to this date due to prejudice from a group of João
Clímaco’s friends who never forgave the plot’s main character’s transgressions,
as if the novelist’s inner voice could interfere with his sexual orientation.
Every heterosexual
writer, as is the case with João Clímaco, has the artistic freedom to conduct
the construction of his work from his formal and polyphonic resources, from his
perspective of class and his values. And
what we most expect from him is that he transgresses the daily life norms.
The narrator’s
homosexual introversion in this novel by João Clímaco re-marks a character’s
behavior, even though this novel was written with the focus on the first
person.
With recurring
technique and a detailed plot, João Clímaco’s lyrical texture in Os Órfãos de Deus (God’s Orphans) is seen as a high-quality discourse,
although the author sometimes uses traditional language that clashes with the
narrative dynamics.
The obsessive feeling of guilt
and sin in this audacious novel by João Clímaco wins striking poeticity and
literary vigor. However, the emphasis is
on the strength of the narrative structure and the vision of the existential
absurdity, which is actually very important for this novelist’s literary works.
Nevertheless, what I
would like to highlight in this text is a small book by João Clímaco Bezerra; a
book that has always touched me in a very special way. It is the novel Longa é a Noite (Endless Night), written
in the form of a diary and first published in the Clã magazine, N. 11, in December, 1951. This novel had a second edition published in
partnership with a Stênio Lopes’s soap opera.
Considered
by Sânzio de Azevedo as one of the author’s most important pieces of fictional
work, Longa é a Noite (Endless Night)
also gives this same author the impression of being a soap opera permeated by
intentions and almost enigmatic plots. Also according to Sânzio de Azevedo,
this “almost Machado de Assis like” enigma is “one of the strengths that
constitutes the importance of this novel by João Clímaco Bezerra”.
The Edições Poetaria
publisher’s decision to republish this long fiction by João Clímaco in 2007 is
surely a sublime moment in the state of Ceará’s cultural life, thus giving
emphasis to this well-known Brazilian writer’s human density and extremely
beautiful and creative language.
I hope that the
mystery and the semantic construction, that the subjective plot and the existential
and ontological perspective in this cearense
novel – Endless Night – will continue to seduce the reader, just as they did
when it was published more than half a century ago.
To re-read João
Clímaco’s works in the year we celebrate his 100th birthday is one
of the challenges facing the Brazilian literary critics. As a member of a
generation of novelists, probably the most brilliant in our literature, João
Clímaco Bezerra needs to be urgently rehabilitated. The State of Ceará owes him
this tribute; Brazil needs to hear his voice.
Nenhum comentário:
Postar um comentário