Au Revoir,
Dictionary-Man

With characteristic humility Antônio Houaiss used to call himself "a humble word worker. I am no poet or creator." And yet his work was the highly sophisticated one of building dictionaries and encyclopedias. The respected intellectual and former minister died March 7, in Rio, at age 83, after being in the hospital since December to treat chronic pneumonia. Houaiss died before concluding his most ambitious project, an extensive Portuguese dictionary, with the origins for every word listed, which he was having difficulty financing.

Born on October 15, 1915, in Rio, Houaiss was the fifth of seven children of Lebanese immigrant Habib Assad Houaiss and Brazilian Malvina Farjalla Houaiss. He was raised in the legendary beach neighborhood of Copacabana. The scholar loved the sea and became an excellent swimmer.

His marriage lasted until the death of his spouse in 1988. He married his wife—Ruth Marques de Sales, a Latin teacher from Bahia—in 1942. They had no children. Also in 1942, he graduated in classic letters from Faculdade Nacional de Filosofia da Universidade do Brasil. From 1934 to 1946 he worked as a Latin, Portuguese, and Literature high school teacher until he was accepted into the Itamaraty (the Foreign Service) as a diplomat.

For someone so unassuming he possessed an impressive collection of titles: philologist, encyclopedist, Culture Minister (under President Itamar Franco), diplomat, translator, and teacher. From 1978 to 1981 he was Rio's Writers Union president. And he was an "Immortal," one of the 40 for-life members of the ABL (Academia Brasileira de Letras—Brazilian Academy of Letters). Houaiss was admitted to the ABL in 1971 and was its president in 1996. He was buried at the ABL's mausoleum in the São João Batista cemetery in Rio.

He became in 1964 one of the first victims of the military dictatorship that lasted from 1964 to 1985. Houaiss was stripped from his civil rights for 10 years and forced into a premature retirement. A blessing in disguise because it led the lexicographer to dedicate himself full time to his intellectual endeavors, in particular to his dictionaries and encyclopedias. That's when he also found time for the Herculean task of translating James Joyce's Ulysses.

He wrote close to 50 books including A Nova Ortografia da Língua Portuguesa (Portuguese Language New Orthography), O Que é a Língua? (What's Language?) and A Crise da Nossa Língua de Cultura (The Crisis of Our Language of Culture). Houaiss also helped to establish the definitive text for several Brazilian writers including Lima Barreto, Gonçalves Dias, and Augusto dos Anjos. The English-Portuguese Dictionary edited by James L. Taylor and the Webster's English-Portuguese Dictionary both compiled by him can be found at the Amazon Internet bookstore (http://www.amazon.com). To celebrate his 80th birthday the Civilização Brasileira publishing house released Antônio Houaiss: uma Vida (Antônio Houaiss: a Life), a tribute book written by 41 authors.

Speaking about Houaiss's death, Arnaldo Niskier, president of the Academy of Letters declared: "The Brazilian culture lost its greatest philologist. The man who personified a tradition of great names in the cultivation of the Portuguese language. The Academy also lost a great fighter for the establishment of an orthographic agreement for unifying the Portuguese language. The best way to pay homage to his memory is to guarantee that this agreement, which has dragged on since 1990, be finally signed by the seven countries of the Portuguese-speaking community (Brazil, Portugal, Angola, Mozambique, Guinea Bissau, Cape Verde, and São Tomé and Príncipe). This was his biggest dream. In the last years his passion was divided between the fight for the orthographic agreement and the making of his big multimedia dictionary which should be released in September 2000."

The new dictionary, which will be called Houaiss in an homage to its creator, will contain about 320,000 terms with etymological and morphological explanations, double the entries of the most popular Brazilian current dictionary, the Aurélio, prepared by Aurélio Buarque de Holanda. Research on the dictionary—started in 1986—had stopped between '92 and '97 for lack of funds. Now there are 50 experts working on it. Ninety percent of the work has already been concluded. Most of the effort now will be concentrated on proofreading.

Houaiss's defense of the new orthography brought him some enemies even amongst his fellow members in the Academy and he was accused of pushing legislation for self-benefit so he could better sell his new dictionary. His Ulysses translation, which first appeared in 1966, was very controversial. Some critics accused him of giving too much importance to the linguistic aspect of the book forgetting other angles. Houaiss defended himself: "Joyce deliberately practiced violence against the English language. It was a new language. I, as a translator, tried to do the same."

Houaiss believed in the power of culture saying that "the culture doesn't intend to change only the vision of the world, but wishes to change the reality when this is repugnant."

His term as Culture minister didn't last more than one year, though. The intellectual in him was never capable of wearing the political suit. He abandoned the post criticizing the ridiculous 0.03% of the budget reserved for culture and lambasting pork-barrel politics.

