Intimacy, Memory and Revelation: HIV/AIDS Representations in Néstor
Perlongher’s and Caio Fernando Abreu’s Epistolary Writing
Intimidad, memoria y revelación: representaciones del HIV/SIDA en la
escritura epistolar de Néstor Perlongher y Caio Fernando Abreu
Gustavo Vargas
University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, varga181@umn.edu
ORCID: 0000-0003-4011-0899
DOI: http://doi.org/10.30827/RL.v0i26.16492
Palabras clave:
HIV/SIDA; género epistolar; Abreu; Perlongher.
ABSTRACT
This article analyzes the epistolary works of writers
Néstor Perlongher and Caio Fernando Abreu. Both authors share their experiences
living with HIV/AIDS in their personal correspondence that has been recently
published in different publishing houses in São Paulo and Buenos Aires (Agir and Santiago Arcos editor). This article delves into
the affective archive that both authors left for posterity and suggests
Perlongher and Abreu have a divergent system of writing about the epidemic and
what it represented for gay men in the region. Despite being authors that
followed different paths to develop their literary interests, Perlongher and
Abreu left for posterity an archive that provides a comprehensive understanding
of the social, medical and political aspects of living with HIV/AIDS in Latin
America.
Keywords: HIV/AIDS; epistolary genre; Abreu; Perlongher.
Introduction
The intimacy of epistolary writing
allows authors to reveal their desires, fears and uttermost secrets. Nora
Bouvet, in her exploration of this modality of communication, explains that
writing letters is a relationship between ghosts –those of the sender and the
addressee– that seek to communicate despite distance and solitude (28). This
article explores the correspondence of two authors of a more recent time period–the
end of the twentieth century in Latin America, which is a time marked by the
steep decline of epistolary writing due to digital technological advances. Néstor Perlongher and Caio Fernando Abreu –avid
letter writers– lived at the edge of this transition, and their epistolary
archives have been published in recent years. For instance, Italo Moriconi
edited a volume of Abreu’s letters in Editora Aeroplano in 2006. In the case of Néstor Perlongher, Adrián
Cangi and Reynaldo Jiménez published Papeles insumisos (2004) in Santiago Arcos Editor, a remarkable
compilation of lesser-known documents by Perlongher that contain the letters
addressed to his intimate friend Sara Torres from 1981 to 1992. Most recently,
Cecilia Palmeiro edited a new volume of letters entitled Néstor Perlongher, Correspondencia (2016)
that was published by Argentine publishing house Mansalva. The editorial and
critical interest in the private correspondence of both authors is
understandable when considering their posthumous status as exemplary figures of
the intersection of queer sexualities and literature.
In the context of this article, Perlongher’s and Abreu’s letters
constitute a valuable resource to delve into two different modalities of
HIV/AIDS writing in Latin America. Despite being authors who followed different
paths to develop their literary interests, Perlongher and Abreu left for
posterity an archive that provides a comprehensive understanding of the social,
medical and political aspects of living with HIV/AIDS in South America. Both
writers lived during an important part of their careers in São Paulo –Perlongher
as an Argentine exile who established ties with the Brazilian public university[1]– and
Abreu, a talented, well-traveled, and ambitious writer and journalist who moved
away from the restrictive reality of his small hometown in Rio Grande do Sul.
Reading through these affective archives, there is evidence that Perlongher and
Abreu had divergent systems of writing about HIV/AIDS. After his untimely diagnosis, Perlongher –known
for his dedicated political activism and his conviction that a revolution was
not possible without sex– hesitates about some of these early ideals and seeks
refuge in the syncretic religion of Santo Daime[2].
In one of his letters,
Perlongher writes, “ahora que me veo en la proximidad
de la muerte, me cuestiono todo lo que pensaba y escribía y me aferro a la
religión del Santo Daime” (Correspondencia
132)[3]. Adrián Cangi, in
his analysis of Perlongher’s
writing, explains that “el punto cúlmine de la
enfermedad supone un fuerte viraje y olvido de la deriva libidinal, para
desarrollar el que sería su proyecto más ambicioso: el viaje extático […] su
metamorfosis consiste en la trascendencia del cuerpo singular y el abandono de
la deriva erótica” (17-18). For instance,
Perlongher’s early concerns with physicality and eroticism (i.e.
his anthropological research on male prostitution in São Paulo) mature, at
least in his letter writing and poetry, into a deep interest in the mystical to
reach a superior state of ecstasy through Santo
Daime. However, as it is later revealed in his epistolary exchanges, this
mystical conception is in direct conflict with the advance of the viral disease
within his body. The author and his writing retreat into a deep state of
individuality and intimate confession that departs from his earlier political
radicalism[4]. On the
other hand, Caio Fernando Abreu, a writer known for the metaphorization of the
virus in his literary writing, turns to disclosure when he is diagnosed in
1994. As one of the first Brazilian writers to address the epidemic, in the
last years of his life, Abreu reaches a recognizable status as a public figure
living with HIV: “together with Brazilian pop star Cazuza, and writer and
political activist Herbert Daniel, Abreu was one of the earliest and most
outspoken cultural figures to address the general public in Brazil concerning
the AIDS experience” (Fernando Arenas 238). Maybe the most important public disclosure
of his HIV positive status took place in his three chronicles entitled “Cartas para além dos muros” published in O Estado de São Paulo between August and
September of 1994.
Despite their differences in dealing with the HIV
diagnosis in their writing, Perlongher’s and Abreu’s correspondence gives
intimate portraits of the joys of friendship, the fears of solitude and the
recognition of mortality. Reading their epistolary archive reveals a myriad of
affective relationships, including those rooted in queer attachments. This is
especially powerful in the case of Abreu who feels compelled to memorialize a
community of gay men (e.g. friends, lovers, writers
and artists) that had already succumbed to the virus.
Ecstasy, Daime and AIDS: Néstor Perlongher’s Correspondence
En
saudades extensas anegada, rauda en noche de domingo (en casa, siempre en casa)
invoco el afecto del recuerdo.
Néstor Perlongher, Correspondencia
Néstor Perlongher is a key figure to understand the configurations of
early gay activism in Latin America. A non-conformist, the Argentine writer
defied notions of normalcy and morality in moments of political turmoil in his
native Argentina and later in his “deterritorialization” in Brazil. Perlongher’s
personal correspondence sheds
light on many of the challenges he faced during his
life: “la anacrónica moralina de las dictaduras y su
penalización de toda disidencia, la normalización y estabilización de la
identidad gay en el contexto de las transiciones democráticas, y la crisis del
Sida” (Palmeiro 13). Although this personal archive covers different stages
of life –his early activism in Argentina, his relocation to São Paulo, the
onset of the disease in Paris, and the return to the Brazilian metropolis where
he died in 1992– this article explores the author’s epistolary writing related
to his experience with HIV/AIDS. During his untimely diagnosis in France in
1990, he writes constantly to his intimate friends Sara Torres and Beba Eguía.
This epistolary exchange continued until the end of his life.
Written in his opulent neobarroso style, Perlongher
sends numerous letters to his dear friend Sara. She is not only a confidant, but also a familiar bond to
the reality of Argentina. His letter writing is campy, and in some letters,
Perlongher’s voice assumes the alter ego of a woman named Rosa L. de Grossman.
