Amidst the chaos, the empty rhetoric, the silence, the immobility, the gaze lost in space and time: waiting. A passable theater, left to fate, a puppet of chance. A poetic refinement used in long dialogues. A painful and lonely private life. But even this didn't stop Roberto Gomes's (1892-1922) pieces from expressing sensitivity and lightness. This is what Bianca Almeida found in her master's thesis presented to the Institute of Arts (IA) on the theatrical works of this Brazilian playwright who portrayed the Rio de Janeiro of his time.

The modern features of his aesthetics dealt with life, feelings and pains of the human heart. They talked about small moments in which destiny changes the course of the days. “Gomes’ theater became a valuable document on sincerity. There was no need for physical movement, since chance was in charge of the plots”, noted Bianca.

The author of the study, carried out within the Postgraduate Program in Performing Arts, reached these conclusions by analyzing four of the playwright's plays (As the day declines - 1909 The beautiful afternoon - 1915 A moonlit night's dream - 1916 and The silent garden - 1918) which, in common, suggested more significant features of symbolist aesthetics in the Brazilian theatrical context of the 1910s and 1920s.

Bianca began to be interested in Roberto Gomes during her scientific initiation and continued the topic in her master's degree under the guidance of professor Larissa Catalão. She admired him for his story and how he brought the lives of the characters to the scene. She researched primary sources in several libraries and collections, in addition to her plays and performances. She analyzed her theatrical aesthetics to evaluate these four plays that had love as fuel for the plots, pain and loneliness.

Gomes wrote nine plays in total: As the day declines (1909) The song without words (1912) The beautiful afternoon (1915) Innocence (1915) A moonlit night's dream (1916) The silent garden (1918) Berenice (1917-8), The Closed House (1919) and Kiss in the moonlight (1913), the latter still missing.

The playwright was a unique author in the Brazilian theater scene, highlighted the scholar. His pieces had a decadent air about the world, men's lives, emotional relationships and loneliness. It turns out that few works revealed his work. The plays were rarely performed, except The closed house.

Marta Morais da Costa's dissertation, completed 35 years ago at USP, was a thorough study, a survey of criticism about performances that resulted in the book Roberto Gomes Theater.

In the researcher's opinion, the performances were in dialogue with aspects of modern Western theater, but also featured typically Brazilian episodes. They crudely portrayed the characters' feelings and afflictions in the face of Rio's reality.

Two articles stood out as the central theme of Gomes’ work: “The dramaturgy of Roberto Gomes, from Closed House to modernist opening”, also by Marta (2003); and “Twilight forms, silent pains: the symbolist theater of Roberto Gomes”, by Elen de Medeiros, published in Revista Pythagoras 500 from Unicamp, in 2011.

There was also a short article by Cláudia de Arruda Campos – “The symbolism of Brazilian theater: leaving the shadow”, published in the USP magazine in 1994. It summarized the context of this author based on the book by Eudinyr Fraga, Symbolism in Brazilian Theater.

The work featured 12 Brazilian authors with traits of symbolist aesthetics, including Coelho Neto, Goulart de Andrade, João do Rio, Graça Aranha, Oswald de Andrade, Oscar Lopes, Carlos Dias Fernandes, Emiliano Perneta, Durval de Moraes, Marcelo Gama, Paulo Gonçalves and Roberto Gomes.

The book contained two chapters – “Symbolism” and “Symbolist Theater” – which traced the path of this aesthetic current from Baudelaire and Maurice Maeterlinck to its influences on Brazilian theater. They verified the reasons for the emergence of this movement in neo-republican Brazil.

Among the books with specific (but brief) notes by Roberto Gomes, Bianca found – in Panorama of the Brazilian Theater, by Sábato Magaldi (1962) – the chapter “Twilight sensitivities”. It focused on the decadent movement in Brazilian theater, a reaction against naturalism and disbelief in progress, happiness and intelligence.

Magaldi commented on the theater of Goulart de Andrade, Oscar Lopes, João do Rio, Paulo Gonçalves and Roberto Gomes. Made a critical summary of the pieces The closed house, Dream of a moonlit night, Berenice e The song without words.

In the book History of Brazilian Theater: from Origins to Professional Theater in the First Half of the 20th Century, organized by João Roberto Faria and edited by J. Guinsburg, has a chapter on pre-modern theater by Roberto Gomes. Also in the book Aspects of Brazilian Theater, by Paulo Roberto Correia de Oliveira (1999), but nothing that adds to Magaldi's ideas in Panorama of the Brazilian Theater.

