A morte de si pelo sertão da memória: uma análise do universo de Antônio Torres

Abstract

This study discusses the literary universe of Antônio Torres, based on three themes: suicide, space and memory. From this triad of Torres’ narratives, I have nine novels by the author as a research object: Um cão uivando para a lua (1972), Os homens dos pés redondos (1973), Essa Terra (1976), Carta ao Bispo (1979), Balada da infância perdida (1986), Um táxi para Viena D’Áustria (1991), O Cachorro e o Lobo (1997), Pelo fundo da agulha (2006) and Querida cidade (2021). From this perspective, I discuss the literary universe of Antônio Torres, having as a guideline suicide, space and memory. Therefore, I carry out a study of a qualitative nature and bibliographical review, literary analysis, along with other areas of knowledge. Starting from an overview of suicide in Western history and its approach in literature, I examine the successive occurrences of voluntary death that permeate the novels discussed here, to understand the characters who took this path and their motivations. To unravel the taboo that arises around self-inflicted death on more than twenty suicidal characters of the Bahia’s author, most of them migrant from Sertão, I establish a dialogue between literature, history, sociology, psychology and psychoanalysis through the works of Albert Camus (2018a; 2018b; 2019), Willian André (2020), Georges Minois (2018), Ramon Andrés (2015), Émile Durkheim (2012), Karina Okajima Fukumitsu (2013), Neury Botega (2015) and Sigmund Freud ( 2013). Aiming to understand space as one of the foundations of Torres’ work, I turn to Sertão in Brazilian literature through the works of Fernando Cristóvão (1993; 1994) and Gilberto Teles (2009), and then discuss Junco, the birthplace of the writer, in Sertão of Bahia, and the characters' deep connection to this territory in which they set their roots. Finally, I analyze the memories of the author's narratives in order to discuss the roots of the characters in their homeland, as well as their uprooting in the metropolis due to the diaspora. Therefore, I address the studies by Maurice Halbwachs (2003), Ecléa Bosi (1987; 1994; 2003) and Simone Weil (1996; 2001) to debate these memories and their implications for the plots. Furthermore, I try to discuss the role of family memories in the constitution of the identities of these Sertanejo subjects and, for that, the works of Anne Muxel and Françoise Zonabend (1991) were of great value to me, as well as the studies by Diana Cohen Agrest (2007) and Joseba Achotegui (2000), which helped me to understand the relationships between memory and grief that permeate the narrative of those who were marked by the suicide of a loved one. In this way, I tried to demonstrate the creation of a literary universe in which migrant subjects, marked by uprooting and suicide, sustain their existence in the memory of their roots in the Sertão.