THE FIRST CLASS TRANSITS OF BRAZILIAN LITERATURE ABROAD SÃO PAULO, 2014 Centro de Memória, Documentação e Referência - Itaú Cultural The first class: transits of Brazilian literature abroad [electronic resource] / organization Pedro Meira Monteiro ; translation John Norman. – São Paulo: Itaú Cultural, 2014. 1 online resource (251 p.) English version of: A primeira aula: trânsitos da literatura brasileira no estrangeiro Available in Portuguese and Spanish Text (PDF) ISBN 978-85-7979-055-3 1. Literature. 2. Brazilian literature. 3. Brazilian literature – Study and teaching I. Monteiro, Pedro Meira, org. II. Norman, John, trad. III. Título. THE E FI TRANSITS OF BRAZILIAN RST LITERATURE ABROAD EDITED BY PEDRO MEIRA MONTEIROCLASS Realization CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 8 THE FIRST CLASS: VOID AND LITERATURE 14 PEDRO MEIRA MONTEIRO LITERATURE IN TRANSIT, OR BRAZIL IS INSIDE US (CONTRACTION, EXPANSION AND DISPERSAL) 30 MARÍLIA LIBRANDI-ROCHA THE LESSONS THAT DISTANCE GIVES US 42 JOSÉ LUIZ PASSOS THE PIGEONHOLE: OR CONCERNING THE ARTS OF INVENTING ONESELF AND FEELING “FOREIGN” 56 LILIA MORITZ SCHWARCZ SOME FIRST CLASSES 68 JOÃO CEZAR DE CASTRO ROCHA THE GOLD OF THE CLASS 88 MICHEL RIAUDEL MY “PRIMEIRA AULA” 100 JOHN GLEDSON THE FIRST AND SECOND CLASSES 112 JOSÉ MIGUEL WISNIK STRAIGHT LINES AND CURVES 128 JOÃO MOREIRA SALLES THE LESSON OF ABANDONMENT OR WHAT THE FIRST CLASS CAN POINT TOWARD ETTORE FINAZZI-AGRÒ 142 AN AIR PASSAGE, GIVING VOICE A TRANSCULTURAL TRANSLATION PETER W. SCHULZE 156 THE UNSTABLE PLATFORM OF BRAZILIAN LITERATURE FLORENCIA GARRAMUÑO 166 SO FAR FROM HOME: ILLUSIONS AND LIMITS OF A TRANSNATIONAL PEDAGOGY GUSTAVO SORÁ 178 OTHER MODES OF THE FOREIGN VIEWPOINT ON BRAZILIAN LITERATURE AND CULTURE M. CARMEN VILLARINO PARDO 190 PROFESSOR BORGES, MYSELF, AND LINKED DEBUT(S) CHARLES A. PERRONE 202 THE OUTLINE OF AN ISLAND CAROLA SAAVEDRA 216 INDELIBLE MARKS OF THE BRAZILIAN DIVERSITIES AND THE LITERARY ARCHIVES ROBERTO VECCHI 228 THE RIVER-CLASS VIVALDO ANDRADE DOS SANTOS 242 CREDITS ITAÚ CULTURAL DEPARTMENT OF COMMUNICATION PRESIDENT MANAGER Milú Villela Ana de Fátima Sousa CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER EDITORIAL PRODUCTION Eduardo Saron Lívia Gomes Hazarabedian CHIEF ADMINISTRATIVE OFFICER TEXT EDITING Sergio Miyazaki Ciça Corrêa (outsourced) Thiago Rosenberg REVISION COORDINATOR DEPARTMENT OF AUDIOVISUAL Polyana Lima AND LITERATURE REVISION MANAGER Rachel Reis (outsourced) Claudiney José Ferreira Regina Stocklen (outsourced) COORDINATOR ART DIRECTION Kety Fernandes Nassar Jader Rosa EXECUTIVE PRODUCER GRAPHIC DESIGN Jahitza Balaniuk Serifaria (outsourced) TRANSLATION Alison Entrekin (outsourced) John Norman (outsourced) María Teresa A. Pineda (outsourced) THE FIRST CLASS TRANSITS OF BRAZILIAN LITERATURE ABROAD 9 he question that gave rise to this set of essays is a simple one. What does a professor – Brazilian or otherwise – think and do on that first day that he or she is in front of a group of “foreign” T students to talk about Brazilian literature? Naturally, this first question led to others. Who is this profes- sor? How did he or she plan that first class? What challenges do professors face when teaching the literature of a country different from that of their students, and in a language that is, in most cases, likewise unfamiliar to them? According to the person who conceived and edited this book, Pedro Meira Monteiro, “the first class convokes, invokes and provokes the void. It would not exist without the void.” A professor at Princeton, in the United States, he invited another sixteen professors from Brazil and other countries, along with a writer, to consider the voids they have experienced – and the result is a significant set of often poetic reflections concerning Brazilian literature and its role in the forma- tion of our imaginary and the imaginary of the Other, the foreigner. A Primeira Aula: Trânsitos da Literatura Brasileira no Estrangeiro [The First Class: Transits of Brazilian Literature Abroad] is part of the activities of Conexões Itaú Cultural [conexoesitaucultural.org.br]. Created in 2008, the program arose from an observation by professor and essayist João Cezar de Castro Rocha – the author of one of the texts in this book. While browsing the Enciclopédia Itaú Cultural de Arte e Cultura Brasileiras [enciclopedia.itaucultural.org.br], he noticed that the various entries about writers there could be very useful to researchers and professors of Brazilian literature abroad. The many questions that ensued – Who are these professionals? Where do they carry out their research and give their classes? How do they deal with the cultural displacements and shifts of references? etc. – suggested the idea to create a project attentive to the presence of Brazilian literature outside