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TRAVEL, CONSCIOUSNESS, AND SELF-NARRATIVE IN THE
AFRO-LUSO-BRAZILIAN TRIANGLE
by
Oscar C. Pérez
B.A., New Mexico State University, 2005
M.A., Brown University, 2010
Thesis
Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the
degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of
Portuguese and Brazilian Studies
May 2011
Copyright
by
Oscar C. Pérez
This dissertation by Oscar C. Pérez
is accepted in its present form by the
Department of Portuguese and Brazilian Studies
as satisfying the dissertation requirements for
the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
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Date
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Nelson H. Vieira
Recommended to the Graduate Council
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Date
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Onésimo T. Almeida
______________________
Date
__________________________
Leonor Gonçalves Simas-Almeida
Approved by the Graduate Council
______________________
Date
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VITA
Oscar C. Pérez was born in El Paso, Texas on May 23, 1980. He entered New Mexico
State University in Las Cruces, New Mexico in December of 2000. At New Mexico State
he pursued dual interests in Wildlife Science in the Department of Fishery and Wildlife
Sciences and literature in the Department of English. While completing a course in
World Literature he was introduced to, and became fascinated with the work of
Brazilian author Clarice Lispector. At the same time he became an avid practitioner of
the Brazilian art of Capoeira. These combined interests led to an auto-didactic study of
the Portuguese language and of Brazilian culture and history. As a Ronald A. McNair
Program scholar, Oscar received a summer research grant with which he completed a
study of stereotype and social class in Clarice Lispector's The Hour of the Star entitled
"Woman of the gutter: subversion of stereotype through narrative in Clarice Lispector's
The Hour of the Star." He was selected to represent New Mexico State University at the
Compact for Faculty Diversity in Atlanta, Georgia where he met Brown Professor Evelyn
Hu-Dehart and learned of the Ph.D. program in the Department of Portuguese and
Brazilian Studies at Brown. In 2005, Oscar completed a B.A. at NMSU in English with a
minor in Wildlife Science. In the Fall of the same year, he began graduate school as a
doctoral student at Brown, after spending a semester abroad in Rio de Janeiro studying
at the Pontifícia Universidade Católica.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I have traveled many different paths in the course of my life that have, each in
their own way, contributed to the insights and passion that have made the completion
of this dissertation possible. Throughout these different journeys I have been blessed
with the company of many individuals who have inspired me and given me the strength
and determination to persevere in the achievement of my aspirations. For each of these
people I am eternally grateful.
Above all, I dedicate this dissertation and give my undying love and gratitude to
my mother, Maria Teresa Pérez, and my brother, David Gustavo. Through the joyful and
difficult times in my life they have been my refuge, my confidants, and my truest
inspiration. Together we have confronted and overcome immense obstacles and we
have done so relying on one another for strength and for solace. Madre querida, te
agradezco por tu apoyo y tu cariño en los tiempos tiernos, y tu fortaleza en los tiempos
difíciles. Te agradezco por enseñarme a amar el viaje, a saber como disfrutar los
tiempos en que me pierdo, tan solo para conocer paisajes nuevos. To my brother I have
to say thank you for never letting me take my eye off the mark, for having the words to
help me find my way back on track whenever I strayed. I thank you both for being my
foundation, for teaching me to be strong and determined despite the obstacles that lay
in my path. This achievement is not so much mine, as it is ours. This is for us.
I would like to thank the people that have been with me from before I began this
journey, those of you who have been a constant presence and support in my life since
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our days together in the desert. Ernesto, Carla, and David, you are more important to
me than you will ever know. From our times together in Las Cruces we have each gone
and grown our separate and unique ways, but in a sense we have never left each other's
side. We have crossed many borders and boundaries together, literally and figuratively,
and I have been blessed by the many steps we have walked together. Ernie, we like
vitamins. Carla, you taught me the joys of combining high minded decadence in life and
literature with cheap Chilean wine, for which I am ever grateful. David, ô seu cheiro
molé, a gente arrasou pelo mundo fora, you have been my teacher and my partner in
crime in many rodas, from Las Cruces to Rio de Janeiro to Rome and back again. Gracias
carnal.
I want to thank Dr. Raul Valdez for being my mentor, my advisor, and my friend
throughout these last ten years. You were the first person to consistently challenge me
when I arrived at New Mexico State, and you have continued to be a motivating force in
my life. Without your counsel and your example I would never have come this far. You
taught me how to use my education to grow, to gain a voice, and to travel beyond my
self-imposed horizons. I will always be grateful to you for the time you took to give me
guidance and to push me in the right direction. As I am completing this doctorate I can
finally and happily agree with you that I don't know anything. And it is with enormous
gratitude and joy that I can now ask you "Who's just a half-ass, now?"
I also want to thank those who have been my family in Providence. To Brian,
Karl and Heather, you have been with me throughout, and seen me through many
difficult times as I have grown and learned to embrace the person I am constantly
v
becoming. I thank you for being my advisors, for being my closest friends, and for giving
me the opportunity to step up to multiple challenges and find my own path. Brian,
thank you for always reminding me through your words and your example to never stop
walking. Karl and Heather thanks for being my support and my sanctuary during those
difficult first years here, I wouldn't have found a home here without you. To Camilo and
Keith for being constant friends in the search of my most honest self-expression through
our art of Jeet Kune Do. Remember, JKD is life and life is JKD. To Montana Blanco for
bringing a bit of the realness of the desert to my life in Providence. To Travis Bickford
for just being real, and teaching me that sometimes I just need to ease up.
Without all of these people, the work that I have accomplished at the
Department of Portuguese and Brazilian Studies would not have been possible as they
have been the family and community whose presence has allowed me to focus and to
breathe in the larger space of life, outside of my academic and scholarly endeavors.
However, my life as a scholar has been enriched personally and professionally by my
professors, mentors and advisors within the Department of Portuguese Studies, and I
wholeheartedly extend my gratitude to them. I want to thank my advisor, Professor
Nelson Vieira, for being thoughtful and present in his guidance and his passion for
Brazilian literature as well as for sharing an interest in all things noir. Our discussions
from literature to film to martial arts have always been a highlight of my experience in
the department. Also, a big thank you to Professor Onésimo Almeida for sharing his
fascination and expertise on travel and discoveries throughout the Portuguese speaking
world. I would also like to thank Professor Leonor Simas-Almeida for teaching me to
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explore how literature inspires us to feel beyond the mere words of the written page.
Onésimo and Leonor, your willingness to work with me and to help me explore and
develop my understanding of existential and ontological questions through the works of
Pessoa and Vergílio Ferreira was amazing, thank you. I thank all three of you for your
guidance and your continued interest in my development of this dissertation.
To Professor Luiz Valente, your humor was always a high point of my time at the
department, and I greatly appreciate your candid expression of your ideas and your
capacity to speak your mind. You still need to teach me to play squash, Luiz. I want to
thank Patrícia Sobral for being a mentor and a source of inspiration in the classroom. I
think that your passion far exceeds the four walls that encompass and sometimes limit
every classroom. Your dedication is astounding, and your understanding of students
and what we need to grow as both scholars and individuals is far beyond that of many in
this academic world. Thank you.
I want to thank my colleagues and friends at the Department of Portuguese and
Brazilian Studies. From those that were here when I arrived, Guilherme and Marília,
Luca, Rob, Rex, for giving me guidance and advice. To the newer class, Adi, Lauren,
Thayse, Daniel, Sandra, Stevie, Ben and Lucas, vocês são ótimos meus bichos! Tudo de
bom pra vocês. O nosso tempo juntos tem sido do melhor. Obrigado pela amizade e
pelo convívio, pelas boas conversas e pelos tempos de festa dentro e fora do
departamento. Mais do que colegas vocês são bons amigos. Vamos continuar nessa!
I want to thank the two wonderful ladies that make it all possible, Candida and
Armanda. Every morning, afternoon, or evening at the department was a special one
vii
because of your presence and your dedication to us as graduate students. The
conversations I had with each of you have enriched my time at the department in more
ways than I can count. I am ever grateful to you for your advice, your laughter, and your
support. I thank you both for witnessing some of the most important and pivotal
moments of my life. You both go out of your way to ensure that we have a positive
environment in which to grow and learn at the department, and beyond, and I am
indebted to you both for all that you have done for me.
There are countless other people that I would like to thank for their support and
their presence in my life. Among them I have to include Jesse and Bethany Bash, Diana
Rodriguez, Angie Mendoza, Thaddeus and Suzi "Detroit" Denton, Cortez, Mariela Salasde-la-Cruz, Brianna Medeiros and Joshua Marcotte for being a future to look forward to,
Sue Brown, Terry L. Cook, Evelyn Hu-Dehart, Rosario Pren, Adan Sales, and Shirley
Fuertes. I want to thank everyone and anyone that I have not included and I apologize if
at this time I have omitted your names. Finally, I want to extend my gratitude to
Melissa Milliken, for coming into my life as this journey ends and being the person with
whom I want to share each and every journey that follows. This is the beginning of
many new horizons to pursue, and many new places to explore.
To the next generation and those that may follow, a path has been made.
This is dedicated to my grandfather, Roberto Carbajal.
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PREFACE
In the summer of 2007, as I sat alone on a train departing from Termini Station in
Rome, I was awestruck by the rush of memories that came together in my mind at that
specific moment and the realization that I was leaving one of the oldest cities in the
Western world, a place I had always dreamt of seeing but which had for many reasons
seemed perpetually out of reach. As I sat there, looking out the window as the city of
Rome went rushing by, I reflected on all of the roads that I had traveled to get to that
singular point in time, and I realized that each path that I had taken, from the dusty
difficult streets of my borderland home in El Paso, Texas and Ciúdad Juárez, Chihuahua,
México, were woven together by the stories of the experiences that make up my sense
of self. During that summer I was living in Lisbon, having traveled there to conduct
research at the Biblioteca Nacional on the work of Portuguese existentialist author
Vergílio Ferreira and focusing specifically on the author's use of introspective, firstperson narratives to create representations of space.
My interests in travel and in seeking different ontological perspectives have
fueled my research throughout my time as a student. Due to my upbringing in a border
town, where I navigated the different social, cultural, and linguistic borders of two
countries and cultures on a daily basis, I was drawn to issues of situation-specific
identity and the adaptability that is necessary for those who traverse these types of
spaces. This interest developed even more when I began learning Portuguese, as I
began to see these types of figures in contexts other than those of my native Spanish
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and English. In learning about Brazil, I was soon fascinated by the figure of the
malandro, a figure that is based upon a type of conscious social fluidity that can move
from one social and economic space to the next by understanding the nuances of each
of these spaces and adapting and manipulating them in order to gain access to different
social environments.
At the same time, through my interest in literature I was guided to the theories
of such scholars as Paul Ricoeur, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, and later to the work
of anthropologists such as Clifford Geertz, and the literary criticism of Frances
Bartowski, whose work Travelers, Immigrants, Inmates was essential for the
development of this dissertation. Continuing with my growing awareness of different
types of identity as represented through literature, I was drawn to the work of authors
like Clarice Lispector, Dalton Trevisan, Lydia Jorge, the aforementioned Vergílio Ferreira,
Pepetela, Manuel Rui, and later the works of the three authors that comprise this
dissertation: Miguel Sousa Tavares, Bernardo Carvalho, and José Eduardo Agualusa.
