ESPAÑOL PORTUGUÊS NELLY NOVAES COELHO

By Carlos Nejar

Nelly could have been a pianist, as was her famous aunt Guiomar Novaes. She even distinguished herself in this career as a concert performer graduated from the Conservatório Dramático e Musical de São Paulo. However she found her true vocation: literary critique. That which she melodiously captivated with her fingers on the keyboard, she sought to subdue with an impressive consciousness of both the written word and her time. Hers is a work of clairvoyant humbleness, which enlightens written works, penetrates their hiding-places and labyrinths and discloses strange and estranged forms of beauty within a vaster and diligent project, that of the human condition.

Becoming a PhD in Language Arts, an Associate and Head In-House Professor by examination of the Universidade de São Paulo were some of her conquests between the years of 1961 and 1971, as was becoming the Head of Teoria da Literatura course in the Faculdade de Letras of Marília. Nelly Novaes Coelho, since 1961, was frequently present in the Press through articles and essays in newspapers and magazines both from Brazil and abroad. She also published remarkable books, such as: O Ensino da Literatura (1966), Mário de Andrade para a Jovem Geração (1970), Carlos Nejar e a " Geração de 60" (the first book about our generation thus a pioneer in the retrieval of a whole new cast of writers), Escritores Portugueses (1973), Aquilino Ribeiro (1973), Literatura & Linguagem (1974), Guimarães Rosa (in partnership with Ivana Versiani), Seleta em Prosa e Verso de Cassiano Ricardo, amongst many others.

She was also a pioneer in the field of Children's and Youth Literature (a course that she created as a Complementary Discipline in the Language Department of the FFLH-USP, in 1980, and has been teaching at a Graduate level as well). She edited the following titles in this interest area: A Literatura Infantil (1981), Panorama Histórico da Literatura Infantil/Juvenil (1983) and Dicionário Crítico da Literatura Infantil/Juvenil Brasileira (covering a whole century's worth of productions of this sort, published in 1983 and once more in December of 1990, in a completely reformulated and updated version; the fourth edition will soon be out). Unpleased with the professorship and literary critique, she dedicated herself to editorial work, thus founding Quíron in São Paulo, through which she let many poets, essay writers and novelists be known. Some of Quíron's influential collections are highly appreciated in the national panorama such as "Sélesis", "Logos" and "Jogral", where she published a great deal of the own books.

Nelly Novaes Coelho has thirty years of experience within the literary field, and it is tough to say which aspect of the career is greater: the critic (that brought her recognition), the cultural activist, the talent seeker, the passionate professor, the exemplary didactic or the creator of multiplicity. Or maybe that who bravely found a way of turning the Portuguese language into a nation.

Nonetheless, the paths covered by this woman are amazing, always unstoppable, obstinate, enduring, lucid, inflamed with totality, bound to historical truth without ever separating thought from language. Generous.

Nelly engendered a field of imagination in her activities as a critic and brought out the premises of her faithful perspective towards the ambiguity of written word. And while dealing with the igneous and perturbing matter that is the memory of the imagination, in it she embedded herself and engraved her name. With courage enough to assume that which Torga, the great Portuguese poet, foresaw and is the paradigm of contemporary creation: "The fear of the opposite". The opposite of that, which is real. Vigilant, she didn't allow her consciousness to wear out.

How to keep from loving that who had the patient greatness of loving and understanding the poor, warm, strong, free, fulgent, furious and captivating words?

The poet Carlos Nejar is a member of the Academia Brasileira de Letras

Transcribed from A Gazeta. Vitória, ES.

Translated by Manuela Fonseca

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