Suelly, the sinisdextrous one

Suelly Svartman Printzak (she added Printzak when she married in 1967), was born in Rio de Janeiro in 1936, daughter of Ukrainian Jews, who came to Brazil fleeing the “pogroms” of the period at the end of the Russian Empire and the beginning of the communist republics, both periods and groups with antisemitic connotations. She has one son, 4 granddaughters and a sister, Miriam (Carioca, 1944), a French teacher.

In 1959, at 23 years of age, newly graduated in “letters” from the National Faculty of Philosophy, FNFi, she entered the career of “Language” teacher (Portuguese + Literature) at the Colégio de Aplicação of FNFi, CAp.

The Colégios de Aplicação were where those licensed by the Faculties of Philosophy had didactics classes, to obtain the degree of teachers. For this, the teachers were selected among the best graduates, and the students, like us, were the guinea pigs who benefited from those “laboratories”. One could only enter CAp through an entrance exam and, in case of “repeating the year” for a second time, enrollment was not renewed, resulting, with these two filters, in a student body of excellence. A difficult group, because many “thought highly of themselves”, brilliant minds. We must have been insufferable little things.

A group, in which I include myself, was Suelly’s student from Mar 1961 to Dec 1965, from the 3rd year of ginásio to the 3rd year of científico, from ages 14 to 18. From the beginning of classes, we realized we were before someone special. A superior spirit!

For a Teacher to accompany a student for 5 years, even more in adolescence, is remarkable. With no discredit to other masters who helped us and shaped us, many of us are fully aware of the influence Suelly had on our construction, on our life.

At the time, up to age 14, the most common readings were authors such as Monteiro Lobato, Viriato Corrêa, Mark Twain, Karl May, Charles Dickens, Jules Verne, the fabulists Collodi, Andersen, Grimm and La Fontaine.

It was Suelly who opened to us the world of vocabulary, of style. Who made us see that it was necessary to master language, at least until the utopia of telepathy is reached. That words are fundamental tools for building intelligent sentences. Who made us see the difference between tongue and language, and that, practically, the same grammatical rules apply to the various idioms (tongues), the objective being to express thoughts.

While she improved us in grammatical rules, in adjectives, nouns, prepositions, agreements, genders, definite and indefinite articles, verbs, present, past and future, transitive and intransitive, and in the bottomless pit of exceptions, she showed us that the mastery of language is what would allow us to improve the interaction between people, to exchange knowledge and reasoning, to refine intelligence. Whether in philosophical matters or scientific ones.

Mathematics, Music and Painting/Sculpture are forms of expression with their own and brilliant languages, but it is also through written (and spoken) language that they can be transmitted, while they are refined. For other fields, such as history, organization, philosophy, language is fundamental. for good or for evil, after all, they can record truths, untruths or even help deceive, sometimes just for the sake of deceiving, the more credulous and those of lesser perception.

The noblest branch of language is literature, the ability to record in words reasoning, thought, feeling, evaluation, fantasy, premonition. Suelly’s passion was literature, especially Iberian literature. Years later, sculpture, but that will not be the object of this text.

The passion for literature was contagious, and made us interested in reading even more, to absorb the subjects she brought.

At that time, everything was discussed in a dichotomous and excluding way (as it still is today), from how to organize States, right x left, liberals x conservatives, communists x capitalists. Factions, groups, parties were organized, in which watchwords predominated and were (are) used to scramble ideas.

Suelly, always well-informed, with her intelligence, managed to have a rare intellectual independence, without being neutral in anything. That drew attention. Many wanted to be like that, to escape stereotypes.

Adolescence is a phase in which personality is still being formed and people seek to belong to groups, herds, packs, schools, where they can take refuge and feel welcomed. Whether in football fan groups, neighborhood little groups, pseudo-secret or secret societies, in sharing drugs and customs, in beliefs, in traditions, pseudo-ideologies, political groups, deep down in brotherhoods of mutual help and affirmation, from which many never leave again, either because they settle in, or because of the rigid hierarchy that does not let them leave. They become soldiers, they cannot desert.

We were a few who saw, in Suelly, the model of freedom and independence that we wanted (or would it be of independence and freedom, subtle difference, but difference, if you understand me).

It was by the hand of a Suelly constrained by the mandatory school curriculum that we read the classics (some very boring): Machado, Cervantes, Eça, Manoel M. Almeida, J. Alencar, R. Pompéia, A. Azevedo, J. Macedo, Euclides, J. Amado, the poets, Camões, C. Alves, Cruz e Souza, F. Pessoa, R. Queiroz, in short. She took Manoel Bandeira to the school so that we could meet him personally and discuss poetry, and the modernists, the macunaímas, the anthropophagy.

