A invasão narrativa em José J. Veiga: ditadura militar, transculturação e voos possíveis a partir de Sombras de Reis Barbudos

Abstract

The main goal of this work is to analyze the relationship between the literary narrative of fantastic aspect and the political history in Brazil (1964-1985) in the work Sombras de Reis Barbudos (1972), by the writer José J. Veiga. We focus on the relationship “between countryside and city” (CANDIDO, 2011) in this novel from the narrator’s point of view about the friction between the urban culture (with all its technical, scientific and cultural apparatus) with the small communities in the Brazilian inland (rooted in popular beliefs, in the religiosity and in the familiar and community relationships). Such problematics are shown explicitly in the contrast between the technological equipment and the urban practices in the scenes, costumes and regional way of speaking which are typical from Brazilian inner cities and/or, more specifically, from Goiás, the place where the writer was born and lived during a significant part of his life. We insert this novel in the core of the narrative from the 20th century Goiás which thinks and writes the history of Brazil since its agrarian inland, tropeiro and sertanejo, even if through a magical or fantastic bias (in the mainstay of the Latin-American boom). We consider the constant and complex dialectic and dialogical movement between literature, culture, narration and landscape, this last one built not only in its visual aspect, but from nuances which interact with the human senses and its memory, in a way to cooperate for recognition of a culture which, in shock with the modernizing and technical culture proclaimed as a symbol of status and power, is kidnapped by means of fascination for the other and its modus operandi. Thus, we show how the narrator — a child — consolidates in the work from 1972 as an ethical-aesthetic instance (BAKHTIN, 2006) fundamental in the transit between Brazilian history and history-told by fiction, in order to guarantee that art presents itself as a product of historical responsibility. With Angel Rama, we analyze the phenomenon of transculturation, explicit in the novel. Sigmund Freud and Italo Calvino offered theoretical-critical tools for us to discuss the concepts of discontent in the culture and lightness, sponded from this book-allegory of a political regime experimented in the entire dimension of the national territory (not only in the fictional city of Taitara). To reflect on the countryside and city dialectic, we turned to Antonio Candido and Alfredo Bosi. However, Agostinho Potenciano Souza, Samira Campedelli e Antonio Arnoni Prado are voices of the expert review on José J. Veiga in which we added. In the field of narrative theory, we dialogue with Walter Benjamin and as for the historical narrative and the history of Brazil, Marcos Napolitano (2014) and Demian Bezerra de Melo (2012) appear as central names of our perspective. This research, therefore, aimed to present a reading about freedom and lightness, against the weight of the discontent and of the authoritarianism, from a novel from the 1970s Goiás.