Among the works of other authors, who are too numerous to recount here, the
relationship that these writers demonstrate between the development of self-identity,
cultural repertoire, consciousness, and travel provided me with invaluable tools to
explore the convergence points between lived experiences and self-narrative.
My interest in the places they depicted in their narratives grew progressively as I
became more acquainted with their works and their depictions of the relationship
between character and space. The work that I completed in Lisbon while researching
Vergílio Ferreira's Aparição is an example of this. I traveled to the small town of Évora in
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southern Portugal to walk the same streets that Ferreira recreated in his novel through
the eyes of his first-person narrator. Furthermore, I found that the spaces in these
novels were projections of the narrator and character's own internal preoccupations,
and their interpretations of space were closely tied to their own cultural heritage in
conjunction with their exploratory narratives of self and Other.
The authors that I have chosen for this dissertation were selected because their
narratives have this type of relationship between self and space, between history and
culture, and they also demonstrate different variants on the relationship between
narrative and identity construction. I was drawn to them specifically because their
production as fiction writers can be directly correlated to their journalistic works, which
allowed me to explore how narrative maintains a type of continuity that traverses the
realms of fiction and non-fiction. In a sense, this was yet another border that I wanted
to analyze in order to see how the biographical stories they tell are re-appropriated into
the production of a fictional artwork.
As I have undertaken this process of research and analysis, I have found that the
narrative plays an integral role in the ways that we relate to both the external world and
to our own internal worlds. As a matter of elucidating this understanding, I researched
the work of Ken Wilber, whose integral consciousness model iterates the importance of
perceiving human existential experience as a combination of the external and internal,
but which emphasizes the necessity to perceive these different spheres consciously in
order to maintain a sense of agency in the internal creation of self as well as the
external projection of self through interpersonal communication.
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When approaching the following dissertation, I remind myself that what matters
is the process through which these narratives come into being, and what each reflects
to the reader; as ultimately our interpretation of any narrative is a reflection of our own
self. The following work is representative of the travels that I have experienced as I
have researched the Portuguese-speaking world, and they contain within them the
roads that I have traversed: literally, figuratively, and consciously. They are a map of my
experiences as a scholar of the Lusophone world, but they are also examples of the tools
that I have compiled and developed in order to venture out beyond this scholarly space.
As such, I believe they are only the starting point to other horizons, and while I feel
fortunate to have come this far, I am certain that this is only the beginning.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................................................. 1
History and Travel Narratives in the Lusophone World ........................................................................... 7
The author's travel: journalism and fiction............................................................................................. 20
CHAPTER 1: THE MISTREATED ISLANDS OF EQUADOR ............................................................................... 26
São Tomé in the gaze of Miguel Sousa Tavares ...................................................................................... 29
As Ilhas Maltratadas................................................................................................................................ 36
Traveling with Narrative: São Tomé or Sousa Tavares? ......................................................................... 42
The Narrative Bridge: Non-Fiction and the Novel................................................................................... 44
An acceptant exile................................................................................................................................... 53
The journey to São Tomé ........................................................................................................................ 58
The transitions in the tropics .................................................................................................................. 66
CHAPTER 2: SEEKING THE NARRATED SELF IN BERNARDO CARVALHO'SNOVE NOITES ............................. 80
Exploratory narratives ............................................................................................................................ 86
Travel in Nove noites............................................................................................................................... 90
Buell Quain travels the world ................................................................................................................. 92
The letters of Manoel Perna ................................................................................................................... 97
The idyllic becomes helplessness and despair ...................................................................................... 106
The narrator's search for Buell Quain ................................................................................................... 117
CHAPTER 3: TRAVEL AND CONSCIOUSNESS IN AGUALUSA'S PLÁCIDO DOMINGO .................................. 128
Journeying across Agualusa's Fronteiras Perdidas ............................................................................... 133
Introducing Plácido Domingo................................................................................................................ 141
Plácido Domingo in Corumbá ............................................................................................................... 149
Corumbá through the eyes of José Eduardo Agualusa ......................................................................... 156
Plácido Domingo in Goa ........................................................................................................................ 167
"Please allow me to introduce myself, I'm a man of wealth and taste..."............................................ 173
Goa through the eyes of José Eduardo Agualusa ................................................................................. 183
EPILOGUE .................................................................................................................................................. 189
BIBLIOGRAPHY .......................................................................................................................................... 194
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INTRODUCTION
In a postcolonial, increasingly globalized world, identities fluctuate through the
spectrum of historical and lived experiences that, though initially fragmented as
seemingly random events, are ultimately drawn together in the individual's selfnarrative, attempting to find a place amidst the multiplicity of national, social, and
cultural spheres. This process of creating a self-narrative of the existent social and
cultural components that make up an individual's repertoire is amplified through the
experience of travel, as the traveler is consistently faced with the Other: creating a
necessity for identity to reflect back upon itself either consciously or unconsciously, in
an attempt for self-preservation amidst the unknown. As the traveler incorporates the
experiences and interactions he has with the Other, these too become a part of the selfnarrative, thereby expanding the complexity and awareness of the traveler's place in the
world. In this sense, travel can function as an experience of growth and adaptation.
The traveler, however, does not always have the ability to adapt and include the new
experiences as a part of himself: which would increase a sense of social awareness of
self and Other and bring about new forms of self-identification. When unable to abapt
to and integrate new perspectives and forms of understanding into the self-narrative,
the traveler adheres to a pre-determined cultural and self-identity which accentuates
individuality and separateness, in which case the experience of the Other leads to
despair.
1
This dissertation deals with the narratives of three different Lusophone authors
who emphasize the experience of travel in their works of fiction and non-fiction. By
comparing their writing in both spheres, we will discuss the manner in which the
author's own travel experiences enter into the fictional narrative, while at the same
time taking into consideration their cultural points of origin. The three authors to be
discussed are Miguel Sousa Tavares, a native of Portugal who has built a career upon
journalism and political commentary about the Lusophone world, Brazilian journalist
and author Bernardo Carvalho, and the Angolan writer José Eduardo Agualusa.
As we engage the narratives of each of these authors, it is possible to see the
points of convergence between their biographical lives and the lives that they construct
through their fictional narrators and characters. However, the degree to which each
weaves his fictional account with the non-fictional events or experiences in their life
differs from one author to the next, and throughout the discussion of the following
chapters there will be a progressively diminishing boundary between fiction and nonfiction. In a sense, this elucidates how each of the authors' approaches to storytelling
relates to their own geographical, cultural and historical backgrounds, demonstrating
how concepts of self, narrative tradition and globalization in the post-colonial
Lusophone world differ while being tied to a common linguistic heritage. Furthermore,
each author presents a unique form of creating the self through narrative, in the ways
they present their characters, their narrators, and themselves.
By utilizing the concept of the narrated self, as proposed by Paul Ricoeur, we will
focus on the development of character narratives in the works of these three authors as
2
they relate to travel and the confrontation with the Other. According to Ricoeur, the
development of self is brought about by using narratives to tie together the dispersed
events that collectively make up a life, and therefore narrative is the tie that binds selfidentity as well as cultural identity. Ricoeur also asserts that an individual incorporates
elements of other narratives into the fabric of their own narrated self, alternately
utilizing the different stories that are provided through culture and socialization in order
to situate their own identity within the greater social context. When citing his own
work, Time and Narrative, in his Oneself as Another, Ricoeur states:
The notion of narrative identity, introduced in Time and Narrative 3, responds to a
different set of problems: at the end of a long voyage through historical narrative and
fictional narrative, I asked whether there existed a structure of experience capable of
integrating the two great classes of narratives. I then formed the hypothesis according to
which narrative identity, either that of a person or of a community, would be the soughtafter place of this chiasm between history and fiction. Following the intuitive
preunderstanding we have of these things, do we not consider human lives to be more
readable when they have been interpreted in terms of the stories that people tell about
them? And are not these life stories in turn made more intelligible when the narrative
models of plots – borrowed from history or from fiction (drama or novel) – are applied to
them? It therefore seems plausible to take the following chain of assertions as valid: selfunderstanding is an interpretation; interpretation of the self, in turn, finds in the
narrative, among other signs and symbols, a privileged form of mediation; the latter
borrows from history as well as from fiction, making a life story a fictional history or, if
one prefers, a historical fiction, interweaving the historiographic style of biographies with
the novelistic style of imaginary autobiographies. (114)
In the following analyses, we will explore these types of narrative attachments as they
pertain to various different cultural contexts involving travelers in the Portuguesespeaking world. By focusing on three writers who write travel-based narratives in
journalism and fiction, we will demonstrate how conscious narrative awareness allows
3
characters to develop in a manner that provides the capacity to adapt to different
cultural and social spheres while traveling. In this sense, both the author and the reader
partake in what Ricoeur terms the "vast laboratory in which we experiment with estimations,
evaluations, and judgments of approval and condemnation through which narrativity serves as a
propaedeutic to ethics." (115) For Ricoeur, this is one of the predominant impacts of literature,
as it allows us to engage with different sets of social and historical events and experiences while
demonstrating how these are woven into individual narratives of self, all the while elucidating
the process by which narrative becomes the force of cohesion in all identities. In order to
discuss the importance and impact of travel, we will elicit the work of Frances Bartowski
as she analyzes different types of travelers and displacement.
As we progress we will see how each of the authors emphasizes different levels
of conscious awareness in the utilization of narrative to construct and deconstruct the
self. In the novel Equador, by Miguel Sousa Tavares, for example, the reader has limited
access to the narrated self of the main character which makes the reader's impression
of the character rely primarily on the semi-omniscient narrator. As such, this character,
Luís Bernardo Valença, is presented as an individual who is acted upon by the outside
world, as opposed to being a character with more control over the circumstances
surrounding his dislocation to the islands of São Tomé e Príncipe. While the reader has
some access to Luís Bernardo's thoughts through the letters he writes to his best friend
João Forjaz, he is predominantly a character seen from the exterior, and who is used as
a caricature of a bachelor of the Lisboan elite of the early twentieth century. By
observing this type of character, the reader can see how displacement affects identity in
4
someone whose own narrative self is externalized. While Luís Bernardo adapts
somewhat to relocating to the African coast, he ultimately commits suicide because of
his inability to liberate himself from the aspects of his narratively constructed identity,
aspects which relate to what Ken Wilber terms "script pathology."1
Bernardo Carvalho, on the other hand, depicts two different sides of the
narrated self in his novel, Nove noites. A novel that is strongly influenced by his own
lived experiences, Nove noites is composed of two different narratives, one that follows
the life and suicide of American anthropologist Buell Quain, and the other that is the
story of the narrator in the first-person. This Brazilian novel provides a bridge between
the third-person focus of Sousa Tavares, and the almost fluid first-person narratives of
José Eduardo Agualusa, by enveloping the third-person story of Buell Quain within the
greater first-person story of the unnamed narrator. Buell Quain, like Luís Bernardo
Valença, is a character who, despite his travels, cannot rid himself of the social and
cultural baggage that is a part of his self-narrative and who, ultimately, commits suicide
as well. However, there is a different dynamic in this novel that allows the reader to see
how narratives can be reappropriated and utilized as a means of transformation or
adaptation, much like the travel experiences themselves.