He signs his letter closings as Rosa, Rose and Rose La Lujanera,
and addresses Sara as Sarette, Soul Sister, compatriota, Ginger and Diosa Sariana (Goddess Sara) to express his endearment to his
beloved friend. Néstor tells her all: his latest literary and academic
projects, his everyday life in São Paulo, his latest romantic affairs, and his
innermost fears and hopes regarding his HIV infection. As readers, we do not
have access to Sara’s responses, but we can infer that those were not as often
as Perlongher wanted them. In December
1984, Néstor writes, “Nena y a vos cómo te van las
cosas? Sé que esperar que me escribas es tan insensato como mi necesidad de
quedar embarazada para obtener la ciudadanía brasileña y poder llamarme Janira dos Santos y haber nacido en Caraguatetubapeipiringa”
(72). Through the years, he demands Sara to write back and more often, to
reciprocate his affection and confidence. As Bouvet states, “la práctica epistolar amorosa [in this case based on friendship] se reduce al verbo
intransitivo ‘escribirse’ o ‘cartearse’; expresiones como ‘te escribo’ y ‘escribime’ […] introducen a los interlocutores en un
universo discursivo que pone a prueba el poder dialógico del lenguaje”
(94). Perlongher’s letter writing had many interlocutors over the years:
Osvaldo Baigorria, Tamara Kamenszain, Roberto Echavarren and even Cuban writer
Reinaldo Arenas[5]. But there
is no doubt that the most intimate revelations of Perlongher’s psyche are found
in his epistolary exchanges with Sara Torres and Beba Eguía. Some specific
aspects stand out in these communications, such as a rather complicated relationship
with the traditional medical discourse on HIV/AIDS, a clear positionality of
difference and foreignness in the metropole (Perlongher’s stay in Paris), and a
fixation on the description of the flesh and its transformation with the
advance of the illness. As Lina Meruane–pioneering scholar of research on the
HIV/AIDS epidemic in Latin American literature, has stated the establishment of
a gay identity in the early 20th century created “a sexual community
[…] [and] the demarcation of spaces of specific sexual actions and
interactions, places where those men made dates and practiced what Néstor
Perlongher called nomadismo erótico” (86). In the late 20th century, the
epidemic suddenly constitutes an experience of trauma for this sexual community, and fosters the reconfigurations of affects and
kinships based on aspects of survival, memory and death.
In November 1989 –thanks to a scholarship– Perlongher
moves to Paris to study a doctorate of anthropology under the guidance of
Michel Maffesoli. He leaves his city of São Paulo,
his home university, and his dear lover “Luizmar”. In
February 1990, he soon writes to Sara confessing the bad news of his recent HIV
diagnosis:
Sara del Alma.
Divina hermana: Qué situación! Qué
lejos estamos! Adónde me ha llevado esta desterritorialización
insensata. En el 1er y único llamado te largo esta noticia terrible. La
situación es la siguiente. Todo comenzó con unas manchas blancas en la lengua.
Era la temible candida (un hongo típico del virus).
Fui a un hospital donde me hicieron el test y dio
positivo. El 5 de febrero Luizmar llegó y me está
ayudando mucho. Pero la depresión corre por abajo. En un típico acto de boicot
destruí la máquina de escribir […] Todo entre brumas: un mar de culpas y
arrepentimientos. Muy confuso (131).
It is evident that the news of the disease was
devastating for Néstor in a time when the diagnosis of the illness was equated
with certain death. Since the onset of his symptoms in France, Perlongher is
specific about one aspect: he wants to keep his condition a private matter. He is emphatic to Sara: “Nena, te
pido por favor que no comentes nada porque quiero evitar que se cree una
atmósfera negativa que parezca y llame a la catástrofe” (131)[6]. He is also wary
about the use of allopathic medicine to treat HIV. In the development of
Perlongher’s political writing, there is a denunciation of the power of
medicalization to control queer sexual conducts: “Pienso
que hay un proyecto abierto
para modificar comportamientos.
Hay
una medicalización de la existencia y hay una medicalización de la sexualidad.
Esta medicalización implica una discusión del valor de la vida. La vida es
medida por su extensión, por la cantidad de años vividos aún si son en agonía,
y no por un criterio, un valor intensivo” (Papeles insumisos 362). This opposition to traditional medicine had also its
roots in Nestor’s personal discovery of Santo
Daime in Brazil. In his communication with his friend Sara, there are vivid
anthropological-like accounts of his travels to Acre to immerse himself in the
world of this religion. Santo Daime
is a syncretic faith founded in the Brazilian state of Acre with teachings
centered on the consumption of ayahuasca, a brew made of the yagé plant with hallucinogenic properties leading to a
trance-like and spiritual ecstasy known as mirações. Perlongher’s interest
in this religious group is documented long before the onset of the disease. For instance, he describes to Sara one of his excursions
to visit members of Daime
in 1989: “Tras cinco o seis horas por el río enorme, se entra en un arroyo, el Igrapé Mapía […] son campesinos
metafísicos todo el tiempo hablando de la luz, el cosmos, las estrellas, dios,
en fin, filosofías teológicas. Y todos reciben himnos por inspiración divina,
poetas muchos de ellos analfabetos, eso es impresionante” (125). Influenced by
his involvement in the religion’s teachings, Perlongher initially refuses to
take the AZT medication prescribed by his doctors in France. In his epistolary confession to Beba Eguía, he explains,
Mi entrevista con
la médica que me trata no fue muy tranquilizadora que digamos… Al mismo tiempo
me quiero volver (lo he decidido haciendo el pedido de un pasaje) para hacer un
trabajo de cura en el Santo Daime y también ir con vos a ver la Padre Mario al
Bajo Flores (133).
Perlongher resists AZT, believing instead that his devotion to Santo
Daime would help him with his illness; however, after a rapid advancement of
symptoms, he acquiesces and takes the drug. One of his main concerns was the
side effects he was feeling in his body. He writes,
Tomo AZT a título
preventivo. También me han dado antibióticos. Todo ello me cae como una patada
en el estómago y en la conciencia, pues mi resistencia a la medicina alopática
es considerable. Ese cansancio ojeroso; no se sabe si es la enfermedad, la
depresión o ambas cosas […] La sensación de derrumbe (141).
He also comments about
the change of his intellectual pursuits in the same letter: “mi cambio de tema [referring to his doctoral research] ha sido demasiado abrupto: de la sexualidad a la
religión. De un tema en el que era especialista a otro en el que no sé nada”
(141). One can argue that the reality of
the disease was transformative in many aspects of his life. In a 2014 television documentary aired in Argentina, Sara Torres comments about this stage of her
friend’s life: “la época
que más discutimos fue cuando decidió dejar el tratamiento e incorporarse al
tema del Santo Daime […] ya a esa altura él tenía una cosa mucho más mística
que era rara para mí por su formación marxista. Yo no lo podía entender” (n.p.). Although this analysis does not attempt to rebuke
Perlongher’s personal turn to the mystical, current scholarship has argued that
this exploration should not be deemed a passive embrace of religious
spirituality—at odds with the author’s political and ideological legacy. For instance, Jorge Ignacio Cid
Alarcón explains that
“Perlongher se acerca al Daime no
sólo por una curiosidad dogmática, sino más bien porque vio en él una nueva
lengua en constante desvanecimiento capaz de reflejar el cuerpo en trance
sexual, fronterizo, de enfermedad y místico que se constituye a lo largo de su
poética” (379). This can certainly be argued
in the aesthetic choices that infuse Perlongher’s penultimate poetry book Aguas aéreas (1991).
