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ALVES: They wanted a summary: who is Rubem Alves? I thought of the epitaph. I remembered the epitaph Robert Frost chose for himself, I found it so beautiful. He had a love affair with life. That's it, I had a love affair with life.
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ALVES: I was living my life, traveling like a madman. Doing long trips in cars, planes. I noticed that my legs were weak. They took me to a doctor [here in Ceará?], a great specialist in that subject. She gave me the tests and confirmed it. My shock. Mario Quintana has a
little verse there in which he talks of what he expects from old age. He said, I want a comfortable old age. With Parkinson's, I cannot have a comfortable old age. Insecurity is coming. Physical security, and -- spiritual insecurity. Physical insecurity is the fear of falling. Spiritual, is the fear of missing words.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 1: Today is international literacy day.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 2: The man coming on today to speak on that subject and many more of the sort --
W1: A mineiro of good hope, a pedagogue, philosopher, theologian, psychoanalyst --
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 2: -- the exalted provocateur with an anarchist spirit --
W1: -- educator, chronicler, story-teller, and writer passionate about literature.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 2: -- emeritus professor at UNICAMP.
W2: But above all he could be considered a great defender of children, of that which they would like to learn in school.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 2: And the fight that our provocateur maintains against the retrograde ideas that trap culture and education in this country.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 1: For many years he has placed himself at the center of this debate, on education in Brazil. And he became a reference point for those seeking changes in the form and content of Brazilian education.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 3: The man himself, professor Rubem Alves. Come here!
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UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 3: Rubem, once more, thanks for joining us.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 2: And now the hug which is the only false thing about this program, the hug.
ALVES: Why is --
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 2: It's the only false thing because [I'm a?] fatty.
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ALVES: I was born in Minas. My body is full of childhood memories. Among the pleasures of mineiro cuisine are chicken with quiabo. It was served with angu and peppers. I was born in the same city as Nelson Freire, who some say -- I agree -- is the best pianist alive
today.
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ALVES: My father was a very wealthy man. But his -- his wealth...was the wealth of -- before I was born. I didn't know my father as a wealthy man. He was wealthy, the owner of many things, he was a coffee exporter. Then the market crisis -- I think it was in 1929. My father lost everything.
And that wealth was lost and we had to live in [Roça?]. The first memories I have of my childhood are memories -- of Roça. A wattle and daub house. Always [swept?]. Of a poverty
-- rats walking up there. That smell of kerosene because we didn't have electricity, [one?] light was -- a big lamp. My father had a defect. His defect was the following. He always thought everything was great. The [day that?] most disgraceful situation, he would find a way to do something, turn it into something good, but he had a problem, he was poor.
And he didn't have money to send his kids to school. So the missionary approached him, offered scholarships for the [Gamo Institute?], which was the school in [Lavras?]. So we were tied to Protestantism not through conversion but rather through -- through cleverness, right?
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ALVES: Then my father decided we were to move to Rio de Janeiro. I thought it was cool in the [million?] of the trip, of the train. And we went to Rio de Janeiro and my [was already?] doing well in life, he sent me to the most expensive schools in Rio. [Andrews?] College. That was a tough experience. I became an object of derision. Since I said "carne." "Mar."
Everyone laughed at me. And more than that, my [costs?]. For example, I didn't -- in Minas, I would go about barefoot. In Rio de Janeiro you have to walk around with socks, socks and shoes, I remember the first day that I -- I went to school, I went with shoes but no socks. And I became the target of teasing for everyone. The time I spent in Rio
de Janeiro was a time of suffering. I never had a friend. It was there that I got the idea of becoming a pianist.
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ALVES: I lived in Botafogo Beach, and I took the [Bonde?] to school. And there were posters there. The [billboards?]. With just one word. [Brailowsky?] I arrived home and I asked mom, "mom, what is Bre-lo-vi-ski?" She said, "Brelovisk? It's not Brelovisk, it's Brailowsky, one of the best pianists in the world."
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ALVES: I don't know how I [got?] money, I remember that I went to the gallery/balcony of the Municipal Theater, up above. When I saw that guy playing piano, I [saw?] two pieces [that I?] -- I don't forget. [Rondo Capricciosa?] by [Mendelssohn?], and a sonata number three by [Chopin?].
(music)
[Quiv?], it's in my head.
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ALVES: For me, it's the fantasy of overcoming humiliation. (inaudible) on the stage, receiving -- fantastic, he played. And if I -- if I had been on stage, all the humiliations would have been thrown out, right? So I remained -- that which I could, and I remained -- with the idea in my head that I -- I could be a pianist. But
I didn't know about God things yet.