In this novel, travel is an integral experience in the process of seeking the self.
However, the narrator travels to the Amazon in Brazil and later to New York in order to
understand the story of the American anthropologist whose life seems uncannily tied to
1
Ken Wilber's integral consciousness theory will also be a predominant theoretical reference throughout
this dissertation, as we will discuss the internal and external components of identity development and
their relation to the narrated self.
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his own. In this manner Bernardo Carvalho demonstrates how the narrator uses both
travel and the story of Buell Quain to find a greater understanding of himself. Like
concentric circles, the narrator's story envelops that of Buell Quain but also transcends
it. Neither limited to identifying with the tragic anthropologist nor driven to dismiss
him, the narrator uses his obsession with the life and death of Buell Quain as an impulse
to travel through physical and psychological spaces in order to tie together the
fragmented aspects of his own identity. Furthermore, Bernardo Carvalho uses much of
his own narrative in developing this unnamed narrator, toying with the boundaries
between history, non-fiction, and fiction, and also demonstrating less adherence to
literary tradition than Sousa Tavares and more of a tendency to develop something
unique through the reappropriation of fictional and non-fictional stories.
In the works of José Eduardo Agualusa, on the other hand, the understanding of
the relationship between the narrative and the self is significantly more elaborate. By
including elements of his own biography into much of his fictional production, Agualusa
demonstrates the transformational capacity of narrative from a first-person perspective
that asserts the supreme importance of storytelling. In his works, his characters change
their selves and their lives through the stories they choose to tell about themselves.
They embody completely different identities, and they fluidly transition from one
identity and one life to another within the space of his novels and short-stories by using
narrative as a vehicle. Being narrator, character, and author, Agualusa participates in
this through using the narrative medium on himself. As he writes the stories of his own
travels, his fictional universe suddenly emerges in works that begin as non-fiction; he
6
fictionalizes himself in the process, and engages with both fictional and real characters
through a voice that seems to be his own. Always centering on characters that travel
throughout the Lusophone world and beyond, Agualusa demonstrates how the
conscious use of narrative combined with travel creates the opportunity for characters
to selectively live different lives.
Prior to entering into these discussions about the converging points between
narrative self, conscious awareness, and travel, it is important to understand how travel
has affected the Portuguese-speaking world throughout the past five centuries. Being a
nation that earned its now-lost glory through exploration and discovery, Portugal also
spread its language and a rich history of travel throughout the world. However, the
Portuguese legacy has left behind very distinct nuances in each of the countries to be
discussed in this dissertation, as the social, cultural, and historical circumstances in
Portugal, Angola, São Tomé e Príncipe, Goa, and Brazil are all unique.
History and Travel Narratives in the Lusophone World
Beginning with the overseas expansion in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries,
travel has been an integral part of the national and cultural narrative of Portugal,
carrying the obsession with travel throughout the exploits of exploration, and later
colonization, in Africa, Asia, and South America. The traveler has been a central figure in
Lusophone literature from the annals of navigational overseas voyages such as the
Crónica do descobrimento e conquista da Guiné, by Eanes Gomes de Zurara (ca. 1470 – 3
7
or 4), the Esmeraldo de situ orbis by Duarte Pacheco Pereira (ca. 1480/91 – ca. 1534),
the Roteiro da primeira viagem de Vasco da Gama (Vasco da Gama, 1469 – 1524), and
the Carta de Pêro Vaz de Caminha a el-rei D. Manuel sobre o achamento do Brasil (15th
century), as well as the poetic and fictional depictions of travel in works such as Os
Lusiadas, by Luís Vaz de Camões (1524? – 1580) and Peregrinação by Fernão Mendes
Pinto (d. 1583). Being a small nation with limited capacity for growth in Europe,
Portugal turned its eyes toward the vast expanse of the Atlantic in order to create its
empire. It is what Luciana Stegano Picchio, in her 1999 book, Mar aberto, terms a
nation of frontiers:
O facto é que, por definição, Portugal é, na Europa, o país da fronteira. E não já da
fronteira terrestre, que o separa da Espanha e que foi estabelecida pela história
recente entre dois países e Estados pertencentes a um mesmo território, mas sim
da fronteira geológica entre terra e mar, entre Europa e Oceano. (19)
As Piccio affirms, Portugal is a nation whose borders extended out beyond the Atlantic
and whose cultural expansion was integral in the dissemination of its national and
cultural identity. With its expansion outward, the Portuguese culture became
intrinsically tied to two different concepts that are related to the need for travel as a
form of self-identification, the concepts of saudade and desassossego. Both of these
concepts have left lasting impressions on the nations and people who now make up the
Portuguese-speaking world, and they can be found throughout works of music, poetry,
and prose.
8
Saudade is a concept that is closely related to nostalgia of what once was, and
what is expected, in a sense, to return. It is tied to the traveler because it correlates to a
longing for the homeland, a land representative of the culture and people left behind,
that may or may not be seen again but that are held close to the traveler's heart and
mind as he leaves his homeland and journeys to other places, experiencing new
elements of culture and coming into contact with the Other. Saudade is also strongly
experienced by those who remain when the traveler departs, as they wait for their
loved one to return and maintain the expectation that the life they once had may be
continued in the future. However, this concept is engrained in the Lusophone world
beyond the personal sphere and encompasses a range of emotions that are not only
associated with interpersonal relationships, but also with the larger identifications with
nationalism and culture.
Desassossego, on the other hand, relates to a feeling of longing in a somewhat
different manner. It is a concept that is translated into English as "disquiet" or
"disquietude," but which encompasses a sense of internal lack or need for ontological
understanding. It is exemplified by the travelers discussed in the later chapters, as the
search for meaning or self that generates the impulse to leave the known world behind
and seek understanding, knowledge, or fulfillment on the levels of existence or identity.
In contrast to saudade, which relates to what has been left behind or what has left,
desassossego is what generates the impulse to leave, it initiates the sense of lack that
inspires the process of seeking.
9
Both of these concepts are present in the travel narratives of the Lusophone
world, and they each have their own social and cultural nuances in reference to the
travelers' nation of origin. As a general concept, saudade has permeated Lusophone
culture throughout the once-extensive Portuguese-speaking Empire, and it continues to
be central to the expression of self and national identities throughout the ex-colonies of
Brazil, Lusophone Africa, Asia, as well as its native Portugal. Its impact and entwinement
in the fabric of the Lusophone identity can be seen in all forms of artistic cultural
representation, from journalism, poetry, and fiction, to the popular music that emerges
in Portugal, Brazil, the Azores, Lusophone Africa, and Lusophone Asia. From the fados of
Portugal and the sambas of Brazil, to the mornas of Cape Verde, saudade underlies the
cultures that comprise the Lusophone world, and yet it has singular connotations for
each that are culturally unique to the region where these types of music and literary
production are created.
In Portugal, travel narratives are intrinsically connected to the memory of the
Portuguese seabourne Empire, and they are often closely tied with the loss of the global
impact and prestige that the nation experienced during the sixteenth century. This has
influenced the literary and cultural identity of Portugal ever since, finding its way into
the forms of national representation through artistic and intellectual production. The
sense of loss has progressively been reaffirmed in the Portuguese literary tradition as
each colony gained its independence, beginning with Brazil in 1822, continuing with the
independence of Goa in 1961, and finally the Luso-African colonies in 1975. As will be
demonstrated through the example of Miguel Sousa Tavares's journalism and fiction in
10
the first chapter, questions of national identity in relation to the loss and mistreatment
of the colonies remains a point of literary, political, and social contention in Portugal to
the present day. At the same time, the Portuguese attachment to its past glories
through saudade has been a focus of criticism in reference to the stagnation within the
nation. Sousa Tavares's narratives emerge from the nationalistic perspective of
characters and narrators who are deeply invested in the significance of the Portuguese
colonial experiences. In his works, the reader is confronted with the types of criticisms
and concerns of the colonial state that still preoccupy Portuguese citizens and
intellectuals to this day.2
In the Brazilian and Luso-African context, travel narratives and saudade have
somewhat different connotations, as these two Lusophone entities were the products of
colonization, and are not the colonizers themselves. The sense of loss and of cultural
disruption occurs here in a somewhat different manner. In the literature to be
discussed in the following chapters, the narratives of Bernardo Carvalho and José
Eduardo Agualusa demonstrate a search for a different kind of historical and cultural
identity foundation, one that is more closely related to their nations of origin, Brazil and
2
An example of this is Miguel Vale de Almeida's excellent work, An Earth-Colored Sea: "Race," Culture and
the Politics of Identity in the Post-Colonial Portuguese-Speaking World, in which he states: "The journey
back home is an integral part of anthropology. The (Afro-)Brazilian experience made me look at Portugal
with different eyes: first of all, because I became aware of the Luso-Tropicalism of sorts in Brazilian
common sense; and then because I felt uncomfortable with the persistence of an imperial and
expansionistic rhetoric in Portugal, even in the discourse on postcolonial identity reconfiguration. This
was most obvious during the celebrations of the five hundreds years of the Discoveries, particularly the
"Discovery" of Brazil. Furthermore, the expression "Lusophony" has been gaining increasing currency as a
device that helps to regain – in both the "spiritual realm" of the cultural products (language, with
"Lusophony") and the institutional one, with the CPLP [Comunidade dos Países de Língua Portuguesa] –
that which has been lost in the political and material one (Empire as such)." p. 45
11
Angola. As posited by Peter Hulme in his article "Including America" from 1995, the
scope of post-colonial discourse is applicable not only to the African and Asian arenas of
the twentieth century, but also to the decolonization of the Americas of the nineteenth
century, including Brazil.3 This theory of post-colonialism is further corroborated by the
work of Walter Mignolo in "La razón postcolonial: herencias coloniales y teórias
postcoloniales," in which Mignolo separates the distinctions of colonies into three types:
"type a" refers to what Anne McClintock and others have termed "breakaway settler
colonies;" colonies of prolonged settlement before 1945 are classified by Mignolo as
"type b;" and colonies of prolonged settlement after 1945 are "type c."4 Of these, Brazil
belongs to the "type a" category, as it gained independence from the Portuguese crown
in 1822 without a violent revolution and became its own sovereign nation.
As such, Brazilian intellectual history and literature reflects a longing for a home
that was never concretely established, neither as Portugal, nor as a nation that is a part
of a unified "Latin America."5 This can be observed throughout the literary and critical
production of Brazil beginning in the nineteenth century. The literary movement of
romanticism in Brazil began the attempt to define the Brazilian identity, and therefore
3
Hulme, Peter. "Including America." ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature, XXVI, 1 (January
1995), 117 – 23.
4
Fiddian, Robin. "Locating the Object: Mapping the Field: the Place of the Cultures of Latin America and
Lusophone Africa in Postcolonial Studies." Postcolonial Perspectives on the Cultures of Latin America and
Lusophone Africa. ed. Robin Fiddian. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2000, p. 7.