It was also by her hand that we were encouraged to explore the new letters, without reins: Nelson Rodrigues, Miguel Torga (Contos da Montanha, A Criação do Mundo, etc.), Sylvan Paezzo (with the unforgettable Santa Rosinha do Mangue), the chroniclers of the time, Rubens Braga, Sérgio Porto, Fernando Sabino. Sometimes we would show up with things of dubious taste and / or political background such as Don Camillo (Giovanni Guareschi) or The New Class (Milovan Djilas), she would take a look and make a certain grimace, as if saying “one always learns something”, but she did not try to direct our minds nor place blinders on us. How grateful I am for that.

At that time, 1961 to 1965, because of the commemorations of the city’s 4th centenary, Rio de Janeiro was bubbling with local, national and worldwide cultural events of the highest level. The International Film Festival (Sep 1965) marked an era, with the presence of the most famous artists and directors from the four continents: Sophia Loren, Anita Ekberg, Ingmar Bergman, Fellini, Liv Ulman, Marlene Dietrich, Liza Minelli, Claudia Cardinale, Brigitte Bardot, Alain Delon, Mia Farrow, François Truffaut, Peter O’Toole, in short, the tops of the time.

It was almost impossible to get invitations and tickets to the cinema sessions of that festival. Even the press, radio and television complained, because only the very important managed to get them. In the finals, at cinema Rian, on Av. Atlântica 2964 (today it is the Pestana hotel), it was practically impossible to attend. The Governor was Lacerda and the tourism secretary was Eng. Enaldo Cravo Peixoto.

Days after the festival final, Suelly explained why she had missed the previous class (she never missed class): she had managed to go to the festival final, at the Rian, the day before. It paralyzed us. We all wanted to know details and we all began to feel represented at the festival. I remember that someone asked whether Anita Ekberg was as beautiful as people said and Suelly answered:

_ I don’t know, I didn’t get close, nor did I let her get close. Any woman near Ekberg looks ugly, I was not going to risk myself near her.

We all laughed together... Another lesson: “realistic evaluation of the surroundings”. Suelly was neither gorgeous nor ugly, she was beautiful. And at 29, in the flower of her age, with the “presence” that she knew how to impose, she must have drawn much attention from people in her age range, especially the more cultured and interesting ones, like her. But upon seeing Ekberg, she thought it best to avoid comparisons. As we should always do: lucidity above all.

I write from memory, with some help from “Google” (how do you think I found Enaldo as secretary?), aiming to insert this chronicle into a book-video-documentary that is being organized about CAp, recording the time, the recognition, the appreciation and the affection of the students for Suelly’s importance. On Wednesday, Sep 13, 2023, I and Fernando de Albuquerque, a colleague from CAp, went to record that video.

Before starting the “interview”, in her home, and with the presence of her son (also Miguel, a tribute to Miguel de Cervantes), we were talking about our “guru”, while the caregivers got her ready (her health is quite fragile).

In this, Fernando remembered that he had been expelled from the room some 3 times, in ginásio, because he was very restless, what today would be called “hyperactive”, and Fernando’s mother would be urged to sue Suelly for moral harassment. We laughed a lot.

As for me, I remembered that she marked me by her perception of things, standing out a rare intellectual independence in every aspect, without being neutral in anything and, at the same time, making it seem trivial to disagree in a conversation. And that impressed me a lot, because almost everyone already had positions on almost everything. It was difficult to talk with people in day-to-day life, convinced of their choices and without arguments.

Suelly was left-wing and right-wing at the same time, without being center or even also being, a little bit. Jewish and non-Jewish. Elegant and polite. Harsh and rude. All this without being contradictory.

Fernando (who is left-handed) said:

_ She was politically and culturally ambidextrous,

To which Miguel, Suelly’s son, commented:

_ Why ambidextrous and not ambisinister? That is prejudice against left-handed people!

And we laughed... And concluded:

_ Then she is sinisdextrous, there!

The word sinisdextrous appeared there (I have already consulted Paulo Geyer / Lexikon’s Aulete 2011 dictionary and the word is not there). I will write to Lexikon, Nova Fronteira (Aurélio) and to the Brazilian Academy of Letters and send this one, a new word of the Portuguese and universal language:

Sinisdextrous, adj., interesting, intelligent and cultured people, without being sectarian. fem. noun example: “sinisdextrous like Suelly” (see M. Fernández in Retrovisor, chronicles, 2023);

Miguel Fernández y Fernández, engineer, chronicler and columnist, member of the National Academy of Engineering and of the Institute of Engineering # written on Sep 29, 2023 Ra, 10,000 characters.