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ALVES: I was in Rio de Janeiro, I didn't know about Nelson Freire, I was still in Rio de Janeiro. I was crazy studying -- I had Brailowsky in my head. I was there, studying the Sonata [Pathetique?]. I was [hauling?] the piano. It was two in the afternoon, I was playing -- studying. The bell rings. I went to open the door, a woman with a little boy was standing there. The little boy didn't say hello to anyone, he came in
to the house, reached the living room, saw that open piano with sheet music -- he didn't have any doubts, he walked to the piano, sat down and played. Nelson Freire. He never had to be taught. Where did, where did his -- his knowledge of piano come from? How does that happen? [That?] guy was three, at
he gave his first concert. That's when I understood that there is a different, God protects some and not others. But it was preferable for me to be a -- for me not to be a pianist. I could write, right? He didn't give me, God didn't give me the privilege of playing piano, but he helped me a little to become a writer.
I want to hear music! Those who are part of my soul. Because the soul in its deepest place is full of music. Nelson Freire.
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ALVES: He had a sieve in his fingers. Some pianists have a [comb?] in their fingers. Others have sieves.
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ALVES: I school I was very lonely. Church was a place where I didn't feel alone. It's a community. And when you have a community, then you believe. What makes people believe? Belief is absurd!
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ALVES: One day I received that illumination. Because I -- for Protestants and for Catholics, the Bible is the word of God. It's God who inspired it. But one day I thought -- but, how did they put the books of the Bible together? Because people thought that the books had been magically collected. Then I realized there were congresses that -- religious congresses where they chose the
books, so they didn't have anything sacred about them. It was men who chose those books. I thought -- suddenly, suddenly -- [paf?]. My head opened. I was so horrified with the mediocrity, that I lost my faith. I never heard of a person who is going to make a promise to God
, promise to receive something in [return?]. I never saw someone promise something good for God. Well [I?] promise that I'm going to listen to [Martha Argerich?] play Mozart. I promise I'm going to drink a glass of whiskey every day. I promise that I'm going to try to have sex twice a week for the rest of my life. Good things. Wht do people
promise God? [Deferred shell?]. I promise to walk up the four hundred steps of the staircase, the church's staircase, on my knees. I promise not to drink Coca-Cola for six months. People only -- it's as though God were blubbering with pleasure knowing of our suffering. God is happy, "[ah?], how they are suffering,
how they are suffering."
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ALVES: A large part of religions is based on that prohibition of thought. It's prohibited to think.
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ALVES: I lived in Lavras, in the outskirts of Lavras, the most-suffering people you can imagine. There wasn't anyone to take care of those people. So I preached in order to change church-member's minds. Many people changed their minds, began to think different thoughts, so instead of thinking about heaven people started to have consciousness about the importance of loving people who were suffering.
Suddenly, the [heavens?] of religion seemed infinitely tedious. As pastor of a Protestant community in the interior of Minas, I submitted to taking care of the poor without ever thinking of converting them. In that time, Brazil was boiling with political
movements. And there was a shift in the thinking of our new generation. Before, we wanted to save souls from hell, to go to heaven. Now that we didn't believe in heaven or hell, our mission was to save Brazil. It was to transform Brazil, so our metaphysical faith became
political faith, of engagement, especially among the youth of the Catholic Church, of the Protestant church, they united with the quote revolutionary groups. So the transcendence offered by heaven became the transcendence offered by the future. With that, I caused conflict with the rest of the church. A group and I.
Everyone was conservative and we were different. So the church undertook a movement to liquidate us. I was a Protestant pastor. It's likely that if everything had gone according to plan, I would be an old cleric by now.
But then came the military coup. I was accused of being a subversive by the zealous and kind-hearted authorities of the church.
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ALVES: I had finished all my academic obligations, I was free, I worked like a madman, I had lots of [nostalgia?], I wanted to return to Brazil. So I went downtown one day to walk around, around Times Square, and I was wandering, walking over here, walking over there, then I went to go back to my apartment and I got on the metro. I sat down and I looked out in front of me. And I froze
when I saw the headline. "Revolution in Brazil." So began the month of greatest fear for me.
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ALVES: I was really afraid of arriving to Rio de Janeiro and being arrested there. People disappeared. So I came up with a complicated journey to arrive directly to Campinas. A friend came to pick me up at the airport, and he told me later. After leaving. There are two accusations against you and five more pastors.
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ALVES: That was the beginning of -- two years of affliction, trying to figure out -- trying to avoid arrest. I discovered that I -- who denounced me. It was one of my greatest friends. He was with the [CIA?]. And he was favorable to the revolutionary reforms, I don't know what
else. That's when I unlinked from the church.