In this work, ecstatic neobaroque language describes
the experience of consuming the “sacred” brew of ayahuasca. In a revealing
interview with Edward Mac Rae, Perlongher expounds that the liturgical language
of Santo Daime is a syncretic
combination of marginal elements of aboriginal and African cultures. This caboclo-Amazonian language is alluring
because it echoes the potentiality of Perlongher’s neobarroso that, in this case, is created with the muddy waters of both the
Amazon and the sacred libation. The writer’s devotion to Santo Daime was not, however, devoid of criticism. Perlongher says,
Para mi es difícil
mantener la creencia, creer. Y acá viene otro problema: hay toda una moda
esotérica, que es muy oportunista, y el Daime en las ciudades entra dentro de
esa corriente…quedé muy despersonalizado y excesivamente autocrítico […] Creo
también que ese viaje a Francia fue muy destructivo (393).
Perlongher’s period in Paris was a difficult time marked by constant
outbursts of desperation and sadness. Luizmar, Sara
and Beba Eguía are his immediate network of support. In his correspondence with
the two women, he complains of his inability to adapt to Paris. In this
European venture, he is confronted with his own radical difference (as a gay
man, as a person living with HIV, and as a Latin American who does not master
the local language and culture). In a letter dated May 1990, he tells Sara:
Sara, amada, entré
en terror y llanto, y en el hospital no querían atenderme por falta de turno […]
El problema es que pocos médicos entienden de SIDA. [Francia] es el paraíso de
la más cruel alopatía. Lo cual mi extranjería complica, pues me tratan cual a
un fugitivo otomano. Y mi francés sigue pésimo! (138).
In a similar fashion, he communicates to Beba
Eguía his disdain for Paris: “Ya no aguanto más estar aquí. Parte
considerable de mi depre, la achaco a esta ciudad hostil, donde impera una
ética del maltrato y una estética del disimulo” (135). Paris was an epicenter for HIV research in the 80s and 90s; however,
Perlongher is highly critical of contemporary French society. He writes a
chronicle titled “Nueve meses en
Paris.” It is an illuminating text that reveals Perlongher’s opinion on French
scholarship and society. He considers French intellectualism as an isolated
world of “fiefdoms” unable to dialogue with each other. France is also a place
full of racial tensions. Paris is described as an inhospitable city, especially
for the Arab diaspora, despite their strong historical connections to
France. During this time, Brazil is
idealized as a better place to live as it is closer to friends and, most
importantly, closer to Argentina.
After his return to Brazil, Perlongher has a rush of
professional productivity. He writes poetry and publishes his anthropological
thesis O negócio
do michê in Spanish. In addition, in April 1992,
he travels to New York as an invited participant in a poetry symposium
organized by Roberto Echavarren at New York University. Just few months before
his death, he is awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship thanks to the support of
writers: Tamara Kamenszain, Ricardo Piglia and Josefina Ludmer. His
correspondence at this stage shows periods of emotional and physical stability
that would suddenly be interrupted by intense anxiety and bodily deterioration.
In Brazil, he is able to reconnect with the practices of Santo Daime and even try new healing methods based on shamanism. In a letter to Sara, he explains his experience:
he hecho este
final de semana una experiencia de iniciación chamánica […] Con la ayuda de un
tamborcillo, y varias danzas, se entra en un trance leve, durante el cual los
más felices vislumbran un túnel subterráneo que da
acceso al mundo profundo, de donde se rescatan los animales de poder que nos
protegen (146).
But shamanism is not the only experimental practice he
sought for the possibilities of healing. In the 90s, most of Perlongher’s
epistolary communication with Beba Eguía has references to El padre Mario. In one of the editor’s notes, Palmeiro explains
that this religious figure was famous for his alleged abilities to heal through
his hand’s touch (128). Believers from all over the country went in pilgrimage
to his charity foundation in González Catán, province
of Buenos Aires, seeking to benefit from his miraculous abilities. On many occasions,
he writes to Eguía: “Por favor pedí por mí en tus
peregrinaciones al milagrero Padre Mario. Te lo agradezco de alma” (153). In a letter dated September 1991,
Perlongher is content due to the stabilization and improvement of his medical
condition. He writes:
Gracias a Dios, al
Padre Mario y al AZT, estoy bastante bien. No tengo en este momento ninguna
infección ni enfermedad oportunista […] Mi contaje de células de células T4
(aquellas que el virus invade) subió espectacularmente de 100 a 500 (lo normal
es 1000). Yo te juro que estoy optimista y esperanzado como te acordás no lo estaba. Pienso que el Padre Mario me dio una
nueva y maravillosa vida. Vamos a ir con mi amiga Beba a verlo todos los
viernes a González Catán (185).
One of the reasons for Perlongher’s renewed enthusiasm
has to do with his amalgamation of healing traditions in a moment of crisis. He
combines allopathic medicine (AZT) with Santo Daime, Shamanism and even a type
of pseudo-Catholic mysticism. In contrast with his stay in Paris, where he felt
that his only option was to take AZT, he was able now to experiment with a wide
array of possibilities integrating many worldviews. Although here I have no
interest in vouching or rebuking Perlongher’s choices of belief, I do argue
that his move of combining all these “irreconcilable” elements echoes, in part,
the author’s interest with the “baroquization” of existence.
It follows Perlongher’s common operation of “bastardizing” established systems
of thought, of undermining fixation with nomadic multiplicity. It can be argued
that these integrations were made out of a moment of personal crisis
undermining Perlongher’s past of sexual radicalism, but still they need to be
acknowledged, in concordance with Ben Bollig’s
argument that “he [Perlongher] exhibited an awareness of the radical way that
the virus had changed the possibilities of sex as a form of political resistance”
(78).
In one of Perlongher’s last essays, entitled “La desaparición de la homosexualidad,”
Perlongher is certainly less enthusiastic about the political potentiality of
sexuality, but his criticisms and warnings about AIDS remain sharp. In the
context of his writing, the author explains how the epidemic has paved the way
for a repressive planning of all aspects of gay sexuality (87). Gay people are
under the scrutiny of modern medicine and vulnerable to the social changes
brought about by the intensification of neoliberal projects around the world.
Although Perlongher is aware of the overwhelming medicalization of life and the
advancement of a sterilized sexuality without risks and using lots of latex, “esto no quier[e] decir (confies[a] que no es fácil) estar contra los médicos, ya que la medicina evidentemente desempeña, en el combate contra la amenaza morbosa, un papel central” (88).
This is one of the dilemmas in the history of AIDS and medicine: the difficult
task of developing a system of medical cure devoid of social, sexual and
economic biases. In an epistolary exchange with Sara Torres in March 1991,
Perlongher makes an insightful comment about his relationship with medicine and
medication: “[E]stoy un poco más
optimista (ligeramente sin exagerar) con relación a mi salud […] Pero completamente entregado a la medicina y tomando
como 15 comprimidos diarios, no soy yo, es una combinación química que
deambula” (153). He recognizes the effect of
pharmacological substances in his body, and the dependence of a strict medical
regimen to keep his life afloat. The problem does not lie in the consumption of
“drugs” altering his internal chemical composition, but how these regimens of
health are based on the “industrialization and privatization of the body as a
product” (Preciado 342). In the acclaimed book Testo Junkie, Paul
Preciado advances the conception of a “pharmacopornographic”
age in which the AIDS epidemic has been under the surveillance and
administration of “biomedical models, advertising campaigns, government health
organizations […] pharmacological industries, intellectual property, and so on”
(337). Perlongher is aware of these configurations of social and medical
control. In 1991, Perlongher complains
about the cost of paying for medical treatment and his inability to look for
other options to access it: “Tengo que pagar un convenio de salud carísmo, pero no me animo a abandonarlo
pues, en caso de internamiento, la red pública sólo cubre
25% de los gastos. Un verdadero horror. Con el AZT no hubo
caso, hay que pagarlo nomás. Carísimo y aumenta todos los meses […] no hay otra
alternativa que pagar” (193). This position
of precarity during a moment of social crisis allowed, in many cities around
the world, a unique and necessary intervention in the medical discourses of
medicine. Enraged by the lack of social and political action to fight against
HIV/AIDS,
los enfermos de
SIDA, en el sentido clínico de término, rechazan la posición de enfermos y
reclaman ser considerados como usuarios del sistema de salud, expertos en el
proceso de toma de decisiones, piden intervenir en la producción de
conocimiento científico […] Los activistas del SIDA son los primeros que están
entendiendo que el aparato de verificación que produce lo normal y lo
patológico con respecto al SIDA está desplazándose desde la clínica al mercado
farmacológico (Preciado Muerte 28-29).
