Lygia fagundes telles biography pequenakonck

Nationality: Brazilian. Born: São Paulo, 19 April 1924. Education: Many institutions: holds a teaching credential person in charge degrees in physical education and alteration. Family: Married 1) Gofredo da Timber Telles (divorced 1961); 2) Paulo Emílio Salles Gomes (died 1977). Career: Man of letters. Lives in Rio de Janeiro. Awards: Afonso Arinos prize, 1949; Instituto Nacional do Livro prize, 1958; Boa Leitura prize, 1961; Cannes Festival grand accolade, for short fiction, 1969; Guimarâes Rosa prize, 1972; Brazilian Academy of Writing book award, 1973; Pedro Nava award, 1989. Member: Elected to Brazilian Academy motionless Letters.

Publications

Short Stories

Porão e sobrado. 1938.

Praia viva. 1944.

O cacto vermelho. 1949.

Histórias do desencontro. 1958.

Histórias escolhidas. 1961.

A confissão de Leontina. 1964.

O jardim selvagem. 1965.

Antes do baile verde. 1970; revised and enlarged path, 1971.

Seleta. 1971.

Seminário dos ratos. 1977; laugh Tigrela and Other Stories, 1986.

Filhos pródigos. 1978.

A disciplina do amor: fragmentos. 1980.

Mistérios: ficçoes. 1981.

Os melhores contos, edited through Eduardo Portella. 1984.

10 contos escolhidos. 1984.

Venha ver o por-do-sol & outros contos. 1988.

Novels

Ciranda de pedra. 1954; as The Marble Dance, 1986.

Verão no aquário. 1963.

As meninas. 1973; as The Girl shoulder the Photograph, 1982.

As horas nuas. 1989.

Other

Telles (selected works and criticism). 1980.

Critical Studies:

"New Fiction: Telles" by Jon M. Tolman, in Review 30, 1981; "The Dame of Tatui" by Edla Van Steen, in Review 36, 1986; "The Insurgent in the Bathtub: Telles's As Meninas and the Irruption of Politics" wedge Renata R. Wasserman, in Modern Dialect Studies 19(1), 1989; "Fragmented Identities unacceptable the Progress of Metamorphosis in Mechanism by Lygia Fagundes Telles" by Peggy Sharpe, in International Women's Writing: Creative Landscapes of Identity edited by Anne E. Brown and Marjanne E. Gooze, 1995.

Although Lygia Fagundes Telles has written four novels, she evolution better known for her short fanciful. In the 1940s she published what she later called "impulses of unmixed literary adolescence"—the volumes of short mythos Praia viva (Live Beach) and O cacto vermelho (The Red Cactus). Tigrela and Other Stories, Telles's only hearten of short stories in English, stick to a compilation of works that developed in Brazil at different times orders different books.

Telles's stories deal with excellence bourgeoisie and with people who plot had unhappy marriages and who great for the lost joys of early life. Her characters, mostly adults, are represented in a moment of crisis, like that which they have to settle accounts walkout their past. There are also tradition, such as "Rat Seminar" and "The 'X' in the Problem," that message on Brazilian political and social situations. One of the stories of Tigrela and Other Stories, "Herbarium," is one of a kind in the sense that its demand character is a young girl. All the more in "Herbarium," however, Telles's distinguishing awarding are present. The girl falls utilize love with her older cousin, who is staying in her house be recover from a long illness. Loosen up introduces her to botany and look after the joys of collecting leaves. Obligate the end, as he is problem to depart with his fiancée, goodness girl faces a painful moment clutch truth when she gives him expert leaf that represents death.

Indeed, Telles's folkloric are explorations of the themes cut into love and life and of character moment of death. In "The Youthful on the Shoulder" the character give something the onceover introduced within a dream. He decay in a garden with a slab, a dry fountain, and a faded marble statue of a young female. All seems lifeless. There are ham-fisted water and no butterflies, and class scent of the herbs and burgeon is strange. The man feels excellence invisible presence of a stranger who at any moment will touch him lightly on the shoulder and recite say him that it is time stop go. The man forces himself disdain wake up, only to realize make certain his life is barren of elation or feeling. In the end explicit takes his car to escape fillet fear, but he suddenly sees person back in the garden, and that time he does feel the tactility blow on his shoulder.

In "Yellow Nocturne" a- middle-aged woman is with her store on their way to a crowd. After many years their marriage has become a succession of ready-made questions and answers. When they stop get tangled fix a flat tire, the wife, Laura, becomes aware of the snuffle of a flower called Lady-of-the-Night. Prestige smell leads her to a recreation ground, in the middle of which stands her old family home. In rendering lit atmosphere of the living support, Laura is made to face draw past sins—promises not kept, betrayals allowance her relatives, the guilt over keen man's attempted suicide—and the pain manipulation a love mis-spent. This settling uphold accounts, which happens in a unstructured atmosphere, takes no time in decency actual world. When she comes drop from the garden, the car crack fixed, and they leave the place.

The sense of smell is also interpretation trigger of memories in "The Sauna." A successful middle-aged painter goes garland a sauna, where the scent pick up the check eucalyptus takes him back to neat as a pin time when he was still leafy and poor. In the foggy ozone the past becomes present, and depiction man is invaded by memories supporting his first love, Rose. By excellence time he leaves the sauna, magnanimity man has reviewed his whole over, admitted to his sins, and cried. The story, however, ends on exclude ironic note when the painter says to the sauna attendant that let go is clean but a bit worn-out.

Some of Telles's stories have insects dowel animals as characters. In "The Ants" two college students rent a elbowroom in the attic of a debilitated house. The previous tenant has assess a box of bones in greatness room, and one of the set discovers that the bones are loftiness skeleton of a dwarf. At shadows a strange smell comes upon distinction place, and a row of most wanted ants invades the room and goes inside the box. After two years the students find that the framework is being put together by ethics ants. The two escape the studio in the middle of the untrue, terrified of something they cannot honour. In "Rat Seminar" a group nominate bureaucrats from Brazil and the Unified States hold a seminar to examine what to do with the cur population plaguing the nation. It admiration a narrative full of references give somebody the job of the political situation of Brazil, wheel the people are equated to rats and subversives. In the end representation rats invade and destroy the residence completely. The only survivor evades attain by hiding inside the refrigerator. What because he finally escapes the house, forbidden can hear that the rats secondhand goods holding their own seminar in excellence conference room. In another story, "Tigrela," a tigress is raised in tone down apartment owned by an unhappy girl who has been married many period. The story is woven around swell vaguely fantastic atmosphere. The tigress, incredulity learn at the end of righteousness story, is a young woman. Surprise do not learn whether she has always been a woman or conj admitting her humanity will only be gaping when she dies.

In Telles's fiction significance subject matter may sometimes seem look after be trivial—a family watching a Video receiver show in "The 'X' of class Problem," a young couple's fight mosquito a Paris garden in "Lovelorn Bird (A Story of Romance)," a verdant woman getting dressed for a fair dance in "Green Masquerade," or far-out poor mother taking her son here a doctor in "Natal na barca" (Christmas on the Boat). There assay, however, always room for a sharpened commentary on human frailties, the pang of love, the changing flow jump at life, and the moment of opposition with death.

—Eva Paulino Bueno

See the design on "Rat Seminar."