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ALVES: That was before they arranged my scholarship to do my doctorate in the United States, since I had done my masters in New York beforehand. Then they gave me a scholarship to do my doctorate. I went to Princeton. And it was there that I wrote the book Theology of Liberation, during that time.
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ALVES: My doctoral thesis was entitled "The Meaning of a Theology of Liberation." That was the title. So, I had the priority of the title. But then the following happened. I sent my thesis to a publisher, the publisher liked the thesis, wanted to publish it. But the publisher said, liberation -- the style in that time was the theology of hope. There was a
German, [Moltmann?], [Jürgen?] Moltmann. So the publisher said, we're going to put your book in the [pot?] of theology of hope. So it was titled "Theology of Hope." But originally it was theology of liberation. I was at Oxford, I went there to give a conference. I made friends there with two
theologians at Oxford. And one day one came to me, said "how are the preparations going for the theology conference in January?" I didn't know what he was talking about. The congress was in São Paulo, and I didn't know. I was so embarrassed because the Oxford people knew and I didn't. Then I arrived to Brazil, I went to do my [gossipping?].
And I discovered my name had been banned by [Frei Betto?]. He didn't want to admit that a Protestant had priority in theology. He wrote a report in [Pasquí?] stating that my theology didn't count for two reasons. One was
that I wasn't a Marxist. The other -- ah! The other was that I had written my thesis in the United States. So I sent word to him reminding him that Marx wrote Capital in London.
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ALVES: Paul Singer arrived in Princeton, he didn't know anything, where to buy used furniture. I knew, so I put Paul in my car, with his wife, [Melanie?], and we went to the city called Trenton. We became friends. When he returned to Brazil, I arrived in Brazil, I didn't have work, I was unemployed, one day the phone rings, Paul saying, "would you be interested in teaching in the city of [Rio Claro?]?
It's a city in the interior." Anything! So he sent me to Rio Claro and I joined the university there. After Rio Claro I went to UNICAMP. I lived in the academic world for a long time. The academic world is a dangerous place. It's scary. It's very hard to live in the university and continue to cultivate your own thoughts. It's much
easier to continue grinding up others' thoughts.
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ALVES: I got to know Paulo Freire in Mexico. There was an institute there, in Cuernavaca if I'm not mistaken, a mister [Ilich?], I went to teach a course, Paulo Freire was there teaching a course, I didn't know Paulo, we hadn't met. But something [delightful?] happened, which was that some students began to find, look up Paulo, asking if we had prepared our classes in tandem. Because he would say something, I
would respond. You know? It was -- without either one of us planning anything, we were in dialogue, speaking together. There are schools that are [bird-cages?]. There are schools that are wings. Schools that are bird-cages, they exist in order for birds to forget the art of flying. Caged birds are birds under control. They stopped being
birds because the essence of birds is flight. I think the objective of school, one of them is to develop intelligence. Not develop answers. It's to develop intelligence. And to help people think about intelligence, I say that intelligence is just like the penis. That's right, penis.
Penis is an excretory organ -- flaccid, ridiculous, depressing, always looking at the ground. But if it's provoked, it undergoes extraordinary hydraulic transformations and takes on the form of an intercontinental rocket. It explodes -- it's capable of giving life, of giving pleasure.
Intelligence -- you can say the same of intelligence because -- it's not [intelligenius?], it's not whether that student over there is intelligent. It's whether the professor doesn't do the work required to stimulate that organ called intelligence.
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ALVES: My problem with school is that it isn't tied to the problems lived day in and day out by children and adolescents. You can imagine, an adolescent of fifteen, and you have -- from the periphery, amidst drugs and everything else. And you have to learn syntax analysis.
What are you going to do with syntax analysis? I think there's only one way to learn a language. It's -- it's not even reading, it's listening to literature. It's not sufficient to read, because the students often don't know how to read. How do you learn to like Mozart?
Listening to Mozart. Not writing a dissertation on Mozart's music. You have to hear it. The legacy of school is a legacy of violence, of authoritarianism, of the big against the small. I already made that joke, I want to create a new kind of professor. [You?] should frighten. The Greeks thought
that thinking arises when you are afraid. "But how? But how?" That "but how", that interrogation, you aren't understanding, so you think in order to understand. So the task of that teacher should be to frighten.
Market items of useless [fruition?]. Gregorian chanting. A sunset. The smell of oregano. Jasmine perfume. A Mozart sonata. A Fernando Pessoa poem. The Orion constellation. They have no function, they are not tools. Why do we love them? Because they give us pleasure and happiness.