In Perlongher’s case, the author also questions the
authoritative discourses of traditional medicine. In a moment of scientific and
medical uncertainty with fighting the HIV/AIDS epidemic, the Argentine author
intervenes in his own processes of cure by combining a wide array of
alternative knowledges and systems of belief. Though Perlongher’s incursions to
alternative therapies can be controversial from the standpoint of modern
scientific evidence, his willingness to destabilize the spheres of action and
authority of contemporary medicine echoes the experience of many infected
patients in the first years of the epidemic.
Terminally ill people around the globe sought for their own solutions to
reclaim life and health due to the limited efficacy of AZT[7].
Although Perlongher’s latest years were characterized
by episodes of productivity in his literary and academic projects, the advance
of the disease seriously undermined his physical state and his emotional life
in the last months of 1991. In one of the few
analyses of Perlongher’s correspondence,
Javier Gasparri writes about the emotions
that pervade the author’s final letters: “[…] la escritura de la angustia y de la soledad
son el ‘dolor de abandono’ cuya percepción recorre estas cartas (abandono de
los otros, abandono de la poesía, abandono de los proyectos y tal vez de la
idea de futuro a largo plazo)” (126). Perlongher
is aware of his diminished physical capabilities and fears the possibility of
solitude in his apartment of São Paulo. In many instances, he invites Sara to
come over to Brazil, so they do not rely only on letters to communicate with
each other. Though it is not completely clear due to the absence of Sara’s
epistolary responses, there seem to exist periods of disagreement and silence
among them. During his last trip to Argentina [at least the one last documented
in the correspondence], Perlongher writes to many people back in Buenos Aires
looking to stay a few weeks with them.
He has difficulty finding a host. In the past, he would always stay with
his dear Sara, who would open the doors of her place to her exiled friend
Néstor. In one of his letters to Beba Eguía in July 1991, he writes in good
spirits about having his first computer –“un Toshiba portátil milagro de la japonesería ya que no de la
chinoiserie”– and mentions his concern for Sara and her possible anger towards
him: “temo que [Sara] no haya
aguantado mis críticas y decida no recibirme [en Argentina], será?” (161). It
is not clear the main reason for their disagreements (if any), but in a letter
dated August 31, 1992 (roughly three months before his death) a reconciliation
is suggested. He writes, “Enorme alegría me
causó tu llamado, conmovente […] En tu llamado sentí
que nos habíamos del todo reencontrado, después de ese furioso brote que
padecí, que ahora lo sé responde al nombre de la manía” (234). Perlongher is also emphatic about his feelings of
solitude and his need for companionship and support: “Preciso
un poco de mimo, porque en general me siento solo. Esta enfermedad
provoca un aislamiento progresivo porque uno no consigue acompañar el ritmo de
los otros y uno va quedando rezagado” (234).
His final epistolary exchange with Sara is perhaps one
of his most dramatic ones and constitutes a representative example of HIV/AIDS intimate
writing. One of the major features of this modality of writing is the focus on
the somatic and the medical. There is an obsession on expressing the
progression of the disease in all the crevices of the body and making use of
medical terminology to make sense of the experience of decay and
precariousness. In Perlongher’s final letter to Sara Torres, he makes a recount
of his precarious condition. His enumeration of symptoms is similar to those of
a medical report: cytomegalovirus, microbacterium, constant
diarrhea, sarcoma, T4 as 14 out of 1000, and cryptosporidium are just some of
his latest conditions (234). Perlongher
also writes a heartfelt letter to his father dated on
August 1992. The document is dramatic. His father, an old man, is sick, and Perlongher
responds telling him all about his state. Both seem to be dealing with cancer: “Perdoname
que no te escribí, pero estoy tan mal que a veces no tengo fuerzas para
sentarme ante el computador. La mayor parte de los días no consigo hacer nada […]
Siento mucho que no estés bien. Yo también empecé a hacer quimioterapia, pero
tuve que pararla por mi estado de debilidad” (231). The Argentine writer dies in São Paulo a few months later, in late
November 1992.
Living with the Revenants of the Past: Abreu’s Epistolary Writing and
the Politics of Hope
In Latin America, another writer also developed a significative
epistolary writing until his death due to AIDS-related complications in 1996.
Born in 1948, Caio Fernando Abreu was a nomadic artist who spent periods of his
life in his native Rio Grande do Sul, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, London and
Paris. His literary oeuvre is known for
his combination of pop culture elements (e.g. music,
film and literature) and urban Brazilian settings. Also recognized for his
writing on alternative sexualities, Fernando Arenas explains that “Abreu’s
textual space is populated by subjectivities representing a wide and fluid
spectrum of genders and sexualities that escape facile containment within easy
binaries” (243). Part of the post-mortem
recognition of Abreu’s works comes from both “[his] introspective and
profoundly lyrical prose […] certainly an heir to Clarice Lispector’s
resplendent writing” (Arenas 238), and his ability to convey the social changes
and political challenges experienced in Brazil’s post dictatorial society.
Using Perlongher’s epistolary experience as reference,
this is an analysis of Abreu’s letter writing during the twilight of his life.
Similar to the Argentine writer, Abreu enjoyed writing letters to his closest
friends even during the hardest years of his illness. The collection of letters
published by Aeroplano provides a detailed look into
the author’s personal and artistic evolution over many decades. In contrast
with Perlongher, Abreu is predominantly recognized for his literary works and
not necessarily for a legacy of political or sexual activism. Even though the gaucho writer did include HIV/AIDS
representations in his work (perhaps the first ones in Brazilian literature),
Abreu’s first period of AIDS writing is dominated by a conscious
metaphorization of the illness[8]. Many of
his short stories, plays and his last novel are marked by the overwhelming
presence of a symbology of decay created by the use of rich allusion (e.g. skin lesions, urban deterioration and stained walls)
and highly figurative language. There is an evil that has not been yet named, but lurks within the lives of many of his characters.
For instance, in his 1990 novel Onde andará Dulce Veiga?[9], readers are gradually introduced to an
urban world of destruction that is stricken by disease and fear. In the first
pages of the novel, one of the main characters, a journalist, describes the
state of his apartment building and the city of São Paulo: “it was a sick,
contaminated building, almost terminal. But it was still in its place, it
hadn’t collapsed yet. Even though, judging from the cracks in the concrete, by
the ever-widening gaps in the indefinably colored tile facing, like wounds
spreading little by little on the skin, it was only a matter of months” (25).