Politically active, he helped to found the Partido Socialista Brasileiro (Brazilian Socialist Party). More recently he defined himself—not without irony—as a "post-agnostic and a pre-Christian." In the '50's, while serving as a diplomat, Houaiss was placed in "inactive status" after being accused of involvement with the left. Only in 1990 was he was officially reinstated as a diplomat.

The intellectual was an acerbic critic of the Brazilian educational system. He used to say that educationally Brazil was still a country in the 18^th century, when only 2% of the population knew how to read. He never accepted the statistics indicating that 30% of Brazilians are illiterate. Houaiss believed that 70% of the Brazilian population is functionally illiterate.

On the hobby front Houaiss was famous for his knowledge and ability around the kitchen. And he was very proud of being a gourmet. He called himself, with self-created neologisms, "mestre nas artes comestória e bibitória," (master in the eatatory and drinkatory arts). It wasn't uncommon for him to abandon his fellow guests at the table to join the chef in the kitchen at a friend's house or in a restaurant.

"The secret of eating well is variety," he used to teach.

In 1958 he founded the Confraria dos Gastrônomos (Gastronomes Brotherhood) where he stayed until 1975. He left there for disagreeing with new member President General Emílio Garrastazu Médici who joined the gourmets' club in 1975. Four years later he started a new group, the Companheiros da Boa Mesa (Companions of the Good Table). For all his love of good food he never lost his thin figure, which was cause for envy from friends and foes alike.

He even wrote his own cook book, Magia da Cozinha Brasileira (Brazilian Cuisine Magic) (1979), with 100 recipes of regional Brazilian cuisine. He came back to the subject in 1986 with Receitas Rápidas (Fast Recipes), a collection of 81 dishes for those amateur chefs de cuisine in a hurry. A beer lover, he also authored A Cerveja e Seus Mistérios (The Beer and Its Mysteries).

For him, cooking was something cultural and he criticized men incapable of donning an apron and going to the kitchen: "Men who are not interested in eating, or that snub going into the kitchen, are male chauvinists who believe they can become more macho by doing this."

Bibliography:

Anthologies and Essays:

Prefácio, in vida urbana (1956)

Crítica avulsa (1960)

Seis poetas e um problema, estudos de crítica literária, estilística e ecdótica (1967)

Augusto dos Anjos, poesia, antologia, introdução e notas (1960)

Qual prefácio, in A rima na poesia de Carlos Drummond de Andrade, de Hélcio Martins (1968)

Introdução, in Reunião: 10 livros de poesia, de Carlos Drummond de Andrade (1969)

Crítica literária e estruturalismo, in II Simpósio de língua e literatura portuguesa (1969)

Drummond mais seis poetas e um problema (1976)

Homenagem a Joaquim Cardoso, conferência (1978)

Estudos vários sobre palavras, livros e autores (1979)

Philology, Bibliology:

Tentativa de descrição do sistema vocálico do português culto na área dita carioca, dialectologia e ortofonia (1959)

Sugestões para uma política da língua (1960)

O Serviço de Documentação da Presidência da República (1960)

Introdução filológica às Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas, fixação do texto crítico (1961)

Elementos de bibliologia (1967)

A crise de nossa língua de cultura (1983)

O português no Brasil (1985)

O que é língua? (1990)

A nova ortografia da Língua Portuguesa (1991)

Politics:

A defesa (1979)

Brasil—O fracasso do conservadorismo (1985)

Brasil-URSS - 40 anos do estabelecimento de relações diplomáticas, colective work (1985)

Socialismo e liberdade, with Roberto Amaral (1990)

Variações em torno do conceito de democracia, with Roberto Amaral (1992)

Socialismo—Vida, morte e ressurreição (1993)

A modernidade no Brasil—Conciliação ou ruptura? (1995)

Os socialistas e a guerra (1991)

Texts by Classics:

Obras de Lima Barreto, with Francisco de Assis Barbosa and Manuel Cavalcanti Proença (1956)

O texto dos poemas, in Gonçalves Dias, poesia e prosa escolhida (1959) 

Memórias póstumas de Brás Cubas, de Machado de Assis (1961)

Eu, outras poesias, poemas esquecidos, de Augusto dos Anjos (1965); Edições críticas de Obras de Machado de Assis (1975).

Reference:

Anais do Primeiro Congresso Brasileiro de Língua Falada no Teatro (1956)

Novo dicionário Barsa das línguas inglesa e portuguesa , 2 vols., with Catherine B. Avery (1964)

Grande enciclopédia Delta-Larousse, 12 volumes

Enciclopédia Mirador Internacional, 20 volumes and 1 atlas (1975)

Pequeno dicionário enciclopédico Koogan-Larousse (1979)

Vocabulário ortográfico da Língua Portuguesa (1981)

Webster's dicionário inglês-português, 2 volumes, with Ismael Cardim and other (1982).

Gastronomy:

Magia da cozinha brasileira (1979)

Receitas Rápidas (1986)

A cerveja e seus mistérios (1986)

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