Judaism, Medicine and Literature: Ethics in A majestade do Xingu, by Moacyr Scliar

Abstract

This paper aims to investigate the relations between Judaism, medicine and literature in the novel A majestade do Xingu by Jewish Brazilian writer Moacyr Scliar (1937-2011), work published in 1997. These relations will be specified by means of the Jewish concept about the relationship between patient and physician within the Jewish medical ethics (an aspect from the Jewish ethics). In the relationship between patient and physician, in A majestade do Xingu, the literary use of the clinical anamnesis – that causes an “illness narrative”(KLEIMAN, 1988) –occurs to discuss the dehumanization that unfortunately happens in this relationship, yet. Besides, this literary use occurs to give a new meaning to the concepts of sickness and patient in the medical records to create a deep relationship with the human nature of the patient in his totality, not only with the ill part of this nature. According to Arthur Kleiman, this new meaning reveals the care of the sick human being more as sick person than patient. This concept dialogues with reflections of Maimonides about the relationship between patient and physician, because for Rambam the medicine is health not only of the body, but also of the soul. In the novel A majestade do Xingu, in Jewish medical ethics terms, the patient –telling his sickness to a physician – and Noel Nutels caring of the Indians disclose for reader the literature as place where ethics, aesthetics, health and sickness fuse. This symbiosis occurs in this novel to reflect about the dignity of the human life in the context of the health and the sickness with the Jewish contribution by means of the ethical imperative legated by the Torah and interpreted by the Talmudic sages in Pirkey Avoth, for example