This “bodily” description of a place is provided early in the novel when we are
still unaware of the infected status of most characters. The building is,
however, a telling description of a “contaminated” human body that is not only
suffering a lethal illness as AIDS was in the late 80s and early 90s, but also
endures the typical symptoms of the malaise. We are able to perceive that the
wounds spreading in the “skin” (walls) of the apartment are a representation of
the feared Kaposi sarcoma that invades the skin of the sick. There is a
poignant sense of defeat and decay that surrounds most spaces of the story. As Letícia Gonçalves states in her analysis of the Abreu’s autobiographical
aspects in his literary writing, “Caio Fernando Abreu […] demonstrou por diversas vezes, em sua carreira de
escritor, o interesse por uma escrita mais confessional e, mesmo nesse contexto
delicado, Caio não abdicou de sua preferência por textos intimistas, embora
neles tenha tratado o assunto da AIDS, na maioria das vezes, de forma implícita” (133). In fact, it can be argued that many of Abreu’s readers
were unaware of the dramatic social phenomenon that he was trying to depict in
his writing. One may wonder if the stigma related to the virus and the
widespread misinformation among the public prevented Abreu from portraying a
franker portrait of the illness in his literature.
Similar to Perlongher, Abreu exchanges correspondence
with a close circle of intimate friends: Maria Lidia Migliani,
Jacqueline Cantore, Gerd Hilger, Luiz Arthur Nunes, Luciano Albrase
and Hilda Hilst, among others.
Sometimes, in his epistolary writing, he creates a campy feminine
persona named Marilene (similar to Perlongher’s epistolary style) and relates
his life to the melodramatic experiences of artistic divas such as Carmen
Miranda and Marlene Dietrich. In his letters, he addresses himself as Linda
Lamar, Santa Tereza d’ Avila and Marilene Fraga. His most intimate letter
writing is usually addressed to three important women in his life: Maria Lídia
(a painter from Rio Grande do Sul), Jacqueline (a young
woman who was Caio’s roommate in São Paulo during the 80s), and his German
translator, Gerd Hilger. When he writes, Abreu uses a myriad of names (Magli Magoo, Maglim,
menina-loba, Levíssima,
Jackie C and Jacqueline Bisset) to address these friends showing fondness and
familiarity. Letters are an effective means of communication to make all types
of private confessions: new lovers, gossip about their circles of friends, and
comment on their travels and latest personal projects.
In 1988, Abreu is aware of the devastation caused by
the epidemic, and describes his encounter with
Brazilian singer Cazuza during a concert in São Paulo. The singer was one of
the first public figures to openly disclose his HIV positive status to bring
attention to the reality of the disease and hopefully find a cure. He writes, “Aí fui dar uns amassinhnos [a Cazuza], no final. Luciano, Cazuzinha está
com no máximo 50 quilos. Lindo, vital, sereno. Mas você olha a cara dele e vê a
cara da morte [...] Ritual da vida e morte, naquele menino definhando en cima de um palco” (162). In this letter, a concerned Caio expresses his
admiration for Cazuza’s resilience; however, the
public media could not be more different when in 1989, A Veja, one of Brazil’s most important
magazines, “aterrorizou os leitores ao apresentar,
numa capa, o rostro desfigurado do cantor Cazuza, já muito doente, com a
manchete ‘Uma vítima da Aids agoniza em praça
pública’” (Trevisan
451-52). As in many countries around the
globe, the public discourse on HIV/AIDS in Brazil was often mediated by the
dissemination of sensationalistic news and misinformation that only stoked
public fears of the disease. As a queer
person at the onset of the epidemic, Abreu also feared the virus, and his
letter writing in the early 90s is a reflection of that. His hesitancy with
disclosing the harsh reality of HIV/AIDS and his “reading between the lines”
approach to representing the epidemic in his literary writing mirrors his own
hesitation with knowing his status. In many of his epistolary exchanges, Abreu
complains of sudden infections that are difficult to cure. Fearing a fatal
diagnosis, he postpones his own HIV test for years. In August 1990, he writes, “[A] Sandra-médica está começando a idéia […] de fazer
O Teste. Eu não sei se quero. Seria como querer um papel timbrado, firma
reconhecida, dizendo que vou ser atropelado (‘por esse trem da morte’, como
dizia Cazuza) daqui a algum tempo” (224). This passage
reveals the official formality of a positive HIV test as an inescapable death
sentence. It conveys the fear of receiving a piece of news that can modify the
individual perception of time, death and self-worth. In 1992, Abreu writes
again to Maria Lídia to tell her about a new episode of illness. He is taking
multiple antibiotics to tackle yet another infection; however, Caio confesses
the underlying cause of his physical debilitation: “Mas continuo achando que o problema é que definitivamente NÃO SUPORTO OUVIR
A REALIDADE. Acho que não tem cura” (232).
After the publication of his second novel Onde andara Dulce Veiga?,
the Brazilian author gains recognition abroad. His novels are published in
French, German, English and Dutch. Abreu travels often to Europe to attend
conferences and book releasing events, as well as meet with translators. Sadly
enough, it is during this moment of literary recognition that his HIV diagnosis
becomes inevitable. In 1994, Abreu sends a letter to his German translator,
Gerd Hilger, and their epistolary exchanges were often marked by hilarity and
queer camaraderie. In this exchange, after describing his flirtations in a
dingy gay bar, he comments on being bedridden again: “De volta a São Paulo me aguardava uma gripe enorme que durou três semanas
(positiva!), conhecida como CPI, que derrubou meio país, depois uma crise de
otite (velha!), depois um surto depressivo (neurótica!)” (283). In the words that were written before his
official diagnosis, Abreu uses feminine adjectives to describe himself as
“positive,” “old,” and “neurotic.” This self-deprecating description provides
more evidence of Caio’s recognition that something with his health was amiss,
but his attempt to make a campy moment out of it are an effort to delay the
truth of his state a little longer. The following months after the writing of
this letter, Abreu travels to Paris, Lisbon, Stockholm and Skejeberg,
Norway. During this time, he often sends letters to his friends back to Brazil.
Contrary to Perlongher, Caio loves Paris, where he receives much public
recognition for his translated work. His books were reviewed in the local
newspapers, and he even receives invitations to be interviewed on French TV.
Almost 50 years old, Caio believes he is finally receiving the overdue
recognition that he had not been offered back in his native country.
Nevertheless, once he returns to São Paulo in the month of June, his health
seriously deteriorates. In a matter of weeks, he loses eight kilos, and cannot
get better despite treatment. In a letter sent to Maria Lídia in August, he
confirms what he had delayed for so many years: he has been diagnosed HIV
positive. He writes, “Pois, é, amiga. Aconteceu –estou com AIDS– ou pelo menos sou HIV+ (o que
parece + chique…), te escrevo de minha suíte no hospital Emílio Ribas, onde
estou internado há uma semana” (311). In this
epistolary exchange, he also reveals that according to his doctors he probably
has been living with HIV for the past ten years. Now in these crucial moments
of his life, he wants to write: “Eu só quero
escrever. Tenho uns quatro/ cinco livros a parir ainda, chê.
Surto criativo tipo Derek Jarman, Cazuza, Hervé
Guibert, Cyril Collard” (312).