5
Again in her article "Locating the Object: Mapping the Field: the Place of the Cultures of Latin America
and Lusophone Africa in Postcolonial Studies," Robin Fiddian describes the ambiguity of the label "Latin
America" for describing the countries south of the United States border. Fiddian demonstrates the
inequity of the label, as it is related predominantly to discourse surrounding the Spanish speaking nations
of Mexico, Central and South America, and fails to include nations such as Brazil and the Hispanic and
Francophone Caribbean.
12
created a foundation for a national identity that would serve as a point of departure
from which Brazil could engage with the rest of the world. This is found in the literary
works of authors such as José de Alencar, with his foundational fictions O Guarani
(1857) and Iracema (1865), as well as in later authors such as Machado de Assis (1839 –
1908), and Lima Barreto (1881 – 1922). These authors made a monumental impact on
the process of the cultural identification of Brazil, a process which continued throughout
the nineteenth and twentieth century and which is, in fact, continually growing through
the present day. Much like the seeking out and developing of identity in the characters
and narrators that will be explored in the following chapters, the creation of national
identity is also a perpetual process which must continue to evolve in order to avoid
decadence and stagnation. However, the narratives that define national identity need a
point of origin. In this sense, both Brazil and Angola, being ex-colonies, began to seek
their own identities after the expulsion of Portugal.
In contemporary Brazilian thought this search led to the interior of the nation
with the modernist movement and the Semana de Arte Moderna of 1922 in the city of
São Paulo, led by Mário de Andrade. During this week, a group of Brazilian artists,
writers, and intellectuals converged to discuss the future of the national image, and the
direction that the intellectual pursuits of Brazil should take in order to strengthen
national identity both inside and outside of Brazil. This event marked the beginning of
modernism in Brazil, and was to constitute an intellectual rupture with the nation's
attachments to Vanguardismo, a movement strongly influenced by European artistic
and intellectual elite in the early twentieth century. Travel played a significant role in
13
this movement, as the organizers of the Semana de Arte Moderna traveled into Brazil in
order to find cultural forms of expression that were considered truly Brazilian, as
opposed to the adopted and exalted European trends.
The Semana de Arte Moderna was also responsible for the concept of Brazilian
antropofagia. This concept of antropofagia, as proposed by Oswald de Andrade in his
"Manifesto Antropofágico," became integral to the understanding of the Brazilian
national identity of the time: it is the concept that Brazilian culture is created through
the consumption, digestion, and integration of elements of other cultures: particularly
in reference to Europe, and later the United States. Based on the colonial history of
encounters with anthropophagous, or cannibal, tribes indigenous to Brazil, antropofagia
was at once a reification of the European intellectual influences on Brazilian thought, as
well as an exaltation of the uniqueness of Brazil through the incorporation of its
indigenous heritage. At the same time, antropofagia allowed for Brazilian intellectuals
to incorporate and appropriate their African cultural heritage, as well as any other
intellectual or cultural expression considered a part of their identity. This is best
exemplified in the literature of the time in Mário de Andrade's Macunaíma. (1928)
Throughout the remainder of the twentieth century, Brazilian intellectuals
continued to explore and expand on their perceived origins of national identity. This
pursuit manifested in various ways: through works of anthropology, social and literary
criticism, as well as different perspectives on Brazilian historiography. From the
sociological works of Gilberto Freyre came the pivotal book Casa Grande e Senzala,
(1933) on the patrimonial and miscegenated heritage of Brazil, which fortified, in the
14
sociological context, the "fabula das três raças," and the exceptionalism of Brazil via the
Portuguese heritage. It also brought with it the connotations of American influence
from the United States, which would also be a point of contention among Brazilian
scholars throughout Brazilian intellectual history.6 In other foundational works, such as
Manoel Bonfim's O Brasil na América (1929), Sérgio Buarque de Holanda's As Raízes do
Brasil (1936), and Caio Prado, Jr.'s Formação do Brasil Contemporâneo (1942), the
marked distinctions between Brazil and Hispanic America are clearly defined and utilized
to accentuate the uniqueness of Brazil in relation to Hispanic America.
While attempting to differentiate their own nation from the Spanish-speaking
nations of Latin America, Brazilian scholars also utilized the United States as a point of
comparison to alternately exalt their view of racial inclusion through miscegenation as
opposed to the United States' exclusionary racial politics, and at the same time used the
United States as an example for the direction Brazil should take towards modernization
and progress. In this sense, Brazilian intellectuals have continually struggled to
understand their national identity by demonstrating their cultural differences with the
countries surrounding them, as well as the hegemonic powers of the United States and
Europe. These intellectual movements accentuate the underlying need to establish a
unified national identity, to seek the mythic home that the Portuguese inheritance left
within the Brazilian culture. In Chapter 2, Bernardo Carvalho's Nove noites explores this
search for identity as the narrator attempts to draw together his own self-narrative
6
Gilberto Freyre was a disciple of the late Franz Boas, the german-born "father of American
anthropology" who will be discussed in greater depth in Chapter 2, in relation to the novel Nove noites, by
Bernardo Carvalho.
15
through tracing the life and death of American anthropologist Buell Quain, a
contemporary and colleague of Gilberto Freyre's, who was also trained by Franz Boas at
Columbia University and who died in the Brazilian Amazon in 1939. Carvalho's narrative
echoes the Brazilian intellectual history by attempting to discover what lies within the
self, or the national, identity vis-à-vis the perspective of the Other.
While Portugal had an established, unified homeland and identity prior to the
overseas expansion, both Brazil and Angola had to reconcile the linguistic, cultural, and
social elements of the Portuguese culture after their departure. This, of course, has
different ramifications for each of these nations, as each has its own significant cultural,
social, and ethnic considerations. As is illustrated in the two works The Postcolonial
Literature of Lusophone Africa (1996), by Patrick Chabal, and A History of Postcolonial
Lusophone Africa (Chabal et. al., 2002), the complexities related to the decolonization of
the Luso-African colonies varied from one colony to the next, and the racial and cultural
dynamics led to further conflicts in places like Mozambique and Angola. Of these two
larger colonies, Chabal states: "Angola and Mozambique were vast continental
territories of diverse African groups with a history of uneven Portuguese presence and
poor colonial integration" (The Postcolonial Literature of Lusophone Africa, 14). Indeed,
the diversity of the groups and their disputes over who would gain sovereignty in the
post-colonial era, combined with the absence of infrastructure that was left in the wake
of the Portuguese exit en masse, were the catalysts that would ignite civil wars that
lasted until 1994 in Mozambique, and 2002 in Angola.
16
The Luso-African colonies would be categorized by Walter Mignolo as "type b,"
or "colonias de profundo asentamiento antes de 1945" ("La razón postcolonial," 54).
They differ from Brazil in that they were not breakaway settler colonies, but instead had
to fight for their independence and did not see it granted until after the fall of the
Salazar regime on April 25, 1974. Furthermore, the instability that proceeded after the
decolonization of Angola was a result of deep-rooted ethnic conflicts that existed prior
to the five hundred years of Portuguese occupation and were exacerbated due to
slavery during the colonial period. Patrick Chabal states:
Angola had been since at least the sixteenth century linked with Brazil through the
slave trade. During that period there emerged in Luanda a commercial and
administrative Creole elite – Portuguese-speaking, mixed race, Catholic, and
cosmopolitan – involved in the triangular Atlantic trade. This Creole society lived
in Africa but its connections with the interior of the continent were limited to the
commerce which sustained the local economy. They had their representatives
inland who dealt with local Africans. The slave trade was the main, but not the
only, commercial basis for this relationship between Luanda and the hinterland.
Other commodities were also traded but, until the nineteenth century, it was the
business of slavery which underpinned the relationship between Creole and
African societies. (A History of Postcolonial Lusophone Africa, 108)
These ethnic conflicts continued to develop throughout the colonial period, creating
increased tensions between the intellectual and administrative elite in Luanda and the
Africans of the hinterlands of Angola. Furthermore, Chabal emphasizes the fact that this
division was aggravated in the late nineteenth century after the Berlin Conference of
1884-5, when Portugal sought to consolidate their hold over Angola through the
implementation of one overarching functional administration. As Chabal states this
17
created "sharp dichotomies between social and, inevitably, ethnic or racial groups"
(110) that gave rise to the different factions that would fight for sovereignty of the
nation once the Portuguese left the colony: that is, the MPLA (Movimento para a
Libertação de Angola), the FNLA (Frente Nacional para a Libertação de Angola), and
eventually, UNITA (União Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola).
The dynamics of the Angolan Civil Wars are vast and intricately connected to the
social, cultural, and ethnic history of the nation: before, during, and after the colonial
period. Yet the Portuguese colonization added distinct cultural elements that would
exacerbate the struggles for dominance and power in Angola. While the struggle for
power during the Civil Wars moved along racial and ethnic lines, the FNLA and later
UNITA fought under the banner of "traditionalism" which sought to gain sovereignty as
constituents of a "real" Africa, claiming that the leaders of the MPLA were "non-African"
because of their Creole and mixed racial demographic.7 Adding yet another dimension
to the already complicated dynamic of the Angolan Civil Wars was the involvement of
the super powers of the United States and the Soviet Block, who backed different
factions of the Angolan liberation fronts in order to attempt to secure hegemony in the
nation during the Cold War. The United States alternately supported the FNLA and later
UNITA, while the Soviets and Cuba supported the MPLA.8 Once the bloody Civil Wars
7
From A History of Postcolonial Lusophone Africa: "The FNLA liked to consider the MPLA Creole leadership
as a 'non-African' mixed race group disconnected from the 'real' Africa – even if a substantial number of
the MPLA leaders (including its head, Agostinho Neto) were in fact black African." p. 114.
8
In "Including America," Peter Hulme continues his assertion of the importance of including American
countries into postcolonial discourse by talking about the political and ideological connects between
postcolonial African colonies and those of Latin America such as Cuba and Brazil. The strong cultural
alliances between Angola and Brazil are also illustrated in significant detail by Patrick Chabal.
18
reached their end in 2002 due to economic, political, and military exhaustion, it was the
MPLA that gained control of the nation.
With these types of upheaval in mind, it is comprehensible that saudade would
be a prevalent concept in the Angolan narrative, as it furnishes a veiled hope for a
return to a sense of place in the world, if not a sense of peace. However, with Angola as
with Brazil this is a concept that is groundless, it is uprooted because it originates in the
land and culture of the colonizer, and is not intrinsic to the cultural, ethnic, or physical
spheres of Brazil and Angola. In this manner, Brazilian and Angolan narratives have both
the need and the freedom to seek out a sense of cultural or national identity that
includes but supercedes the Portuguese heritage: includes because they are created
with intrinsic Lusophone elements, and supercedes because they must include all of the
unique nuances that are inherently Brazilian or Angolan. At the same time, these
national identities are created in reference to the non-Lusophone world. This provides a
sense of identity malleability that was first seen, in the Brazilian literary context, in
characters such as Mário de Andrade's Macunaíma, characters who have the capacity to
incorporate elements of different social and cultural influences and backgrounds, who
are chameleonic in their nature but also maintain a measure of cohesiveness despite
their various transformations. There is no better example of these characters than in
the narratives of José Eduardo Agualusa. In Chapter 3, we will see one such character as
he moves from non-fiction into fiction, from one end of the Lusophone world to
another, and analyze the ways that each transformation makes him more viable and
more vibrant through the words and travel experiences of José Eduardo Agualusa.