Influences

Gomes was an almost forgotten playwright in the history of Brazilian theater. According to Bianca, it may have been due to the contact he had with an innovative dramaturgy in Europe, when he proposed a theater based on the psychology of the characters, not on their actions.

Brazilian theater at that time was reduced to comedies of manners or theater with music. “There were no artists to stage a play that deviated from realistic standards or comedies, which meant that Gomes lost all the nuances of feeling and symbolism of his texts on stage.”

The playwright appreciated Maeterlinck and Henry Bataille, exponents of the symbolist movement. The spaces in his pieces were always twilight and showed the reality of bourgeois life, the living room of the family house, the garden in the late afternoon. They also presented the dark room, the invisible and the unobservable.

Maeterlinck's pieces valued the gesture, the sob, the groan, the silence, rather than the word. They gained space in the Gomes theater in the plays At the decline of the day, Dream of a Moonlit Night, Silent Garden, Berenice and The Closed House.

An attempt by Maeterlinck and Gomes was to find in the plays as many times as possible in which the spectator could recognize themselves in the characters' feelings. The “static drama” in Maeterlinck's theater caused a split in classical theater, moving towards modern theater.

The Greek tragedy brought the conflict between the hero and his destiny, and the drama in classicism brought into play the conflicts and problems of relationships between men and the symbolist theater. This was the reason why Symbolist theater was accused of having no action.

The lines were insufficient to initiate dialogue. There were declamations and sometimes long silences. This lack of definition of the conflict caused a lack of definition of the characters, leading Maeterlinck to want to replace them with puppets.

Another feature of Symbolist plays that was also present in the plays of Strindberg, Hofmannsthal, Zola and, later, Eugenie O'Neill and Yeats – is that they had a single act. For Szondi, this indicated that the traditional dramatic structure was in crisis.

The Symbolists opted for short plays because they dealt with exact moments in which destiny was acting, with tension from beginning to end, without breaths, to make the desired impression. The play was the whole catastrophe situation. There was no introduction or resolution. Only destiny, Bianca observed.

Importance

Gomes set his plays to the reality of Rio, as they would be staged in “serious” theaters in RJ. As this was not the asset of his dramaturgy, he left behind the chance to be a precursor in modern theater.

But why was Gomes forgotten in this story? His plays were rarely performed, which is why some historians omitted his name, such as Múcio Paixão in the book Teatro do Brasil (1917), Lafayette Silva in História do Teatro Brasileiro (1938) and Andrade Muricy in Overview of the Brazilian Symbolist Movement (1987)

Even without recognition, the theater critic Décio de Almeida Prado redeemed it from oblivion and analyzed it properly in The Evolution of Brazilian Literature, from 1955, noting in an excerpt: “He was almost a French writer, a stranger in our theater”.

Even with poetic dialogues and refined words, Gomes spoke about common subjects and his plays brought many scene possibilities to contemporary theater. “He didn’t create tragic heroes. It revealed real people living as puppets of destiny,” he highlighted.

His pieces were an attempt to report the changes. “Perhaps this is the most striking trait inherited from symbolist aesthetics: talking about this moment, suggesting before explaining, leaving it between the lines for everyone to interpret”, reinforced Bianca, who is an actress and marketing producer.

Playwright was a theater and music critic

Roberto Gomes was born in RJ, son of Commander Luiz Gomes Ribeiro and Frenchwoman Blanche Ribeiro Gomes. His father was one of the directors of the National Bank. At the age of eight, he traveled with his mother to Paris. He later studied humanities at Lycée Jaison de Sally. He participated in soirées as an actor, musician and designer.

In 1897, with the bankruptcy of the National Bank, the family returned to Brazil and, in 1902, began studying at the Free Faculty of Legal and Social Sciences of RJ. He graduated with distinction.

After his father's death in 1905, he taught French and was critical of News Gazette. He signed the first articles with the pseudonym Bemol. He was a music and theater critic for Jornal A Notícia, where he signed with the pseudonym Sem.

He was a French teacher at the Benjamim Constant Institute, a municipal education employee and school inspector, the same position held by literary names such as Medeiros e Albuquerque and Olavo Bilac.

With Bilac and Guimarães Passos, he produced the Guide to Unis offices in Brésil, a tourist guide from RJ. In 1922, in Botafogo, Gomes took his life with a shot to the chest, at the age of 40.

Publication 

Dissertation: “Modern theater at the beginning of the 20th century in Brazil: Roberto Gomes, text and scene”
Author: Bianca Almeida
Advisor: Larissa de O. Neves Catalão
Unity: Institute of Arts (IA)