In Abreu, there is a need to document and narrate
their own personal experiences for posterity. But Abreu does not only want to
write privately –he goes public with his HIV positive status. Whereas
Perlongher is initially concerned about any rumors or public disclosure of his
affliction, Abreu does not have any worries about revealing his recent
diagnosis: “Nada disso [Abreu’s
HIV status] é segredo de Estado, se alguém quiser saber, diga. Quero ajudar a
tirar o véu de hipocrisia que encobre este vírus assassino” (313). The purpose of pointing out these contrasting views is
not to judge or assess Perlongher’s legitimate choice of confidentiality or
Abreu’s lack thereof, but to track dramatic changes in the representation of
the epidemic in their own writing projects, and the possible tensions that
arise between their public personas and their intimate selves. As Alberto
Giordano insightfully points
out:
el interés crítico
de los “actos autobiográficos” depende de las formas en que su textura
manifiesta la tensión entre procesos autofigurativos
y experiencias íntimas, es decir, de las formas en que las experiencias de algo
íntimamente desconocido de quien escribe su vida presionan indirectamente y
desdoblan la instancia de la enunciación, provocando el desvío […] la
suspensión de los juegos de autofiguración en los que se sostiene el diálogo de
los escritores con las expectativas culturales que orientan la valoración
social de sus obras autobiográficas (3).
In his confessional letter to Maria Lídia, Abreu
mentions that he has been admitted to the Emílio Ribas hospital in São Paulo. It is in this place of
seclusion where he writes three letters for his readership in his weekly column
in Estado de São Paulo between August
and December 1994. These letters, posthumously published in a collection of
chronicles, constitute an original way to make a difficult and intimate
revelation to a large audience. In the first letter titled “Primeira carta para além dos muros,” the author wants to transmit a sense of confusion and perplexity. He pens: “Alguma coisa aconteceu comigo, alguma
coisa tão estranha que ainda não aprendi o jeito de falar claramente sobre ela.
Quando souber finalmente o que foi, essa coisa estranha, saberei também esse
jeito. Então serei claro, prometo. Para vôce, para
mim mesmo” (106). Although there is no direct
reference to his diagnosis yet, one can infer that the writer is secluded in a
hospital and desires to communicate a message that transcends the imprisoning
walls of his reality. The writer is in pain after being pricked with syringes
and writes while tied to a bed after having suffered what seems to be a nervous
breakdown. Reading this letter in the light of Caio’s epistolary conversation
with Maria Lídia, it is evident that he is writing about his difficult time
when he first learned that he had contracted HIV. According to Abreu, he was
able to keep serene after receiving his test results, but during his third day
in the hospital he was on brink of madness. Some weeks later, Caio releases his
“Segunda carta além dos muros”. In the analysis of the representation of HIV/AIDS in his literary
project, this text may be one of his most valuable ones. Full of nostalgia and
melancholia, Abreu positions himself within a genealogy of queer men who
experienced the most difficult years of the epidemic and left behind an
artistic or social legacy of queer worldmaking. In this second letter, Abreu is
a patient isolated in the hospital nostalgically recollecting all the angels
that he encountered along his difficult passage to hell. These angels are not
celestial, but rather carnal and worldly. Their wings protect him from his very
own fall. He evokes their memory:
Reconheço um por um [os anjos da noite]. Contra o fondo
blue de Derek Jarman, ao
som de uma canção de Freddy Mercury, coreografeados por Nureiev, identifico
os passos bailarinos –nô de Paulo Yutaka
[...] Wagner Serra pedala bicicleta ao lado de Cyril Collard, enquanto Wilson Barros esbraveja contra Peter Greenaway, apoiado por Néstor Perlongher. Ao som de Lóri Finokiao, Hervé Guibert
continua sua interminável carta para o amigo que não lhe salvou a vida.
Reinaldo Arenas passa a mão devagar en seus cabelos
claros. Tantos, meu Deus, os que se foram. Acordo com a voz safada de Cazuza
repetindo na minha orelha fria: “Quem tem um sonho, não dança, meu amor” (110).
In the previous passage, Abreu exposes the HIV/AIDS
epidemic as a truly transnational phenomenon that fosters the creation of a
community of remembrance. In this period of personal hardship for Abreu, he
reaches out to the memories of “fallen angels” who lived and died among the
most dramatic years of the epidemic. For a general audience, some of these
figures may not be easily recognizable, but they are certainly important for
the Brazilian author and for the queer historiography of AIDS. Like Caio
Fernando Abreu, most of these men were salient figures in their respective
cultural worlds: British filmmaker Derek Jarman,
whose last film Blue was a narration
set on a blue background commenting on his own mortality; the French writers
Cyril Collard and Hervé Guibert, important public voices for AIDS awareness in
their own country; and the Russian dancer Rudolf Nureyev, one of the most
important ballet dancers of the 20th century, who died in 1993.
There is also a mention of Néstor Perlongher and Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas,
whose autobiography Antes que anochezca is a widely known piece of gay literature in
Latin America. Finally, Cazuza, one of the most famous singers of contemporary
Brazilian rock, who died in 1990, is also evoked in his pages.
For Abreu, there is a significance in the power of
evocation. After the devastation and death left by the epidemic, remembrance is
necessary to bring back memories of those gone. The AIDS epidemic left a
traumatic wound in the core of the queer community that still lingers in the
present day. Dealing with the specters of the past –in Abreu’s case, a recent
one–proved to be a way of celebrating lives soon to be forgotten and
recognizing that he was not alone in trying to deal with the hardships of his
diagnosis. The past can be useful for identifying moments of resistance, shared
dignity and community building. For instance, in Abreu’s and Perlongher’s
correspondence, there are many evident moments of solidarity and queer
remembrance amidst adversity. The fact that their affective archive is
worthwhile to study in the present reveals the potentiality of thinking under queer time. If one would endorse a
teleological order of progress in which the past of HIV/AIDS is forgettable,
many of the identities and struggles that shaped progress in the dignity of
queer people would be relegated to oblivion. Living and thriving in queer time echoes directly Walter
Benjamin’s disavowal of a traditional conception of history as a successive
linearity of progress. Benjamin evokes the figure of Klee’s Angelus Novus as
the best depiction of the “angel of history”. He writes,
[the angel] is turned toward the past. Where we
perceive a chain of events, he sees a single catastrophe which keep piling
wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like
to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is
blowing from Paradise […] This storm irresistibly propels him into the future
to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward.
This storm is what we call progress (257-58).
Interestingly, Benjamin’s reference to the “angel of history” mirrors
Abreu’s representation of his queer family
of “anjos.” An angel can be understood as ephemera –as
a type of specter that comes to inhabit the physical world to disrupt the
idealizations of normativity and progress. As María del Pilar Blanco and Esther
Peeren argue,
spectrality is used as a conceptual metaphor to effect
revisions of history and/or reimaginations of the future in order to expose and
address the way certain subjectivities have been marginalized and disavowed in
order to establish and uphold a particular norm, as well as the way such
subjectivities can never be completely erased but insist on reappearing to
trouble the norm (309-10).
In the last letter sent to his intimate friend Jacqueline Cantore, Abreu
reveals a poignant awareness of learning to live with those specters of the
past that insist on reappearing in his own life. In the letter, the Brazilian
author writes:
em quem está com AIDS o que mais dói é a morte antecipada que os outros nos
conferem […] Sei disso porque assim me comportei, por exemplo, com o Wilson Barros, de
quem fugi como diabo da cruz. Como o Paulo Yutaka,
sem ir vê-lo no hospital. Não respondi as cartas do Wagner e só telefonei um
dia depois que ele tinha morido, por saudade
intuitiva. E tardia (330).