19
The author's travel: journalism and fiction
The three authors to be discussed here were chosen because they are both
journalists and fiction writers, each of them coming from a different corner of the AfroLuso-Brazilian Triangle. As such, their works are analyzed with reference to their nonfictional representations of the places to which they have traveled, which are also the
places into which their fictional characters and narrators are rewritten. Each of these
authors has his own distinct narrative style, one reminiscent of the history of travel that
pervades the Lusophone heritage while at the same time taking into account each
individual's own national identity and circumstances. Each also incorporates significant
cultural and social elements that are relative to their country of origin.
As such, Miguel Sousa Tavares's narratives, both journalistic and fictional,
demonstrate a preoccupation with the Portuguese national image as it pertains to the
ex-colonies and the fall of the Portuguese seaborne empire. While Sousa Tavares is at
times a staunch critic of social and political aspects of Portugal, his writings reveal a
vested interest in analyzing how post-colonial Portugal relates to the African excolonies, to other Portuguese-speaking countries, and to the non Portuguese-speaking
world. Furthermore, Sousa Tavares's fictional works are strongly influenced by the
Portuguese literary tradition, and he attempts to create his narratives in a style that is
reminiscent of the realist works by canonical authors such as Eça de Quieroz. This
20
preoccupation with national image and tradition sets Sousa Tavares apart from the
other two authors, as it demonstrates a sense of cultural identity that was defined prior
to the colonial period. Despite his criticisms of Portugal, Sousa Tavares's characters
often embody the same cultural patterns that are prevalent in the types of intellectual
and literary systems that their author critiques.
In Sul (1998), a collection of his travel writings throughout his years as a
journalist, Sousa Tavares's interest in the Lusophone world manifests in his observations
and interactions with the peoples and cultures of different places in Lusophone Asia,
Africa, and Brazil. Of these, his chapter on São Tomé e Príncipe, entitled "As ilhas
maltratadas," was the basis for the larger work of fiction that Sousa Tavares published in
2003, Equador. While Equador is a somewhat historiographic metafiction,9 which is set
in the early years of the twentieth century, much of the material that is included in the
novel can be found in the observations and depictions of São Tomé e Príncipe that
Sousa Tavares chronicles as his own firsthand accounts on the islands. It is interesting
that Sousa Tavares picks these two islands as the setting for his novel which greatly
criticizes the historical Portuguese colonial system, as these islands, like Cape Verde,
were only inhabited when the Portuguese brought African slaves there to work the
sugarcane and cacao plantations in the sixteenth century. As such, they are isolated, at
least geographically, from the older ethnic and tribal conflicts of other colonies such as
Angola and Mozambique, creating a unique set of cultural and geographical
circumstances that are accentuated in both Sul and Equador.
9
As defined by Linda Hutcheon in The Poetics of Postmodernism, New York: Routledge, 1988.
21
In Bernardo Carvalho's Nove noites (2002), we find another instance of overlap
between fictional narrative and the lived experience of the author. In this case,
however, the interplay between fiction and non-fiction becomes more explicit, as the
author creates a first-person narrator whose life experiences closely mirror his own, and
whose narrative constantly includes and interacts with real historical figures that, in
some cases, were still living at the time of the publication of the novel. In this Brazilian
context we see less of an adherence to a rigidly defined literary tradition, as opposed to
Sousa Tavares who attempts to closely skirt the line of Portuguese realism in Equador.
Instead, Bernardo Carvalho's fictional narrative interacts with his own biographical
experiences and with those of other living or dead historical figures, at the same time
pulling together multiple genres into one work. His narrative and his characters
demonstrate the type of freedom that is so characteristic to the postmodern novel, as
they traverse the spaces of history, biography, fiction, and non-fiction to create a story
of seeking to understand and create identity through developing a narrative self vis-à-vis
the stories of others. At the same time, Carvalho's narrator is highly introverted and
introspective, and as he guides the reader through his narrative experience he seldom
includes dialogical interactions with other characters. It is apparent in Carvalho's fiction
that the most important space to travel for the narrator is the internal space, that of
self-identification and self-narrative, and the interaction with the Other functions only
as a means to elucidate this process.
As we move from the Brazilian context and the work of Bernardo Carvalho to
that of José Eduardo Agualusa, the narrative development becomes somewhat more
22
intricate, as Agualusa's characters and narrators not only undergo similar processes of
self-construction as those of Bernardo Carvalho, but they also do so while
simultaneously engaging other, oftentimes equally complex, characters. In Chapter 3,
we will analyze the development of one of Agualusa's recurring characters, Plácido
Domingo, a character named after the real-life opera tenor, who initially appears in the
collection of travel stories Fronteiras perdidas: contos para viajar (1998), and later in
Um estranho em Goa (2000). What is unique about Agualusa's narratives is that, as he
develops his fictional characters, he also repeatedly does so while including a literary
verson of himself and often using his own biographical narratives in a manner that
consistently blurs the line between fiction and non-fiction. While he develops his
depictions of people, places, and events in his narratives on travel throughout the
world, he also utilizes a voice that ambiguously fluctuates between the self as author
and a fictional narrator. This establishes an interesting paradigm through which the
reader can engage with continually evolving characters through the use of inter- and
intratextuality, and at the same time consider the importance and/or validity of
separating narratives into rigidly established genres, which in a sense fragments the
overall narrative human experience. In engaging with Agualusa's work the reader has
the experience of a type of storytelling that transcends the boundaries of Western
literary production because it considers dream and reality, fiction and non-fiction,
history and popular culture all equally relevant in conveying a narrative of human
experience in a uniquely African manner.
23
For these authors, there is a spectrum of seeking identity that ranges from the
nationalist preoccupation to questioning how one defines the self in a globalized world.
The means through which their characters and narrators engage these questions is a
reflection of the larger question of how identity and agency are developed in these very
different corners of the Portuguese-speaking world, all of which are ultimately united
through the common Lusophone heritage. While these authors are by no means
considered as a representative whole of their respective nations, their narratives allow
an excellent opportunity to see how their individual literary productions relate to their
own sense of belonging and/or displacement as citizens of Portugal, Brazil, and Angola,
all sharing a linguistic tradition within the Portuguese-speaking world.
Furthermore, the utilization of narrative and meta-narrative in the works of each
author also demonstrates their different levels of attachment to form and tradition. As
we progress from a novel that is strongly influenced by concerns of nationalism and
national image, to one that mimics the trajectory of national identity but ultimately
breaks free of the narrated pattern, to another which fluidly manipulates not only
national but global narratives: we see the importance of engaging our cultural and
literary narratives consciously in the process of learning to adapt more fluidly in an everchanging, post-colonial globalized world. Through their travel experiences and their
personal and fictional accounts of travel, these authors can serve to demonstrate the
evolution of narrative selves and narrative consciousness. While their stories are
characterized by their Portuguese linguistic tradition, the process through which each
24
engages issues of nationalism, self-narrative, and consciousness are examples of ways
we can each engage our own self-narratives.
25
CHAPTER 1: THE MISTREATED ISLANDS OF EQUADOR
Viajar, mais do que a travessia
de um espaço geográfico,
concreto, é o sonho que a
leitura e a inovação da própria
memória desencadeiam.
- Nuno Judice
Com certeza, em sentido lato,
tudo, a começar pela vida,
desde o cais do nascimento até
ao da morte, seria viagem.
- Luciana Stegano
Picchio
As a longtime journalist and recent novelist, Miguel Sousa Tavares has in part
created his career on the foundation of his travel experiences. While participating in
often polemical debates about the social, political, and historical image and culture of
Portugal, he also creates some of the most vivid and powerful depictions of the places
to which he travels in his literary works. As he himself has stated, his training as a
journalist has significantly impacted the way in which he writes the foreign spaces to
which he travels, as he attempts to captivate the people and places from a photographic
perspective.
26
At the same time, the narratives that Miguel Sousa Tavares writes are
inextricably connected to his own cultural and social background, and the reader is
often confronted with this writer's criticisms and preoccupations with the image of his
native Portugal. Through the literary lens that provides the vivid and exotified images of
places like Goa, the Amazon, or São Tomé e Príncipe, Miguel Sousa Tavares also projects
his own Lusophone identity, with its nuanced cultural and historical implications. In his
journalistic non-fiction the reader has the opportunity to engage directly with Sousa
Tavares's firsthand impressions of places that were Portuguese colonies up until the
recent past. He discusses the effects of Portuguese colonization on the peoples of these
nations as well as on the Portuguese, both those who remain in the colonies and those
who have returned to Portugal, and he uses these accounts to situate his own cultural
identity as a Lusophone traveler and writer.
While Miguel Sousa Tavares' travel writings are fascinating and full of social and
cultural commentary and critique, they are also situated in a long-standing Lusophone
tradition of narrative travel experiences in journalism, critical essay, and fiction. Sousa
Tavares uses his journalistic accounts of travels as a foundation for his fictional works.
This has been a Portuguese tradition dating back to the initial Portuguese overseas
encounters, where writers such as Fernão Mendes Pinto or Luís Vaz de Camões wrote
the experience of traveling abroad using, overlapping, and sometimes intersecting nonfiction and fiction. However, Sousa Tavares's fictional work is modeled more closely
after the realism of such nineteenth century authors as Eça de Queiroz or Ramalho
Ortigão, both of whom traveled abroad extensively and utilized their experiences of
27
other parts of the world as the source material for such works as A relíquia, published in
1887.
In two works in particular, Sul (1998) and Equador (2003), Sousa Tavares writes
about the tiny equatorial islands of São Tomé e Príncipe. Once part of the Portuguese
colonial empire, these two islands were uninhabited until the arrival of the Portuguese
in the sixteenth century. Later used as centers of production and exportation of coffee
and cacau, the islands were populated during the first century of Portuguese colonial
rule by Portuguese landowners and the slaves they brought to work the plantations
from the larger colony of Angola. In Sul and Equador the reader engages with different
perspectives of life on the islands, as one is a work of non-fiction and the other of
fiction; in Sul the reader is given the firsthand impression that Miguel Sousa Tavares had
upon visiting the island of São Tomé, prior to turning this experience into the much
longer fictional work of Equador, which is set during the beginning of the twentieth
century, at a time when Portugal was under intense economic and political scrutiny by
England for the alleged continued use of slave labor despite the supposed abolition of
slavery throughout the Portuguese empire in 1869, which demanded the transition to a
fully free society by 1878.10
When read and analyzed in conversation with one another, these two works
provide a variety of perspectives on the nature of travel and dislocation, as well as an
interesting opportunity to see how the non-fiction production of Miguel Sousa Tavares
10
o
From the Boletim Geral das Colónias. I – 001. PORTUGAL. Agência Geral das Colónias. N 001 – Vol. I,
1925: "Em 1869 um decreto aboliu o estado de escravidão até ao termo definitivo de 1878, o qual,
felizmente, se realizou antes desta última época." p. 138
28
is directly connected to his more expansive fictional works. This allows the reader to
see the impact of travel on the author from the perspective of journalism. On the other
hand, the reader can follow the narratives of space as they are recreated in the fictional
work of literature and see how the same concepts, places, and to an extent even
characters re-emerge in the longer, more drawn out and emotively engaging form of
fiction, creating what the writer and philosopher Vergílio Ferreira termed a literature of
"ideias com sangue."
