This Sunday, IEL-Unicamp professor Antonio Arnoni Prado (São Paulo, 21/12/1943 – Paulínia, 11/09/2022) left us. Talking about his career as one of the great Brazilian intellectuals of his generation would require much more time and space. In these sinister times of growing barbarity, in Brazil and around the world, Arnoni was a beautiful example of what a committed teacher, a tireless researcher and a radical critic of status quo can and must do so that the public University is an essential and unconditional place in the defense of the values that human life, so often forgotten about itself, demands of us here and now. He always knew that freedom considered in absolute or abstract terms most often results in oppression and social injustice. That equality is an urgent challenge in countries as tragically unequal as ours. And that solidarity, beyond all beliefs and rites that may call for or exhibit it, must be a permanent commitment of those who consciously chose our profession.
For all this, this great friend never let himself be seduced by the siren song of an academy of vain glitter, hypocritical smiles or mediocre arrogance. He was a university professor with a broad vision and rare ethics, without neglecting his fine irony, often misunderstood, but extremely affectionate for those who lived a little more with his intelligence, starting with his thousands of students still in high school, in São Paulo, and then at Unicamp, in the undergraduate and postgraduate courses at IEL, throughout the 33 years of his teaching among us. It would be better here to call upon the testimony of so many technical-administrative colleagues who adored him, not by chance, because Arnoni exuded disinterested humanity in every gesture, an attribute perhaps more in line with that condition that only true masters achieve.
When he retired in 2012, we were able to honor him at meetings at IEL, where two essential books by his inspired authorship stood out: Itinerary of a false vanguard: dissidents, the Week of 22 and Integralism (Ed. 34, 2010), in fact a complete and revised version of his doctoral thesis in literature at USP, in 1980, and which, rightfully so, received the first prize from the National Library, in the Literary Essay category, 2010 edition ; and the exquisite organization of this Lima Barreto: a literary autobiography (Ed. 34, 2012), a work that only the intimate coexistence he had, for half a century, with the writings of the author of Polycarp Quaresma, was able to generate. By the way, let us remember that Arnoni was a pioneer researcher, at the Brazilian university, of Lima Barreto's studies, since his master's degree, in 1975, published as LB: the critic and the crisis (Ed. Chair, 1976). He liked to tell us that, when presenting his choice of theme/author to his then advisor, Antonio Candido, around 1971, he replied: “I still don't know Lima Barreto. If you give me a year's deadline, we can move forward with your project. I need to read it a lot more.” Of course Arnoni agreed!
Anyone who truly approaches the literary and social radicalism of Lima Barreto quickly becomes familiar with the anarchist movements. It follows that Arnoni organized the beautiful volume Libertarians in Brazil: memories; fights; culture (Ed. Brasiliense, 1986), still a mandatory reference today for anyone dedicated to the topic. And, in this field, I had the privilege of partnering with him in organizing the book Anarchist tales (Ed. Brasiliense, 1985), which, quickly sold out, came to light, much later, in a new revised and greatly expanded edition, in which our former student Cláudia Baeta Leal, historian and researcher at IPHAN, also contributed decisively, under the title: Anarchist tales: themes and texts of libertarian prose in Brazil (1890-1935) (Ed. WMF Martins Fontes, 2011).
In the context of the struggles against the military dictatorship, in the 1970s, our friendship was born and lasted forever. We were joined by the historian and erudite bibliophile Geraldo Moreira Prado, known as Alagoinhas, organizer of the largest rural community library in Brazil, perhaps in the world, in the village of Paiaiá, backlands of Bahia, when the fortunate circumstance of attending the same seminars as Antonio Candido, on “'Ideological' Reading of Literary Texts”, at USP, in 1975, brought us together for the rest of our lives – via Antonio Gramsci and his fine conception of literary life and cultural criticism –, at a time when, as now, the urgency of choices and actions forge solidarity and collective feeling as indelible milestones of a generational experience.
But our indefatigable companion didn't leave anything cheap. In recent years, with his health very poor, he published a play, Class diary (Ed. Jabuticaba, 2017), in which fragments of school memory are articulated in satire and, according to colleague Vilma Arêas, who signs her presentation, between the limits of farce and tragedy, “slides from one extreme to another” without falling nor appeals. And his refined, lucid and pleasurable literary streak did not stop there. In The last train from Cantareira (Ed. 34, 2019), the memory of childhood in the streets and wastelands of Tremembé, in the then extreme northern suburbs of the city of São Paulo, returns with the strength that only a disappeared, but viscerally ingrained, landscape is capable of supporting.
I know that what my friend wanted most, in those difficult and final years, was to board this last train, cross the entire Cantareira mountain range and then disembark in Beijing, where we could still renew our dreams of world peace and a multi-ethnic planet, equitable and sustainable. Utopia that vanishes at the moment of death. However, the trails remain here, the untraveled stations, the arrival and departure notices, a whistle that continues into the night when the mid-autumn full moon, still visible, marks a path in the middle of everything and in the middle of nowhere. Goodbye, muchacho!
Englewood, Colorado September 12, 2022
This text is an opinion article and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Unicamp.
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