All these men, despite their physical disappearance,
have lingered in Abreu’s memory and influenced his take on acknowledging a
queer past that ought to be recognized. In September 1994, in his last letter
to his readership in O Estado de São
Paulo, Abreu reveals that he has just recently being diagnosed with HIV, but assures that his life is far from over. For him, “a
luta continua”. Abreu’s writing not only adds
visibility on the phenomenon of AIDS, but also creates a sense of resilience
and self-confidence.
Caio Fernando Abreu’s writing reveals unique moments
of queer relationality that can
transcend death and time. Despite their disparate origins and distinctive
linguistic traditions, the Brazilian writer establishes a dialogue with the
ghostly presence of Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas –one of the most recognizable
Latin American figures in the literary representations of the epidemic. In 1992,
Abreu is in France as an invited writer at the Maison des Écrivains
Étrangeres et de Traducteurs
in the city of Saint Nazaire. He writes to Portuguese-Brazilian playwright
Maria Adelaide Amaral about his latest activities in Europe,
and mentions that writers such as Ricardo Piglia and Juan Goytisolo also lived in the French city as guest writers in
previous years. He also mentions Reinaldo Arenas’ participation in this
program, and his interrupted stay at the Maison.
According to Abreu, Reinaldo leaves due to his suicidal ideations that will
finally materialize six months later in New York (Arenas dies in December
1990). In November 1994, some months after knowing he was living with the
virus, Abreu wrote a short chronicle entitled “Um uivo em memória de Reinaldo Arenas” [A Howl
in Memory of Reinaldo Arenas]. In this text, there is a fictionalization of
Abreu’s residence as a guest writer in Saint Nazaire. Maybe the most salient
aspect of this work is the spectral encounter he has with Arenas. He writes,
Encontrei Reinaldo Arenas numa madrugada de novembro de 1992 em Saint-Nazaire […] Insone fiquei
lendo Méditations de Saint-Nazaire,
de Arenas, que só vagamente conhecia. Impresionado
com o texto, decorei suas últimas palavras: ‘Aún no sé si
es este el sitio donde yo pueda vivir. Tal vez para un desterrado –como la
palabra lo indica– no haya sitio en la Tierra. Sólo quisiera pedirle a este
cielo resplandeciente y a este mar, que por unos días aún podré contemplar que
acojan mi terror’. Repeti feito oração, e dormi. Acordei
ouvindo o ruído da máquina de escrever do escritório. Fui até o corredor,
espiei. Em frente à janela, um homem moreno contemplava a tempestade enquanto escrevia.
Estremeci, ele desapareceu. Tô pirando, pensei. E voltei a dormir (128).
Later in the morning, Abreu describes his eerie
experience to French poet Christian Bouthemy, who
believes he has seen a man similar to the late Reinaldo Arenas. Despite all the
possible fictional elements that pervade in this chronicle, there are many
valuable moments of queer identification and anticipatory revelation. Abreu’s
fascination with Arenas’s literary passage is telling especially in its
references of feeling out of place, of being exiled of one’s home. This nomadic
spirit, this feeling of not fitting within a national context is a shared
experience among many queer Latin American writers including Abreu, Perlongher,
and most certainly Arenas. Writing in 1994 about a past experience, the
Brazilian writer re-inhabits a place of memory, and establishes an affective
bond with a writer that also lived the experience of AIDS in his own skin. In
this chronicle, Abreu wants to transmit his admiration and appreciation for
Arenas, to recognize the Cuban’s powerful writing that he feels compelled to
translate, and to howl “para o infinito em memória desse
cubano lindo, desventurado, heróico” (129).
Based on Perlongher’s and Abreu’s final
correspondence, their emotional outlook on the advancement of the disease
differs significantly. As has been already stated, Perlongher suffered bouts of
high emotional distress during his last years and there is much pain and
solitude depicted in many of his epistolary conversations. Abreu’s outlook
after his traumatic diagnosis is far more optimistic and transformational. For
instance, in a letter dated on September 1994, he writes “[eu] consegui transmutar o HIV numa coisa boa dentro de mim” (316). In the face of death, Abreu feels
enthusiastic about continuing to live and battle the disease. In the first
months following his diagnosis, Abreu is still relatively healthy and travels
to Germany to present public lectures at Frankfurt’s book fair. Upon his
return, Caio moves back to Porto Alegre to be close to his family. Many of his
letters during this time follow a pattern. He is content with his life in Rio
Grande do Sul, and the possibility of being close to his family and friends. He pens, “Adoro Porto Alegre
[…] sempre quis ter um jardim; sempre quis escrever o dia inteiro; sempre quis,
bem tia, acompanhar o crescimento de meus sobrinhos” (319). In another letter, he describes his daily routine in
his new home –he writes and takes care of a garden, practices yoga, and reads Nádia Gotlib’s biography of Clarice Lispector (Cartas 326). Abreu, however, is aware of
the transient state of his recently acquired sense of happiness. He
insightfully states: “Ando com uma felicidade doida,
consciente do fugaz, do frágil” (327). This
comparison does not intend to legitimize one way of dealing with illness over
another one. As previously explained, Perlongher experiences his most
precarious moments away from his native Argentina. At least, in the evidence of
the epistolary archive, his network of support in these last years seems to have been more fragile than Abreu’s due to
the geographical separation of loved ones and the nostalgic nature of the
exile. Perhaps one of most valuable aspects of exploring these intimate
archives it is to recognize the multiplicity of life stories and emotional
attitudes dealing with the diagnosis of HIV/AIDS in the late 80s and early 90s.
As physical health starts to deteriorate, writing
becomes an ideal tool to expose the suffering of the flesh. Similar to
Perlongher’s painstaking accounts of his somatic state, Abreu provides many
details of his physical evolution to his closest friends. In mid-1994, he writes to Maria Lídia to tell her about his
blood tests after starting AZT: “Hoje peguei o resultado do primeiro exame de sangue pós AZT e plaquetas
leucócitos e Tês-4 e todas aquelas coisas sanguíneas, segundo a médica, estão
maravilhosos” (314). In a postcard sent to a friend
just before his last European trip, Caio complains about a sarcoma appearing in
his nose and his next steps to treat it (317). With echoes to Perlongher’s last
letter to Sara Torres, Abreu’s final letter addressed to his German translator
Gerd Hilger in early January 1996 can be read as a type of medical report: “Andei mal: duas semanas no hospital para extirpar a vesícula. 3 cirurgias,
oito transfusões de sangue, pressão a três […] Fraco fisicamente, fortíssimo no espírito. Hoje recomecei a combinação
AZT-3TC. Vamos lá, tenho fé” (347). Abreu’s passage
reveals important details like his relentless optimism to continue fighting for
his life, as well as the significance of the historical moment in which he
lives. According to the letter, he had just started to take one of the early
combination therapies that will transform the landscape of AIDS in 1996. By the
time Caio is penning this letter, protease inhibitors will soon become a
reality prolonging the lives of many, creating an even more complex conception
of temporality in the lives of survivors. Unfortunately, Abreu dies on February
24, 1996, just a few weeks after writing this letter, so he didn’t benefit from
these new breakthroughs. In this correspondence, Abreu writes a beautiful last
message, his year of 1995 has been a complete dedication to his “saúde, o jardim e a literatura” [his health,
his garden, and his writing] and he wishes in the first day of 1996 a wonderful
new year “cheio de Axé!” to his dear Gerd (347).
In his Exercises
d’admiration, philosopher Emile Cioran makes a
piercing argument about epistolary writing: “the letter, a conversation with an
absent one, constitutes a capital event of loneliness. The truth about an
author should be sought in his/her correspondence, and not in his/her oeuvre.