In this interplay between the fiction and the non-fiction, the reader is constantly
engaged by the image of the traveler who confronts other spaces, peoples, and cultures
that are initially projected as an extension of his own, due to the colonial affiliations
between Portugal and the ex-colonies of São Tomé e Príncipe. However, the element of
cultural difference is constantly present, and often the traveler looks to find traces of his
own culture amidst the sometimes exotified other. In this sense, the narrative voice, be
it that of Miguel Sousa Tavares as a traveling journalist or that of his semi-omniscient
narrator in Equador, reflects how the process of travel relates to a confrontation with
the self vis-à-vis the Other.
São Tomé in the gaze of Miguel Sousa Tavares
29
The collection of travel writings, Sul, by Miguel Sousa Tavares, begins with the
following poem, written by Sousa Tavares' mother, famous poet Sophia de Melo
Breyner Andreson:
DERIVA
Vi as águas os cabos vi as ilhas
E o longo baloiçar dos coqueirais
Vi lagunas azuis como safiras
Rápidas aves furtivos animais
Vi prodígios espantos maravilhas
Vi homens nus bailando nos areais
E ouvi o fundo som das suas falas
Que já nenhum de nós entendeu mais
Vi ferros e vi setas e vi lanças
Oiro também à flor das ondas finas
E o diverso fulgor de outros metais
Vi pérolas e conchas e corais
Desertos fontes trémulas campinas
Vi o frescor das coisas naturais
Só do Preste João não vi sinais
As ordens que levava não cumpri
E assim contando tudo quanto vi
Não sei se tudo errei ou descobri
This poem serves as an excellent introduction to the following depictions that
Sousa Tavares gives of the different places to which he has traveled, and the different
encounters he has shared with other people and cultures. It also accentuates the long
history of travel narrative that is intrinsically tied to the Portuguese cultural identity,
leaving the reader to ponder the impact one has when traveling and interacting with the
Other. The poetic voice states, "E assim contando tudo quanto vi/ Não sei se tudo errei
30
ou descobri", and this astutely encapsulates the rhetoric of travel and recounting the
travel experience in an eloquent and lucid manner, for the traveler can never be fully
aware of the impact he has had on the people or places he has found, but what remains
and what can always be the perpetual gift and purpose of the traveler is the retelling of
what he has lived in far off lands.
Taking this as a point of departure, Sousa Tavares's epigraph begins by stating
"Eu sou um contador de histórias. Pagam-me para isso, pagam-me para percorrer o
mundo e contar o que vi." It is as a storyteller that he presents himself to the reader,
even before asserting himself as a journalist. He is the storyteller that carries the
confluence of narratives that inspire, inform, and shape the accounts he goes on to
write of places he has been to throughout the world, as well as the people who inhabit
those spaces. In Sul, Sousa Tavares narrates the stories of his travels to the south,
including everything from Southern Portugal to Egypt, Brazil, and S. Tomé and Príncipe.
He states:
Umas vezes vi tragédias, miséria, coisas que magoavam descrever. Outras vezes
vi sonhos, esperança, histórias felizes. Este é um livro que reúne apenas a parte
boa daquilo que me coube em sorte ver e contar. É um livro de viagens, um livro
de alguém que, como nos sonhos de infância, teve a sorte de partir tantas vezes
com pouco mais que um saco de viagem e uma máquina de filmar ou de
fotografar.
Though a work of non-fiction, Sousa Tavares immediately stylizes himself as the
sort of errant traveler who could be the narrator or protagonist of a literary work of
fiction, one who has returned from all sort of adventures overseas only to recount the
31
wonders and horrors seen abroad in less "civilized" spaces. His tone and narrated self
are reminiscent of the errant travelers in other Lusophone works such as Peregrinação11
or even Viagens na minha terra12. In his retelling of the voyages he has undertaken,
Sousa Tavares definitely reflects what Nuno Júdice comments on in his article "A viagem
na literatura portuguesa," when he states “Viajar, mais do que a travessia de um espaço
geográfico, concreto, é o sonho que a leitura e a inovação da própria memória
desencadeiam.” (57)
It is important to maintain awareness of these details when engaging a text by
Sousa Tavares, as his attention to minutiae and the focus with which he attempts to
captivate and convey the physical spaces he visits and experiences are always colored by
literary flairs that border on the line of poetics. This will facilitate the later discussion of
11
The way that Sousa Tavares begins the collection of travel journals is reminiscent of the writings of
people like Fernão Mendes Pinto because he situates himself as the errant observer, who initially speaks
of having seen misfortune during his travels, but who, having returned safely to tell of what he has seen,
is ultimately grateful for having embarked on these adventures. Take, for example, the beginning
paragraph of the first chapter of Fernão Mendes Pinto's Peregrinação: "Quando às vezes ponho diante
dos olhos os muitos e grandes trabalhos e infortúnios que por mim passaram, começados no princípio da
minha primeira idade e continuados pela maior parte e melhor tempo da minha vida, acho que com muita
razão me posso queixar da ventura, que parece que tomou por particular tenção e empresa sua
perseguir-me e maltratar-me, como se isso lhe houvera de ser matéria de grande nome e de grande
glória, porque vejo que, não contente de me pôr na minha Patria, logo no começo da minha mocidade,
em tal estado que nela vivi sempre em misérias e em pobreza, e não sem alguns sobressaltos e perigos de
vida, me quis também levar às partes da Índia, onde em lugar do remédio que eu ia buscar a elas, me
foram crescendo com a idade os trabalhos e os perigos. Mas por outro lado, quando vejo que no meio de
todos estes perigos e trabalhos me quis Deus tirar sempre em salvo e pôr-me em segurança, acho que
não tenho tanta razão de me queixar por todos os males passados, quanta de lhe dar graças por esto só
bem presente, pois me quis conservar a vida para que eu pudesse fazer esta rude e tosca escritura que
por herança deixo a meus filhos (porque só para eles é minha tenção escrevê-la), para que eles vejam nela
estes meus trabalhos e perigos da vida que passei no discurso de vinte e um anos, em que fui treze vezes
cativo e dezassete vendido, nas partes da Índia, Etiópia, Arábia Feliz, China, Tartária, Macáçar, Samatra e
outras muitas províncias daquele oriental arcipélago dos confins da Ásia, a que os escritores chins,
siameses, guéus, e léquios, nomeiam em suas geografias por Pestana do Mundo, como ao diante espero
tratar muito particular e muito difusamente." p. 19-20.
12
In Viagens na Minha Terra, Almeida Garrett focuses on travel within Portugal, and still maintains the
first-person narrator perspective of a travel that is discovering unknown lands, in this sense he is rediscovering the regional differences that exist culturally throughout his own country.
32
the depiction of São Tomé in Equador, as Sousa Tavares's experience in writing the book
was informed by the scenery, the places, and the conversations he had while writing the
account of São Tomé that he provides in Sul, entitled "S. Tomé e Príncipe: as ilhas
maltratadas."
In an interview that Sousa Tavares gave to Isabel Coutinho, of the magazine
Público on December 13, 2003, he accentuates the importance of his travel experience
and physical presence in São Tomé prior to writing Equador. He states:
A minha escrita tem muito a ver com o olhar. Tudo o que escrevo começa pelo
olhar e pela memória do olhar que tenho sobre as coisas. Foi o meu olhar sobre
S. Tomé que me inspirou o livro. Queria transmitir às pessoas o que é que se
sente no clima de S. Tomé, o que é a humidade, o que são as roças, o que são os
mosquitos, o que é a malária, o que é o fundo do mar. Tudo coisas que fixei. A
memória para mim é a maior ferramenta da escrita. A memória do olhar.
The use of the Portuguese word "olhar" is very important in works of representation, be
they fictional or non-fiction. During the remainder of this 2003 interview, Sousa Tavares
repeatedly returns to this idea of "olhar" and to its importance in his work. As often
happens in the Portuguese language, and as we will see in greater depth in the chapters
to follow, the meaning of a word is often polysemous, and attempting to narrow it down
to one strict definition proves impossible. In this case, "olhar" means "to see" or "to
observe", but it is at the same time related to a manner of seeing or observing
something, it relates not only to the sensation of perception, but also to the internal
processes that this type of perception demands. As such, "olhar" is not only to see or
observe, but also to interpret, to analyze through one's own experiential framework, to
33
create and fixate an image that is not made solely of objective observation but of
mutual creation between the things the observer sees and the internal lens through
which he processes it. This is a process that has been studied at length in a variety of
disciplines, ranging from the anthropological work of Clifford Geertz13, to the work of
psychologists such as Krueger et al14,to name just a few examples, to the world of
literary criticism and social theory in hermeneutic scholars such as Wolfgang Iser and
Paul Ricoeur.15 The fact that Sousa Tavares is trained as a journalist creates the
opportunities for his travel experiences, which in turn are internalized and
reconstructed through the fictional medium. However, both processes are equally valid
for the conveyance of his own experience of other people and places.16
13
In his classic, Interpretation of Cultures, Geertz states: “In short, anthropological writings are themselves
interpretations, and second and third order ones to boot. (By definition, only a “native” makes first order
2
ones: it’s his culture.) They are, thus, fictions; fictions, in the sense that they are “something made,”
“something fashioned” – the original meaning of fictiō – not that they are false, unfactual, or merely “as
if” thought experiments.” p. 15
14
The chapter "Self as source and constraint of social knowledge", published by Joachim I. Krueger, Mark
D. Alicke, and David A. Dunning in the collection The Self and Social Judgment, also edited by these
psychologists, speaks of the phenomenon of projection of personal traits onto the scenarios and people
with which their study participants interacted. These psychologists focus their work on the role of selfimage and association in relation to social judgment and interaction. In this case, their work validates the
interpretive nature of journalistic work such as that of Sousa Tavares, demonstrating how, though
representational, it is not objective, but an amalgamation of the author's own projections interacting with
the spaces he visits.
15
Iser's reader-response theory asserts the importance of interaction between the written text and the
reader's own personal repertoire of experience, demonstrating how the interpretation of any text is
created through the interaction between what is written and the assumptions with which the reader fills
in the gaps of what is not in the text. His work The Act of Reading (1978) elucidates this process. Paul
Ricoeur, in Oneself as another, (1992) demonstrates how the self is constructed through a process of
narration, which also develops an understanding of the interaction between the narrated self and preexisting texts or narratives, this takes the concept of Iser from the mere interaction with text to the
textualized development of self identity.
