A child is born to immigrant parents in Brazil, and this child has a special problem. He is a centaur, a creature half-man, half-horse.
But that isn’t the least of it. This centaur is also Jewish in a predominantly Catholic country. And when he finally meets a female centaur, it turns out she is not Jewish.
This may sound like a story for children. In fact, it is the subject of one of the most highly regarded novels by one of Brazil’s greatest modern authors, Moacyr Scliar (1937-2011).
This 1980 novel, “The Centaur in the Garden,” was written with the “magical realist” techniques that are credited to have originated in Latin American literature. It was named one of the greatest works of modern Jewish fiction by the National Yiddish Book Center. Its author was elected to the Brazilian Academy of Letters in 2003.
And Scliar is not the only Brazilian Jewish author to have become celebrated in his native land. In a country where only about 120,000 Jews live in a total population of some 200 million, several Jews have made significant and honored contributions to the country’s literature.
Moreover, many of these writers have explored the same or similar themes, even if some haven’t necessarily done so in a directly Jewish way — themes of homeland, identity, a frustrated need to belong, self vs. other. Finally, many of these Jewish writers have pioneered the exploration of these themes for non-Jewish writers from other Brazilian immigrant groups.
Nelson H. Vieira, Ph.D., of Brown University made all these points in his discussion of “Homeland and/or Diaspora? The Cultural Politics of Being Jewish in Brazil.”
He spoke on Feb. 22 at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Golda Meir Library in one of a series of UWM Portuguese Lectures sponsored by the school’s Department of Spanish and Portuguese.
To read the rest of this article, see the April issue.
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