Nelson Rodrigues and modern tragedy

Brazilian playwright Nelson Rodrigues is the author of a very peculiar dramatic work, whose main characteristics are related to a poetics of the excess and a modernization of tragedy. There are two trends in his works: one that is closer to universal and mythical aspects of life, and another one that is closer to the historical and daily aspects. His own life was full of tragic events which made him feel that tragedy is a dimension that intrinsically belongs to humanity’s trajectory in this world. So the tragic sense of life was part of his world view and his philosophical conceptions. It was then natural that this tragic world view would be present in his literary creation at the several genres he explored, especially in his dramatic works. But his tragic approach is always mixed with melodramatic events and an excess of feelings, actions, and the grotesque, so that it frequently becomes comic at the same time. Nelson Rodrigues was influenced by both the high fine literature of the Western tradition and the subliterature of the beginning of the 20th century, and his mixture of them together makes up an original and very interesting creation. This paper fundamentally approaches the tragic as belonging to the playwright’s life — as well as his world vision — and also belonging to the works of Rodrigues by analyzing events in his, his readings, the opera and cinema techniques he was familiar with in order to reflect about their influences on his work, as well as to discuss formal aspects and subjects that make it possible to consider his dramatic works as belonging to the tradition of tragedy at the same time that he subvert and recreates the tragic standards in his own fashion.