16
Cristiane Costa speaks of this impact of journalism on fiction in her book of Brazilian journalists turned
novelists, Pena de aluguel: escritores jornalistas no Brasil, 1904 – 2004, when she states: “Para mim, a
influência do jornalismo na literatura não tem nada a ver com a linguagem, mas com a experiência. O
34
Though stemming from different disciplines, all of these perspectives are
integrally important in the experiencing and representing of what Paul Ricoeur terms
"the narrative unity of a life." As the reader interacts with the non-fiction accounts in
Sul, and later the fictional accounts in Equador, what the reader is engaging with is this
"narrative unity" in the experience of Sousa Tavares. This relates directly to Ken
Wilber's integral consciousness theory, which espouses the importance of perceiving all
the elements of the process of existence, without differentiating, on the level of
hierarchical value, the importance of the narrated experience in a work of non-fiction
versus a work of fiction. Which is not to say that both fiction and non-fiction should be
ascribed the same representational value, but on the level of demonstrating valid social
and lived experience, both function to convey the social knowledge through which
individuals learn and grow.17 With Sousa Tavares, as well as with the two authors in the
following chapters, what is relevant in their works are the narratives that they provide
as both fiction writers and journalists, with the awareness that the differentiating line
jornalismo permite entrar em contato com pessoas e situações sobre as quais você não faria a menor
idéia se não fosse pelo pretexto da reportagem. Ele funciona como uma fonte de histórias e
experiências.” São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2005.
17
In his discussion on Ricoeur's theoretical implications in leadership practices entitled "Authentic
leadership and the narrative self", Raymond T. Sparrow speaks of the importance of other experiencing
the narratives of others in the process of creating our own self-narrative, he states: "The implication of
this extension [identification with subject of narrative] is that individuals draw from the narratives of
those around them in formulating their own stories. There are many other potential sources of narrative
variation, including film, conversations with friends and acquaintances, or 'stories' told about
organizational founders (Ezzy, 1998). The stories of others potentially inform my story, albeit in an
'experimental' or provisional way. Others thus enable individuals to generate counterfactual
(retrospective) and hypothetical (prospective) alternative plot lines and character developments in
sustaining a narrative identity. To bring this idea into the domain of contemporary psychology, others
offer possible selves (Markus & Nurius, 1986), or provisional selves (Ibarra, 1999) that individuals adopt in
their own narrative identities." The Leadership Quarterly 16 (2005), p. 429.
35
between one genre and another becomes progressively less visible, less easily
determinable. Again, this division, this boundary between what each author denotes as
real and fiction is also determined by their cultural attachments, their self-perception,
as it stands on the written page, and their capacity to self-identify with the Other.
Sousa Tavares states "A memória para mim é a maior ferramenta da escrita. A
memória do olhar." In the act of writing, it is not the first-hand, immediate impression
of the things he sees and experiences on his travels that inform what Sousa Tavares
writes. In effect, he states that for him it is the memory of his perception of a place or
event that he is writing. Vivid though these descriptions may be, they are always
referential to the perspectives that Sousa Tavares had of the place in retrospect, after
having filtered the landscapes he saw and the individuals he interacted with through the
prism of his cultural and lived experiences. Bearing this in mind, we may now venture
through some of the images that Sousa Tavares provides the reader of the equatorial
islands of São Tomé e Príncipe.
As Ilhas Maltratadas
Miguel Sousa Tavares depicts the islands of São Tomé e Príncipe through a rather
ambivalent point of view. On the one hand, he exalts the land for its plentitude, for its
natural beauty, and he exalts the men who went there by force or free will, for the
fortitude and persistence to have established a colony and later a country that became
one of the leading producers of coffee and cacau in the world. On the other hand, he
36
speaks of the destruction inflicted on the land and the decadence to which the former
colony has descended after the end of the Portuguese colonial presence. The epigraph
to his chapter on São Tomé e Príncipe in Sul begins:
Não é bem um país, é um projecto dos deuses atraiçoado pelos homens. Da
escravatura colonial à independência, que já leva vinte anos de ilusão, repete-se o
contraste entre uma natureza exuberante e os homens que a arruinam. Como se
as ilhas fossem demasiado perfeitas para a condição humana. (83)
Again, Sousa Tavares's literary inclinations are demonstrated in this initial
characterization of these two islands. He states that the islands of São Tomé e Príncipe
are a project of the gods which has been betrayed by men, and indeed he goes on to
depict why he believes this betrayal to be true. From a cultural and literary standpoint,
describing the islands in this fashion situates Sousa Tavares's writing in a rhetorical style
that underscores the legacy of the Portuguese seaborne empire. Prior to the
Portuguese overseas expansion, the European conception of far off places was
populated by Hellenic myths and monsters. The uncertainty of what would be found by
explorers when venturing beyond known "civilization" was a major topic in the writings
of early Portuguese writers and chroniclers of overseas expeditions, as well as food for
thought and discussion throughout the following five centuries.18 In the Portuguese
18
Early Portuguese navigational accounts abound with references to the errors in Hellenic perceptions of
the world outside of the occident, in Duarte Pacheco Pereira's sixteenth century volume on Portuguese
overseas discovery, Esmeraldo de Situ Orbis, there are various comments on the erroneous beliefs of the
Greeks in relation to the rest of the world. Divided into 5 books, this navigational classic of antiquity
demonstrates the evolution of European belief in reference to the world beyond Europe, through
speculations on Africa and Asia that were based predominantly on Hellenic myth to their subsequent
demythologizing by the triumphant Portuguese explorers. Works such as the Esmeraldo de Situ Orbis,
37
foundational epic, Os Lusíadas, Vasco da Gama is the heroic explorer who confronts and
overcomes these mythic figures, both literally and figuratively.19 As the Portuguese
expanded beyond the known limits of the occidental world, they demythologized the
lands they encountered through their observations and the chronicles of what they had
seen, which in turn gave birth to the tradition of travel literature of which Miguel Sousa
Tavares is but one of many contemporary collaborators.20
These works of Sousa Tavares's predecessors are remarkable examples of the
tradition of literary production surrounding travel, which has grown and spread
throughout the confines of the Portuguese-speaking world, as will be demonstrated in
the later chapters on Bernardo Carvalho and José Eduardo Agualusa. However, being a
native of Portugal, the history of Portuguese exploration and colonialism has a distinctly
internalized narrative thread in the work of Miguel Sousa Tavares that is absent in the
Eanes Gomes de Zurara's Crónica do Descobrimento e Conquista da Guiné, Álvaro Velho's chronicle of the
voyage of Vasco da Gama to India, and the Italian Antonio Pigafetta's account of Magellan's voyage to
circumnavigate the world give firsthand accounts of the disproving of the ancient Hellenic myths, putting
Portuguese explorers at the forefront of the European conception of the world by the chronicling and
retelling of experiences and observations abroad. Later, these texts serve as creative capital for countless
works of poetry and fiction, glorifying the Portuguese for the desvendamento, or uncovering, of the world.
19
The first Canto of Os Lusiadas immediately asserts the precedence of Portuguese knowledge over the
antiquated myths of the Greeks in the third stanza, as follows:
Cessem do sábio grego e do troiano
As navegações grandes que fizeram;
Cale-se de Alexandre e de Trajano
A fama das vitórias que tiveram;
Que eu canto o peito ilustre lusitano,
A quem Neptuno e Marte obedeceram.
Cesse tudo o que a Musa antiga canta,
Que outro valor mais alto se alevanta. (1)
20
Later on in the twentieth century, Fernando Pessoa undertook the recreation of Camões' epic in his
own Mensagem, the only work he ever published in its entirety, again confronting the topic of the
demythologizing and uncovering or, desvendamento, of the world by the Portuguese.
38
works of the other two. This can be attributed to the fact that, while José Eduardo
Agualusa and Bernardo Carvalho are natives of the ex-colonies of, respectively, Angola
and Brazil, Sousa Tavares is a native of the homeland of the colonizers. From a social
and literary standpoint this has many implications in the work of Miguel Sousa Tavares.
Indeed, as both fiction writer and journalist, his work is inseparable from a Portuguese
intellectual history that at once glorifies and admonishes its colonial past. Though this is
evident in his social commentary and his interviews, it is mostly prevalent in his first
work of fiction, Equador, to be discussed later in this chapter.
However, Sousa Tavares's criticism of the role of Portugal in Africa can be seen
throughout his depictions of São Tomé e Príncipe in Sul as well. Again, and as stated
above, he calls the role of man the "betrayal" of this project set forth by the gods. This
is because of the strong contrasts that he identifies between the almost utopian
plentitude of natural resources on the island of São Tomé, in opposition to the extreme
decadence and decay in the human state of affairs. He gives the following description of
the abundance of natural resources on the island of São Tomé, as he stops along the
side of the road to watch fishermen cast their nets into the ocean from the beach:
À entrada da cidade, à beira da marginal, pescadores lançam as redes ao mar sem
sequer saírem da areia da praia. Mas o que poderão eles pescar ali, na
rebentação?
Paro o jipe e vou ver: camarões, salmonetes, linguados! Do outro lado da
estrada, filas cerradas de bananeiras, coqueiros e a árvore de fruta-pão estão ao
alcance de um braço. Vêm-me à lembrança as inúmeras descrições feitas ao longo
dos séculos acerca da incrível generosidade destas ilhas. Mas ainda não tinha
visto nada: não sabia que, volta e meia, davam à costa, desnorteadas, lulas de dois
quilos, que as crianças e as mulheres recolhem, simplesmente. E ainda não tinha
39
viajado pelo interior da ilha, onde uma profusão de porcos, galinhas, perdizes,
rolas e outras aves exóticas enxameiam os caminhos e as picadas, sobrevoadas
pelo falcão negro, senhor dos ares neste território de caça. As ilhas são o paraíso
de caçadores e pescadores, e seriam também uma interminável festa para os
caçadores submarinos se as suas águas quentes, repletas de estranhos peixes
azuis, vermelhos e amarelos, de majestosas tartarugas e de corais multiformes,
não escondessem a presença indesejável e constrangente dos tubarões. (85-6)
Sousa Tavares comments on the "inúmeras descrições" that have been made
throughout the centuries of the abundance of natural resources of the islands, all the
while making a similar description himself. The way that Sousa Tavares catalogues the
different types of fruits, animals, and fishes in this description is strongly reminiscent of
the types of cataloguing that early explorers made when first encountering these new
places. During the sixteenth century these types of cataloguing were a way for
explorers to claim the wealth of resources they found for their king and their country,
and in a sense what Sousa Tavares does in his descriptions is similar because it
reconnects his current experience with that of what was once Imperial Portugal. In this
sense, though the time of Portuguese rule on the islands has passed, Sousa Tavares can
still reconnect with a glorified past that belonged to his once-great nation by linking the
narrative of his own travels with that of the ancient Portuguese explorers and, at the
same time, exalting the beautiful and plentiful nature of the places he sees. This is
highly characteristic of the Portuguese experience of saudade, a concept which in itself
40
was born of the legacy of Lusophone travel and which has become one of the intrinsic,
and for some problematic, attributes of Portugal.21
In a similar tone, Sousa Tavares continues to speak of the legacy of the Portuguese
people on the island. The trials of the colonizers and the slaves they brought to
cultivate the crops of cacau and coffee are closely connected with the impressions that
Sousa Tavares has of the places he describes in his memory of São Tomé. He states:
Mas, olhando a cidade do alto do forte e a selva que logo começa para lá dela, é
impossível não render uma homenagem silenciosa e maravilhada aos homens,
brancos e negros, que, de 1471 a 1974, desbravaram as ilhas, sondaram a selva,
roçaram o mato, construíram longas casas de pedra e telha vã e resgaram
estradas, praças e pontões, quando tudo parecia ser-lhes adverso – a remota
longitude das ilhas, a inospitalidade do clima, a cerração da mata ou o flagelo das
febres tropicais. (87)
With seeming admiration he speaks of the trials and tribulations of the centuries of
African and Lusophone experience that have shaped, developed, and abandoned these
21
Saudade is a concept that defines Portugal: it has done so for centuries and as such has become
inextricably woven into the fabric of the nation and its people. It is a concept too nuanced, too
complicated, to give full attention to here, but it relates to the nation's perpetual self-identifying with the
past glories of the seaborne empire, and with the anticipation of a return of those times of glory.
