Cultura

Henry Graham Greene - escritor inglês-

(Berkhamsted, 2 de outubro de 1904 – Vevey, 3 de abril de 1991)

mais conhecido como Graham Greene, foi um escritor inglês, com uma obra composta de romances, contos, peças teatrais e críticas literárias e de cinema. Formou-se na Universidade de Oxford, e começou sua carreira como jornalista, trabalhando como repórter e sub-editor do The Times. Publicou cerca de 60 romances.

Durante a Segunda Guerra Mundial, de 1941 a 1943, trabalhou para o governo inglês no departamento de relações externas, dirigindo um escritório em Freetown, Serra Leoa. Muitos de seus romances, a partir de então, tiveram como tema ou pano de fundo a espionagem.

Seu primeiro livro de sucesso foi O Expresso do Oriente (1932). Outras obras: O Poder e a Glória (1940), Nosso Homem em Havana (1958) e O Fator Humano (1978). Muitas de suas obras foram transformadas em filmes. Suas obras falam muito de situações políticas de países pouco conhecidos e aos quais viajava freqüentemente, como Cuba e Haiti.

Outra temática frequente em sua obra é a religião. Tendo se convertido ao catolicismo em 1926, os dilemas morais e espirituais de sua época eram representados através de suas personagens. Graham Greene era considerado o maior 'escritor católico' da Grã-Bretanha, apesar de sua resistência em ser retratado dessa maneira.

Em 1937 Greene era colaborador da revista Night and Day e escreveu uma reportagem sobre a atriz Shirley Temple afirmando que a rapariga, então com oito anos, era o centro das atenções no estúdio de homens de meia idade. Estas declarações valeram-lhe um processo em tribunal tendo o escritor se refugiado no México, país que não permitia a extradição, o que o impediu de ser preso

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His works explore the ambivalent moral and political issues of the modern world. Greene was notable for his ability to combine serious literary acclaim with widespread popularity.

Although Greene objected strongly to being described as a Roman Catholic novelist rather than as a novelist who happened to be Catholic, Catholic religious themes are at the root of much of his writing, especially the four major Catholic novels: Brighton Rock, The Power and the Glory, The Heart of the Matter and The End of the Affair. Several works such as The Confidential Agent, The Third Man, The Quiet American, Our Man in Havana and The Human Factor also show an avid interest in the workings of international politics and espionage.

Greene suffered from bipolar disorder, which had a profound effect on his writing and personal life. In a letter to his wife Vivien, he told her that he had "a character profoundly antagonistic to ordinary domestic life", and that "unfortunately, the disease is also one's material".

Henry Graham Greene was born in 1904 in St. John’s House, a boarding house of Berkhamsted School on Chesham Road in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, England, where his father was housemaster.He was the fourth of six children; his younger brother, Hugh, became Director-General of the BBC, and his elder brother, Raymond, an eminent physician and mountaineer.

His parents, Charles Henry Greene and Marion Raymond Greene, were second cousins; both members of a large, influential family that included the owners of Greene King brewery, bankers and businessmen. Charles Greene was Second Master at Berkhamsted School, where the headmaster was Dr Thomas Fry, who was married to Charles' cousin. Another cousin was the right-wing pacifist Ben Greene, whose politics led to his internment during World War II.

In 1910 Charles Greene succeeded Dr Fry as headmaster of Berkhamsted. Graham also attended the school as a boarder. Bullied and profoundly depressed he made several suicide attempts; including, as he wrote in his autobiography, by Russian roulette and by taking aspirin before going swimming in the school pool. In 1920, aged 16, in what was a radical step for the time, he was sent for psychoanalysis for six months in London, afterwards returning to school as a day student. School friends included Claud Cockburn the satirist, and Peter Quennell the historian.

In 1922 he was for a short time a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain.

In 1925, while an undergraduate at Balliol College, Oxford, his first work, a poorly received volume of poetry entitled Babbling April, was published. Greene suffered from periodic bouts of depression whilst at Oxford, and largely kept to himself. Of Greene's time at Oxford, his contemporary Evelyn Waugh noted that: "Graham Greene looked down on us (and perhaps all undergraduates) as childish and ostentatious. He certainly shared in none of our revelry".

After graduating with a second-class degree in history, he worked for a period of time as a private tutor and then turned to journalism – first on the Nottingham Journal, and then as a sub-editor on The Times. While in Nottingham he started corresponding with Vivien Dayrell-Browning, a Catholic convert, who had written to him to correct him on a point of Catholic doctrine. Greene was an agnostic at the time, but when he began to think about marrying Vivien, it occurred to him that, as he puts it in A Sort of Life, he "ought at least to learn the nature and limits of the beliefs she held". In his discussions with the priest to whom he went for instruction, he argued "on the ground of dogmatic atheism", as his primary difficulty was what he termed the "if" surrounding God's existence. However, he found that "after a few weeks of serious argument the 'if' was becoming less and less improbable".Greene converted to Catholicism in 1926 (described in A Sort of Life) when he was baptised in February of that year. He married Vivien in 1927; and they had two children, Lucy Caroline (b. 1933) and Francis (b. 1936).

In 1948 Greene separated amicably from Vivien. Although he had other relationships, he never divorced or remarried.

He lived the last years of his life in Vevey, on Lake Geneva, in Switzerland, the same town Charlie Chaplin was living in at this time. He visited Chaplin often, and the two were good friends.His book Doctor Fischer of Geneva or the Bomb Party (1980) bases its themes on combined philosophic and geographic influences. He had ceased going to mass and confession in the 1950s, but in his final years began to receive the sacraments again from Father Leopoldo Durán, a Spanish priest, who became a friend. He died at age 86 of leukaemia in 1991 and was buried in Corseaux cemetery.

In his later years Greene was a strong critic of American imperialism, and supported the Cuban leader Fidel Castro, whom he had met. For Greene and politics, see also Anthony Burgess' Politics in the Novels of Graham Greene. In Ways of Escape, reflecting on his Mexican trip, he complained that Mexico's government was insufficiently left-wing compared with Cuba's. In Greene's opinion, "Conservatism and Catholicism should be .... impossible bedfellows".

"In human relationships, kindness and lies are worth a thousand truths."— - Graham Greene -

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