Saint Augustine write a treatise in which he said that "all the things in the universe are divided into two categories. Things to be used, and things to be enjoyed." A toy [serves?] for nothing. Useless toy. You can't do anything with a toy,
so why do people love toys? Because a toy brings us pleasure? To serve, I wish to say, to use. To be used. It isn't meant to be used, it's meant to be enjoyed.
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ALVES: But our schools do not develop sensibility. For example, there is no poetry for the pleasure of poetry. You read poetry in order to then make an interpretation, mark a registry, make I don't know what -- but not for sheer pleasure, not because it's going to be on the exam, not to [memorize?] it -- it's pure pleasure. That idea is strange to our educational
philosophy. A kiss. A kiss is completely useless. So why waste saliva, why risk getting a cold, the flu? Because it's good. Good.
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ALVES: The academic world which encircled me, scared me. I chose silence out of caution. Then, suddenly, a child entered my life. Late in life. A [temporary?] daughter. It was she who gave me courage. I wrote many things inspired by Raquel. She was born with a facial disfigurement
, a cleft lip. Born different, she felt different -- she had to fight all the time against the looks of others. Because people's suffering doesn't come from the point of suffering, but rather from other people's looks. Looks are -- eyes are very cruel organs. The way of looking.
So it's as though I had all the time to write in order to place beauty within suffering.
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ALVES: [Nietzsche?] said that he only loved books that were written in blood. So you must ask yourself [is it eaten with?] blood -- you have to discover, what is the text? How do you know if a text is written in blood? You know that a text written by Emily Dickinson, a North American poet who never left her little city,
writing [for a?] friend she said: When I read a text and I go so cold such that no fireplace could [warm me?], I know that that is poetry, I know that that is poetry. If I have the sensation that the top of my head is being ripped off, I know that that is poetry. So Emily Dickinson understands the poetic not by rhyme, not by meter, it wasn't -- poetry
is that word that has a task for meat, the verb that creates meat. So I write something that I -- and people are moved. That's why we walk our whole lives / in order to arrive at the place we departed. / And when we arrived, we're surprised. / It's as though we'd never
seen each other. / Now, at the end of our wandering, our eyes are others / eyes of old age. Eyes of nostalgia. / And in old age, people become afraid of being alone. I nee to say that I'm afraid of old age. A friend of mine
-- in order to have an idea, he was 92. Suffering from terrible pain. He went to the doctor and said, "would it be possible for you to increase my dose of morphine?" The doctor stared at him. "Are you suggesting I perform euthanasia?"
I wish to say that the doctor was trying to preserve his theological purity. I will not practice euthanasia. But that man was suffering, that man who was suffering, he needed -- you know? When the pain is too much… When the pain is too much -- you have to love humans, we do it to dogs.
I have taken so many dogs to the -- they went to doggie heaven at the veterinarians. People love their dogs, that's why they take their dogs to the veterinarian, to receive an injection. So I think that there are certain situations where people have the right, the right -- it's a right -- I have the right to choose whether I live
or whether I don't live.
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ALVES: This place here is more or less sacred for me. I already said, when I die, I want my [ashes?] to be spread here.
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ALVES: This place is closely related to my life. I walked a great deal here. But now when I return, it's different, right? Some advice: if you love a place, don't do the silliness of visiting it.
Because you'll visit it thinking you will find time, but time won't be there. It's better for you to remain with the idea of it in your head. I don't belong to this place, this place no longer belongs to me.
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ALVES: For the time being I'm thinking about the illness of Parkinson's. It's filling my head. There's not a place left to joke around in.
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UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 4: Our dear writer Rubem Alves, he lost the fine motor-skills in his hand. So for that reason, he will not autograph your books. Our beloved Rubem Alves, the floor is yours.
ALVES: For a long time I considered not coming to speak with you. I didn't know if I would be up to it. Then some friends insisted I come, knowing that -- you like me, don't you?
After months of silence, this is the first time I have built up the courage to speak with you all. I'm doing what I've never done before. I'm going to read what I need to say. Not just read -- more or less, I read [the content?]. I don't know what parts the Parkinson's will hold back.
But I'm sure that if I slip up you will forgive me. Thank you.
[text unavailable]
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ALVES: I don't wish that you simply understand what I write. Understanding is a rational act. What I wish is that my texts be eaten cannibalistically. I want you to feel my delight, I want my readers, upon reading my texts, to feel their eyes become my eyes. That way, they will see the world take shape
as I do. And then words will become unnecessary.
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