A escravidão do amor

Abstract

It was 1982 when I wrote the text Anayde. If I'm not mistaken, it was that same year, or the following year, that the publisher Brasiliense launched the collection Encanto Radical. Coincidence or not, I was radically enchanted by Anayde, by what she represented to me at that moment. Her name was not yet spoken. Until then, it was a cursed name in Paraíba. I myself, throughout my life as a boy and teenager in João Pessoa, heard that in the murder of João Pessoa there was an affair with a woman whose name I had never heard mentioned. It was only in 1980 that I found out who this woman was, and I learned her name thanks to an article published by Jornal da Tarde, in São Paulo, which published a full page about the fiftieth anniversary of the 1930 revolution. In the middle of the page, there was a box with information about José Joffily's book, Revolta e Revolução, in which there is a chapter about Anayde Beiriz. When I read the article, I was completely enchanted by the theme on which I saw the possibility of writing a play. That's what I did about two years ago. I wrote the book with the material that was available. I wanted to write a complete biography of Anayde. It turned out that there was no way there wasn't enough material for a biography. What's more, Joffily himself published a biography of Anayde Beiriz. Because of our shared love for the same theme, Joffily and I became friends, despite the huge age difference that separated us. Faced with the problems of gathering biographical material, I decided not to write a history book, although its foundation is for that purpose, but my poetic perception of the subject, since I am not a historian, and although I did not yet know this clearly, I firmly believe that history is not fact, it is legend, it is what is told - not necessarily what happened. I wrote the book and when I delivered it to Brasiliense, the editor asked me to rewrite it because, according to him, the collection was intended for a teenage audience, and the discussion I raise would be far from that target. Taken by a radical charm - only later did I discover that this is a characteristic of mine - I refused to write the book and the editor, obviously, refused to publish it.