Nelson Rodrigues: Brazil’s Greatest Living Playwright
By Tom Murphy
Special to The Latin America Daily Post
RIO DE JANEIRO–Nelson Rodrigues is Brazil’s Tennessee Williams.
The feisty playwright has been called “the modern inventor of the Brazilian theater.” He shocked audiences with his bold, ironic Vestido de Noiva in 1945.
Later works, such as Album de Família, Sete Gatinhos, Dama do Lotação and many others, marked him as Brazil’s most controversial dramatist.
His sexually charged, violence-filled plays have also earned him a reputation as “Brazil’s most censored author.” But critics and audiences agree that Rodrigues’ desperate characters and continuous obsession with sex and violence are not gratuitous. “The human being is a killer,” he says. “He’s ferocious. That’s all. That’s the truth.” And it’s Nelson Rodrigues’ vision.
At 68, playwright, newspaper columnist Rodrigues has slowed down. A pacemaker helps keep his weak heart going. A Brazilian movie director named Neville d’Almeida and an actress named Sonia Braga are helping bring vintage Rodrigues plays like Dama and Sete Gatinhos to wider and younger audiences, a collaboration which, the playwright says, “is a great personal joy.”
The tall, shuffling figure of Brazil’s greatest playwright still casts its shadow over the national culture. “Rodrigues’ work has radiated out to all the other arts,” according to critic Sabato Magaldi. “And he is the first playwright to bring popular language to the theater.”
His speech is slow and a bit slurred these days. His vast, unmistakable face and tortoise eyes are expressive. He still likes to shock, to put some big idea or stuffy group into a tight, tiny bombshell.
Daily Post: How do you view the role of the Brazilian intellectual in today’s world? How are Brazilian writers doing in their efforts to express themselves with respect to that world?
Rodrigues: I don’t consider the Brazilian intellectual to be very important. You have Gilberto Freyre, the sociologist, but Freyre and others are a select group. Brazilian culture, Brazilian literature, I mean, is not written. And what there is of Brazilian culture is sterile. People don’t write novels, poems, essays the way they used to. And it’s only in literature that the artist has a chance to put across some profundities. There’s a real lack of passion within the Brazilian intelligentsia today. It’s hard enough just to read the newspapers. But then it’s all, more or less, old news anyway. Newspapers used to be a lot more dynamic. You used to have A Noite that came out at night with the news of that day. And it was lively. From a cultural point of view, Brazil is living through a phase of transition. There is a literature out there waiting to be written. It will be written sooner or later. I hope it’s just a phase. Only a spiritual giant is going to get Brazilian literature out of this rut. And there is no genius in Brazilian literature today.
Daily Post: How do you view direct political action by intellectuals?
Rodrigues: The intellectual who goes into politics doesn’t do any good at all. He doesn’t know anything about politics. It used to be that politics was a profession entered into by people who had a special ability for it. It was in their nature. For everybody to be a politician is ridiculous. So the intellectuals go on demonstrations. What good does it do? They’re just making a scene, getting their pictures taken. I say that the novelist should write novels and the poet should write poems. The way to serve your country is to serve your art, if you are an artist.
Daily Post: How do you see the current state of Brazilian culture? And of Brazil as a society? Some people say Brazil is going to be a great power. Others say it’s all going down the drain.
Rodrigues: The real Brazil is only going to begin when a great figure, a Napoleon, arrives on the scene. The United States had Washington, France had Napoleon, Germany had Hitler who almost won the war except he went so far beyond the limits of what is permissible. Juscelino Kubitschek had many qualities, many virtues. He was an activator. But when I speak of a Napoleon, I mean something bigger. China had Mao and Chiang Kai-Shek–men who corresponded to the historical necessities. It used to be that everybody was an idiot and knew he was an idiot. There were millions of idiots in the world. They were humble. They considered themselves to be idiots. But, unlike past times, today the idiots consider themselves competent. Not only that, they want some power too. The intelligent man is shut out. The idiots want to be professors, ministers, president. And the idiots oppose everything. So we are dominated by idiots. The only way to stop the idiots is with a man who has the magnetism of a Napoleon. The problem of Brazil is the same as with all underdeveloped peoples. Underdeveloped peoples are characterized by a lack of self-esteem. And when a people doesn’t believe in itself, it doesn’t believe in others either. What bothers me, for example, is the way the public kills the national soccer team. The national soccer team does one thing wrong, they lose one game, and the whole country comes down on them. They only root for the team when it’s victorious. When it loses, they scourge it.
Daily Post: You said, “the intelligent man is shut out.” What does that imply for the Brazilian artist? Is he accepted, appreciated in Brazil?
Rodrigues: No. I’ve always had to work as a journalist, not that I don’t like it. In the United States, you write a book or a play and it becomes a best seller and you retire. In Brazil, you have to keep working. If I had written in the U.S. everything I wrote in Brazil, I would be a millionaire. I still have to work to eat.
Daily Post: How has official censorship affected the work of Brazilian writers since you began your career?
Rodrigues: Look, I have a lot to say about censorship. I’m an authority on it. In the last 35 years, I’m the Brazilian author who has been the most censored in Brazil. Censorship is barbarous, a monstrosity. The only legitimate role for censorship is a classificatory one, limiting certain things to certain age groups. But censorship should not limit art or the artist in any way whatsoever.
Daily Post: You would limit certain kinds of presentations to adults only. What are your feelings about Brazilian youth?
Rodrigues: I spoke on TV recently and they asked me to say something to the youth of the country, so I said, ‘my advice to youth is, grow up.’ That’s all. Never has youth been so little heroic, so little generous, so little human. I hope that youth enjoys a great resurrection someday. They need it. In France, in the 1960s, you saw how they took power, how they took over the universities, with de Gaulle looking on, with them just thumbing their noses at him. But after they had taken power, everything stopped. They didn’t have any place to go from there. They had nothing to say, no ideas to transmit. It was just exhibitionism. What does a youth of 17 or 18 have to say? Usually, nothing. Old people have ideas; old people give leadership. De Gaulle was old. Mao was old. Chiang was old.
Daily Post: Your plays are among the most controversial in the recent history of the Brazilian theater. Why have you chosen such controversial themes and dealt with them in so different a manner?
Rodrigues: In my writing, I try to transmit myself. It’s hard work. It’s a sacrifice to sit down and write. I think, in order to write, you have to have some obsessions, some fixed ideas, that sustain and structure the work. If you have no obsessions, then your work will decline into chaos. One of my themes is violence. That’s because I have an obsession with it. The human being is a killer. He’s ferocious. That’s all. That’s the truth. So violence is a truth, therefore, an obsession.
Daily Post: How do you see the current state of the Brazilian theater?
Rodrigues: I would say that the theater in Brazil used to be a lot better. It has politicized itself excessively. Every author is now a politician.
Daily Post: Who are your favorite authors–Brazilian and foreign?
Rodrigues: My favorite Brazilian authors are Gilberto Freyre, Guimarães Rosa, Jorge Amado, Graciliano Ramos, Machado de Assis and Euclydes da Cunha. I like Dostoevsky. I’ve liked Dostoevsky ever since I was young. I also like Tolstoy. Russia has a great literature, or rather, it had a great literature. Can a country in which a person writes something and authorities don’t like it and so he has to go to a mental hospital have a great literature? I don’t think so. The U.S. has one of the greatest playwrights of the century–Eugene O’Neill. And you have Faulkner. In France, I like Gide, Albert Camus and a few others. But I don’t like Sartre. He was a writer who betrayed his condition as a writer by becoming a politician. I don’t get particularly excited by Borges. But now I’m in the rereading phase of life. A good book is always new.