Let's Talk about: The Centaur in the Garden by Moacyr Scliar

I read this second title in the Let's about it: Jewish literature series while I was on the plane coming home from Europe. I love reading in an airplane...Somehow the drone of the engines block out all other noises and you can really get lost in a book. No other distractions, places to go, or things to do...

In this work, Moacyn Scliar addresses the issue of Jewish identity and feeling lost between two worlds. Guedali finds himself born as a centaur, half man, half horse. Scliar uses magical realism to tell this allegorical tale of what it felt like to be Jewish in Brazil. The reader gets lost in the adventures of Guedali: he is born to a family who supports him in spite of his freakishness appearance yet keeps him hidden from others. Guedali becomes learned through correspondence courses where he studies extensively on all subjects, but none more than on the reasons why he was born a centaur. He admits that "Life without challenges isn't worth living (2), and he states that "there are man unknown things inside me, many secrets. Isn't it time to open the floodgates, to let the torrents flow." (4) He feels insecure and is afraid of standing up...Which leaves the reader wondering if he is insecure with his identity. He feel alone. He recalls as a child, alone in his crate "...there must have been the notion of conflict between hardness and softness, between the brutal and the delicate, between the equine and the human...." (25)

Guedali has many experiences as a centaur: he is circumcised and becomes part of the Jewish community, yet he still sounds outside of the circle: he is hidden from onlookers and when his sister marries. He is loved by his family but always hidden from the curious eyes of others. He finally decides to leave "It pained me to leave my family. But I couldn't go on this way, a prisoner in my room, gradually becoming a toothless old centaur with white hair, and finally dying without even having tried to escape my destiny." (55) He longs to be happy...

He joins a circus and thus begins the exploration of his sexual identity. He is discovered as a true centaur and in the face of that reality, runs away again to Argentina. He finds refuge on a ranch sleeps, only to be awakened by the sound of horses running. It is another centaur...

The book progresses with his relationship with Tita and the reader is drawn into the story of their longing to be freed from who they are. Guedali seems ambivalent about his identity even as he faces his surgical transition into full manhood: "I thought of many other things that night, both sad and happy. The final result, however, was neither sadness nor happiness, despair nor joy, crying nor laughter, nothing. The final result was sleep--a thick, powerful heavy sleep tat engulfed my being like quicksand, hooves, legs, tail, mouth, eyes, everything." (87)

Guedali never becomes fully human and his relationships with his friends and his wife suffers. His depression is clear: "Time passes, we stop loving each other and start asking ourselves what life is for. For nothing it seems. Every afternoon when I close the office, I think: 'One more day gone, this day won't be back to bother me'" (125) He longs to become a centaur again.

He returns home and has so many questions for his father. "I wanted to hear. I wanted to find out things. Had Guedali the centaur boy been happy? Happier than the biped Guedali, or less happy? If less happy, than more happy), then why my uncontrollable itch to Gallup, why the incessant search for something that I couldn't even identify? If happier (or less unhappy), what should I do to reverse the acceleration of my misery, or regain my lost happiness? And what might be the secret of centaurs' happiness..." (180)

This chapter chronicles godlike struggle with his identity as he wonders "What is the meaning of existence...Why are we in the world? Is there a God, Guedali?" He longs for contact with the earth in a way he cannot deny. He longs to pray again and feels the need "for wisdom and consolation of religion." (183) He stays apart and realizes the must face his demons that torment him: "Not without first finding out who I was: a crippled centaur, deprived of his equine body? A human being trying to liberate himself from his fantasies." (188)

This novel addresses the complex world of being Jewish in a strange land and the reader lurks in the background watching and waiting, not unlike the fluttering wings of the winged horse who beckons Guedali to take flight.