Moacyr Scliar em busca de Shakespeare: uma leitura da crônica “O Mercador de Veneza”

Abstract

Regarded as one of the most important and prestigious contemporary Brazilian writers, Moacyr Scliar was writer, university professor and doctor who wrote novels, chronicles and short stories throughout his life. The son of refugees from Bessarabia, he grew up in the city of Porto Alegre in the Jewish neighborhood of Bom Fim, and daily contact with Jewish immigrants gave the writer knowledge of the ethnic and political persecution suffered by the hebrew people over the centuries. It was as a result of these narratives that Scliar wrote chronicles related to judaism and migration. The author is also an excellent connoisseur of cinema, especially the films that deal with the persecution of the hebrew people. This article therefore aims to analyze the chronicle “The Merchant of Venice”, published in the book Our fragile human condition (2017). In this jewish chronicle, Scliar comments on the film of the same name by director Michael Radford (2004), adapted from the play of the same name by William Shakespeare, thus reflecting on the presence or not of antisemitism in the shakespearean play.