Brazil. For Itaú Cultural, this book is not only an excellent gathering of experiences and reflections – it is also an homage, an elegy to those who have transformed Brazilian literary production into an evolving, increasingly instigating character that tirelessly travels the world. ITAÚ CULTURAL THE FIRST CLASS TRANSITS OF BRAZILIAN LITERATURE ABROAD 15 Pedro Meira Monteiro THE FIRST CLASS: VOID AND LITERATURE “I wish I had a treasure map that would lead me to an old chest full of treasure maps” (Paulo Leminski) he first class convokes, invokes and provokes the void. It would not exist without the void. Who has not experienced the first of the voids that the T class provokes? Throw the first stone, whoever has not felt butterflies in the stomach before walking into a classroom. We must respect the weight and meaning of the void that is “felt” in the body, when it is called to say things that are ultimately ineffable, as if the articulated voice were impotent before something that we know to be fundamental, but which escapes us. How to describe those butterflies, how to say where they are going and where they will lead us? How can they be verbalized? That first void has to do with another, which is adjacent to it: the void we confront when we find ourselves faced with those expres­ sions that we know so well: curious, indifferent, serene, impatient, respectable (or not), circumspect, incredulous, friendly, challenging. How to ignore that the void has to do with this small sea of feelings and predispositions ciphered on the students’ faces? We don’t know what to expect from a first class. Between the students and the profes­ 16 Pedro MEIRA Monteiro sor a giant question mark stands throughout the whole course that is beginning. Where are we going? Will we get there? But where is “there”? What awaits us? What will we do together? What will we leave behind along the way? And what will remain in the end? Even when the proposal is secular, and the professor is agnostic, the beginning of the course is a true moment of grace: full of promise, totally unknown. I can’t resist a small moralizing gesture and I will propose something that should be: either we open that void and delve into it, or we will perish, sterilized by the lethal force of what is known beforehand, whenever we know what awaits us. This is the problem: if I do not open myself to the void, I separate myself from those faces, disconnecting myself from the drama of their own unknowns. And from then on, the disconnection commands the show and the stage is opened for the performance, to the effects sought with confidence and precision. The consolation is great and success is guaranteed. But the soul loses out in the process. If every professor is a frustrated actor (as Antonio Candido was provocatively wont to say), the classroom is a special theater: in it, the masks come off and we rarely know what lies behind them. The void also has to do with the fear that the masks will fall apart, when the subject no longer sustains the image that he/she normally projects. Reading, listening and understanding, in a classroom, is a way to traverse that void, to cross it. It is also a way to discover and reveal oneself. * * * This book is born from the challenge to consider “the first class,” posed during a meeting about contemporary literature some years ago. But it does not concern – as various of the following essays suggest – only the “first” class in a chronological sense. The first class can take place every day and at any moment. It does not even need to be restricted to the classroom or to the teaching of literature, much less Brazilian literature, exclusively. The first class is above all a will- THE FIRST CLASS TRANSITS OF BRAZILIAN LITERATURE ABROAD 17 ingness: an open, necessary and complex willingness in regard to the potential for surprise in the course of speaking and in the use of language. In the first class (whether it be the “first,” or the last) discov­ eries take place, triggered by a gesture, a word or an intonation. Initially, we thought that this book would be restricted to the experience of teaching Brazilian literature and culture outside Brazil. In a certain sense, this plan was kept, in the choice of authors: whether Brazilian or not, they had all been through the experience of geographical displacement and have faced the need to talk about Brazil in a context unfamiliar to him/her. But the book gained a special twist, also encompassing the experience of translation (in a wide sense), of writing, of the nearly always anguished testimony about reaching the limits of Portuguese as a foreign language and of Brazil as an identitary mark. Catego­ ries like “outside/inside,” as well as the institutionalization of teaching, the normalization of “Either we open language, the background