On Nov. 9 Austrian prize-winning novelist Gloria Kaiser spoke in the Pickford theater on the subject of "exile literature."
Using Stefan Zweig of Austria and Jorge Amado of Brazil as examples, she stressed the strong historical links between Brazil and Austria, and the transforming experiences that affected both of these enormously popular writers as a result of exile from their native countries.
Austrian writer Stefan Zweig, born in Vienna in 1881, wrote poetry, critical essays, short stories and biographies, becoming one of the most widely read authors writing in German during the 1920s and '30s. Forced to leave Austria by the Nazis in 1934, he chose to go to Brazil, where during the last year of his life he wrote The Royal Game. In February 1942, with no end to his exile in sight and overcome by depression, he and his wife, Lotte, committed suicide in Petropolis, Brazil.
Written in a concise, spare language, very different from his earlier work, The Royal Game describes what it is like to be deprived of all human contact, living in a windowless room. The protagonist, Br. B., manages to keep sane by playing chess against himself using the checkered bedspread. Gloria Kaiser felt that the book mirrored Zweig's personal anguish -- "internal disequilibrium" was his description -- of being deprived of his native language.
Jorge Amado was forced to leave Brazil in 1948 because of his political activity. Born in Ilheus in northeastern Brazil in 1912, he spent his childhood on his parents' cocoa farm. Sent away to Jesuit school at the age of 10, he eventually rebelled, turned against a career as a lawyer and wrote his first novel at the age of 18. Three years later, he published Cacau, and the following year Suor ("Sweat"). Both of these novels told of the exploitation of the workers on the cocoa farms. In 1933, soon after its publication, Cacau was banned for its socialist messages. (The Library of Congress has one of the very rare surviving copies.) Amado joined the Communist Party, was arrested repeatedly, and then when Communist political activity was forbidden in Brazil, he left for Europe. Although his exile was relatively brief, the experience changed him and his tactics. Ms. Kaiser quotes him as saying upon his return, "Humor rather than political discourse is the novelist's weapon to fight against injustice and exploitation." He wrote Gabriela in 1958 (also about the cocoa-producing town of Ilheus), and it was an instantaneous success. His new approach and tonalities characterize all his later novels.
Gloria Kaiser has done extensive research at the Library and has lectured here on previous occasions. She also writes juvenile literature and plays and does readings for the Austrian national broadcasting system. Her two most recent books Dona Leopoldina (1994) and Pedro II (1997), treating the Hapsburg royalty who became rulers in Brazil, are widely read in Brazil. Both have been translated into English and are available from the Ariadne Press.