The oeuvre is often a mask” (my translation, 125). Although there can be a
refutation of Cioran’s idea of an essential “truth”
in any artist’s literary project, private correspondence can be valuable to understand writers’
evolutions throughout the years, their intimate changes of heart, their
explorations in new aesthetic modalities, their allegiances to literary circles
and even the origins of a specific piece of writing. It can also be argued that
epistolary writing should not be considered as a separate aspect of an author’s
work. Both Caio Fernando Abreu and Néstor Perlongher were prolific letter
writers throughout their lives. They exchanged correspondence with intimate
friends, fellow writers, artists and family members. With their current
posthumous status as crucial figures to understand the configurations of gender
and sexuality in the contemporary literature of Brazil and Argentina, Abreu’s
and Perlongher’s epistolary writing is a window of opportunity to establish a
critical comparison of representations of HIV/AIDS in modern Latin America.
After exploring their epistolary archive, it becomes
clear that both authors share a fair number of similarities: both men spent
important periods of their lives in the metropolis of São Paulo. (It would be
indeed fascinating to have evidence of any interactions between them in this
period.) Sharing a similar queer sensibility, their epistolary writing is
highly confessional, campy at times, melodramatic and literary, and conscious
of its role of narrating a dramatic experience of illness. Interestingly, their respective HIV diagnoses
don’t stall their writing; on the contrary, it triggers an urgent need to narrate
their viral experiences, to tell their own stories maybe as an antidote to
transcend oblivion and corporal death. On the other hand, the intimate
experience of the epidemic is transformative in their approaches to
representing their conceptions of queer sexuality and stigma. Perlongher’s early
defense of alternative sexualities and pleasures as key elements to any
possible liberation, his “ethics of promiscuity” as defined by Brad Epps, wanes
or at least transmutes into a preference for the mystical, for a syncretic
combination of cultural elements that could ease his desperation of living with
a terminal illness that at least initially he prefers to experience privately.
In Abreu’s case, his veiled representations of the disease in his literary
writing, and his personal fears to name and face the reality of the virus,
change after his diagnosis in 1994, when he becomes a public figure for a
national discussion of the epidemic. Their approaches, their epistolary
writing, their unique life stories constitute a space where memory and intimacy
co-exist. Both are valuable voices that still resonate in the present and
foster an intergenerational dialogue to better understand the transformations
of the epidemic through its history. This analysis of intimate letter writing
is also an exercise at unearthing memories of the past. Memory is a valuable
tool to discuss the importance of talking about the epidemic even in the
current post-antiretroviral era[10].
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Date of reception: 31/10/2020
Date of acceptance: 19/01/2021
Citation: Vargas, Gustavo.
“Intimidad, memoria y revelación:
Representaciones del HIV/SIDA en la escritura epistolar de Néstor Perlongher y
Caio Fernando Abreu”. Revista
Letral, n.º 26, 2021,
pp. 145-176. ISSN 1989-3302.
Funding data: The publication of this article has not received any public or private
finance.
License: This content is under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial, 3.0 Unported
license.
[1] Perlongher studied
anthropology at the University of Campinas. He also taught courses in this
institution during his years of residence in Brazil.
[2] Brad Epps has defined
Perlongher’s early radicalism as an “ethics of promiscuity”. In Un militante del deseo (a militant of
desire), the Argentine writer focuses many of his early political writings in
the intersection of desire and politics. However, Adrián Cangi states that this stage undergoes a
transformation: “Del imaginario de Genet al de Santa Teresa, Perlongher produce
un cambio en la disposición del cuerpo, que va del terreno de la orgía como
pulsión voluptuosa y festividad erótico-sensorial al de los brebajes para
celebrar la nada, desde la poesía como liturgia cantada” (18).
[3] Founded in 1930 by Mestre
Ireneu (Raimundo Ireneu Serra) in the western state of Acre, Santo Daime is a
syncretic religion that mixes elements of Catholicism, Afro-Brazilian
traditions (Candomblé), and Amazonic Shamanism, among others. Their members
promote the consumption of Ayahuasca in their rituals to create states of
trance and mystic revelation.
[4] Interested in the
configurations of the HIV/AIDS epidemic since its very beginnings, Perlongher
publishes a book related to the topic entitled El fantasma del SIDA (1988). The book was originally published in
Portuguese under the title O que e AIDS (1987). His book
starts: “Un fantasma recorre los lechos, los flirts, los callejeos: el fantasma
del SIDA. La sola mención de la fatídica sigla […] basta para provocar una
mezcla morbosa de curiosidad y miedo” (5). In this witty appropriation of the
Marxist Manifesto, Perlongher compares the epidemic as a specter that haunts
the urban cartographies of desire.
[5] Palmeiro’s edition of
Perlongher’s correspondence includes two interesting letters that reveal an
affable epistolary exchange between Néstor Perlongher and Reinaldo Arenas. Perlongher writes to the Cuban author: “Te admiro como
espejo que se unta […] siento en tus textos cierta disolución de lo social,
como si los dicharacheros manierismos migrasen, sin perder el nacarado
translúcido (Caribe platinado, un matiz de esmalte para zarpes?) […] ¿Porqué no
nos ponemos de acuerdo (tenemos que vernos, que conocernos, que curtirnos) a
organizar un periplo tuyo por el Brasil? Casa donde quedarte tienes (la casa de
la hada de Jorge Schwartz)” (76-77).
[6] This is not the only instance
in which Perlongher seems worried about the revelation of his HIV positive
diagnosis to people outside his circle. He writes to Beba Eguía: “Veo que la noticia de mi enfermedad
se ha expandido más de lo debido. Me dicen que en la Argentina todo el mundo lo
sabe. Un horror. Cómo enfrentar eso? Me muero de miedo” (167). In October 1990,
he writes to Sara Torres: “Deseo preguntarte y que me respondas con sinceridad:
cuál es la difusión de mi estado de salud? Hay mucha gente enterada? No me
gustaría que se esparciese la noticia pero si se ha desparramado mejor saberlo”
(166).
[7] It is important to point out that azidothymidine (AZT) was a medication more
effective than a placebo. However, it was highly toxic, and unable to prolong
the life of the patients to a considerable extent.
[8] In one of the foundational
texts of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in critical theory, Susan Sontag, after
experiencing herself the myriad of metaphorizations given to cancer patients,
delves into the complex meanings of the new epidemic in the discursive setting
of the late 80s. The American scholar sees a similar metaphorization of the new
virus: “AIDS has a dual metaphoric genealogy. As a micro-process, it is
described as cancer is: an invasion. When the focus is the transmission of the
disease, an older metaphor, reminiscent of syphilis is invoked: pollution”
(105).
[9] At the end of Abreu’s novel,
the main character (an urban journalist) takes a trip to the northern state of
Goiás. There, he finally finds Dulce Veiga. The singer is living in a Santo
Daime community. There, she offers him a “tea” that is obviously ayahuasca. In
Abreu’s autobiographical book, Paul Dip states that Abreu participated in activities
related to Santo Daime. Although
there is no epistolary evidence to affirm that this also took place during the
last years of his life, Dip explains, “A beleza dos rituais o fascinava, talvez mais que a fé,
crença em algo maior. E assim, pela beleza do ritual, ele chegou a freqüentar
também o Santo Daime, que virou moda entre os intelectuais e artistas do Rio e
de São Paulo no final dos anos 80” (144).
[10] I would like to thank Professors
Daniel Balderston and John Beverley for their advice while writing this article
at the University of Pittsburgh some years ago.