César, Ana Cristina 1952-1983

views updated

César, Ana Cristina 1952-1983

PERSONAL:

Born 1952, in Brazil; died from self-inflicted gunshot wound, October 29, 1983, in England. Education: Postgraduate study in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and London, England.

CAREER:

Writer, poet, literary critic, and translator.

WRITINGS:

Literatura não é documento, Edição Funarte (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), 1980.

Luvas de pelica, 1980.

A teus pés (poetry; title means "At Your Feet"), Editora Brasiliense (São Paulo, Brazil), 1982.

Inéditos e dispersos: poesia/prosa, organization and introduction by Armando Freitas Filho, Editora Brasiliense (São Paulo, Brazil), 1985.

Escritos da Inglaterra, Editora Brasiliense (São Paulo, Brazil), 1988.

Antología poética, Planeta (Caracas, Venezuela), 1989, translated from Portuguese to Spanish by Alicia Torres as Ana Cristina Cesar, 1952-1983: [antología poética], Fundación para la Investigación y la Cultura (Cali, Colombia), 1990.

Escritos no Rio, Editor UFRJ (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), 1993.

Intimate Diary (poetry and prose), translated by Patricia E. Paige, Celia McCullough, and David Treece, Boulevard (London, England), 1997.

Correspondência incompleta (correspondence), organized by Armando Freitas Filho and Heloisa Buarque de Hollanda, Instituto Moreira Salles (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), 1999.

Crítica e tradução, Instituto Moreira Salles (São Paulo, Brazil), 1999.

César's works have been translated into several languages, including English, Spanish, and German.

SIDELIGHTS:

Ana Cristina César was a Brazilian writer and poet from Rio de Janeiro. Interested in English literature since childhood, César spent some time in England in the 1960s and then returned to Brazil, where she achieved recognition primarily as a poet outside of the mainstream. César wrote both avant garde prose and poetry and more conventional scripts for a television soap opera. Although she committed suicide in 1983 at the age of thirty-one while in England, her journal, composed of both poetry and prose, was published more than a decade later under the title Intimate Diary. The book contains reflections by the author focusing on herself, her dreams, and her day-to-day life. The book is full of irony and the erotic; the author also writes about such issues as femininity and consumerism. Calling the work a "weirder version of The Bell Jar" by Sylvia Plath, whom César admired, London Observer contributor William Leith noted that the author "drifts between facts and feelings." According to the author of an article about Brazilian poetry on the San Francisco Consulate General of Brazil Web site, "Re-reading poets who did not join the mainstream is as melancholy as contemplating an outdated wardrobe. One example is the Marginal poetry of the 70s, which, if it left us any legacy, did so in the work of Ana Cristina César and of Francisco Alvin."