Saudade affects Portuguese culture on all levels, from the lives of individuals through to cultural
productions of art, literature, and politics, and on a mass scale as a sense of nationhood. However, it is
problematic in that, as Eduardo Lourenço has pointed out, it keeps the nation focused on a past that will
not return of its own, borne on by some divine right. When discussing the foundational epic of Os
Lusíadas, Lourenço states: "Camões não pertence a ninguém, mas na medida em que emprestou forma à
existência e ao ser ideal da "pequena casa lusitana", e assim a subtraiu à informe existência histórica
empírica, a ele pertencemos. O que convém é saber como Camões e a sua obra, em particular Os
Lusíadas, não são uma realidade intemporal e de significação unívoca. Deslocá-los, arbitrariamente, da
sua significação própria, enquanto expressão exemplar de um momento da nossa existência histórica e da
aventura mais vasta da expansão do Ocidente, para a falsa eternidade de um mito moral, histórico e
ideológico cujas bases contunuariam intocáveis, é celebrá-lo às avessas, querer que o dividido presente
nosso tenha a claridade sublimada de um passado irrevogável no seu ser e nas suas coordenadas
espirituais." p. 149
41
islands. In them he seems to see his own history, and the connection he makes goes so
far as to state that the Portuguese, too, are citizens of Africa. He concludes his chapter
on São Tomé e Príncipe with
Mas, pese às vicissitudes da história, aos enganos e desenganos dos homens, a
verdade é que os portugueses pertencem também a África. Não como donos e
senhores por direito divino ou histórico. Mas como cidadãos de África, por direito
natural, por identidade de alma, se quiserem. Não fui eu que o descobri: muitos
africanos o dizem, agora que a retórica anticolonial está a perder também a sua
razão de ser. (88)
Traveling with Narrative: São Tomé or Sousa Tavares?
In her book, Travelers, Immigrants, Inmates, (1995) Frances Bartowski identifies
three different types of people and texts that are related to movement, displacement,
or confinement through physical dislocation from one place to another. She identifies
the individuals involved as travelers, immigrants, and inmates or captives. As Bartowski
discusses the disruption and consolidation of identity for individuals in each of these
processes, she emphasizes the fact that each of these have varying levels of agency and
autonomy in the situation they are in, which markedly affects their perception of the
space they inhabit. Of these three the most privileged, and indeed the most
autonomous, is without a doubt the traveler.22 This is because in most cases the
22
From Travelers, Immigrants, Inmates: “Travel is movement, movement through territorialized spaces,
movement by those who choose to move and those who are moved by forces not under their control.
Travel then could suggest crossing cultural boundaries, trespassing, visiting, capture. It could open up the
possibility of removing the term from its class-bound associations with exploitation and pleasure-seeking,
42
traveler is free to move from one place to the next of his own volition, unencumbered
by necessity or forceful capture.
As he states in his introduction to Sul, Miguel Sousa Tavares is paid to travel and
tell his stories of his travels. What he experiences, writes, and retells his readership and
his viewers are the perspectives that he has when moving through a space he is free to
leave whenever he chooses. He is not bound by legal or social regulations to remain in
São Tomé e Príncipe, so he has the capacity to interpret the islands from the
comfortable distance of someone who does not need to face the limitations and
struggles of the people who reside there permanently. When viewed from this
perspective, it becomes apparent that what is demonstrated in the literary work of
writers like Sousa Tavares, and to a more self-aware degree in the following two
authors, Bernardo Carvalho and José Eduardo Agualusa, is a projection of self-identity
through the subjective lens of what Paul Ricoeur terms the narrated self, as opposed to
objective chronicling of an externally independent real space or time.
As Miguel Sousa Tavares comments on his travels in the islands of São Tomé e
Príncipe he is simultaneously creating himself, or his self-identity, and perpetuating the
cultural identity of Portugal. Ultimately, his travel narratives, in both fiction and nonfiction, serve this same function. As we progress from analyzing the journalistic
narratives of writers like Sousa Tavares to their works as fiction authors, what we find
are common tropes and themes that unite a multiplicity of narrative threads that make
and remind us that those exploited are often forced into movement as an integral part of their
exploitation.” p. xxiii
43
up the author's own experiential repertoire. In other words, for an instant, the
collective or integral experience of the author's life is represented in their literary
creation. This experience is made up of elements of lived events and of intellectual or
cognition construction; experiences that are both real and imaginary, but that are all
drawn together through the narrative process.
The Narrative Bridge: Non-Fiction and the Novel
In Oneself as Another, Paul Ricoeur states that literature functions as a cognitive
or social laboratory through which both readers and writers have the capacity to
perform "thought experiments" which allow them to conceptualize different roles,
actions, and events that later inform the creation of their own narrative identities.23 It is
through these thought experiments that both readers and writers witness experiential
variations to their day to day existence. However, these variations pose the type of
cognitive, social, and cultural conundrums that inform or question the self-narrative. It
23
"In truth, the narrative does not merely tolerate these variations, it engenders them, seeks them out.
In this sense, literature proves to consist in a vast laboratory for thought experiments in which the
resources of variation encompassed by narrative identity are put to the test of narration. The benefit of
these thought experiments lies in the fact that they make the difference between the two meanings of
permanence in time evident, by varying the relation between them. In everyday experience, as we have
said, these meanings tend to overlap and to merge with one another; in this way, counting on someone is
both relying on the stability of a character and expecting that the other will keep his or her word,
regardless of the changes that may affect the lasting dispositions by which that person is recognized. In
literary fiction, the space of variation open to the relations between these two modalities of identity is
vast. At one end, the character in the story has a definite character, which is identifiable and
reidentifiable as the same: this may well be the status of the characters in our folklore." Paul Ricoeur,
Oneself as Another, University of Chicago Press, 1992, p. 148.
44
is for this reason that a brief article of nine pages such as "São Tomé e Príncipe: as ilhas
maltratadas" could lead to a five hundred page novel like Equador.
While the collected articles in Sul, such as "São Tomé e Príncipe: as ilhas
maltratadas" give space for Miguel Sousa Tavares to express some of his perceptions of
the places to which he has traveled, complete with creative license to include some
poetic rhetoric and social commentary, it is in the literary laboratory of the novel
Equador that the reader is exposed to some of the more difficult conceptual issues in
relation to Portugal's ex-colonies. In Equador, many of the images that Sousa Tavares
initially wrote for the article that later appeared as a chapter in Sul are revisited, this
time through the fictional situation which takes place at the turn of the twentieth
century, in which a member of the Lisbon elite is elected by the king, D. Carlos, to be the
governor of São Tomé. This character, Luís Bernardo Valença, is sent with the purpose
of eliminating the apparently continued use of slave labor on the islands before the
arrival of a British consul who will report to England on whether or not the Portuguese
colonies must be boycotted for breaking the international decree that ended the
transatlantic slave trade in the late nineteenth century.
Tied into this novel that closely attempts to replicate the style of writing during
the time in which it was set are a multiplicity of different narratives that come together
to construct a vivid image of Portugal and its relationship to its colonies and to the
world, through the eyes of Miguel Sousa Tavares. Sousa Tavares uses a semi-omniscient
narrator to tell the story of Luís Bernardo Valença and the triumphs and defeats that he
experiences throughout his voyage to the islands of São Tomé e Príncipe. Through this
45
narrator the reader is brought to consider many of the criticisms of Portugal and its
colonial policies that began to be voiced more expressly in the literature of the
illustrious "Geração de 70" in the 19th Century. Again, as Sousa Tavares writes his
narrative of the tragic voyage of Luís Bernardo, he attempts to situate his writing within
a larger tradition of literature that has been instrumental in defining the Portuguese
cultural identity.
Equador is set shortly after the British "Ultimatum" of 1890, when the
Portuguese were ordered by the British to evacuate the land that they had attempted to
claim between their two colonies of Angola and Mozambique.24 This event was seen as
a major embarrassment to Portugal as a nation, and it came at a time when the
intellectuals of Portugal were openly condemning the colonial and overseas policies of
the nation. In O Labirinto da Saudade, Eduardo Lourenço states that: "O Ultimatum não
foi apenas uma peripécia particularmente escandalosa das contradições do
imperialismo europeu, foi o traumatismo-resumo de um século de existência nacional
24
In the race for control over the territories of Africa by the colonial empires of the late nineteenth
century, Portugal made an attempt to secure the land of the Zambezi basin, advocating its "Rose Coloured
Map," in order to unite the colonies of Mozambique and Angola. However, this was a challenge to the
economic and political interests of England, which at the time was intent on acquiring the same territory
in order to consolidate its power by linking South Africa with East Africa. When Portugal attempted to lay
claim on this region, they were issued an ultimatum by Lord Salisbury of the British Foreign Office
threatening to suspend diplomatic relations between the two nations. While in British histories the
ultimatum is treated lightly, it was an event of major political and social significance for Portugal, in his
book, Portugal and Africa, David Birmingham states: "The matter of the Ultimatum may have been of
minor import to Britain, there is no reference to it in Hobsbawm's Industry and Empire, and it may have
made little difference to the peoples of Zambezia as they succumbed to the rule of private-enterprise
chartered colonisers, but to Portugal the Ultimatum brought profound shock. It challenged the mystique
of Portugal as an imperial power and undermined the credibility of the bourgeois monarchy of the SaxeCoburgs at Lisbon. It also destroyed the Portuguese vision of England as the irritating but essentially
benevolent godparent of the nation. It is a serious question to ask how the Ultimatum should be reinterpreted outside the confines of Portuguese domestic history, particularly in Africa, but also in Britain."
p. 110 – 111
46
traumatizada." (30) The "Ultimatum" occurred at the height of the literary production
period of the famous Geração de 70, composed of Eça de Quierós, Oliveira Martins,
Ramalho Ortigão, and Antero de Quental.25 It was these writers and statesmen that
began the shift from Romanticism to Realism in Portuguese literature, using both fiction
and non-fiction as a means to convey their ideas and criticisms on the state of their
nation.
Among the types of literature that these four intellectuals produced was a new
form of travel literature, one which used the experience of going abroad in order to
learn new ways of technological and organizational innovation from other countries as
well as experiencing other cultures. At the same time, travel was an opportunity to
escape the stagnant and retrograde traditions in culture and politics that had so
severely stunted the progress of Portugal.26 Of these intellectuals, it was Eça de Queiroz
25
This group of writers and social critics was instrumental in the social, political, and cultural production
of Portugal from their emergence in Coimbra in the 1860s, through to their influences on modern
Portuguese literature and culture. Concerned with what they perceived as the decadence and
backwardness of the ruling elites in both culture and politics in Portugal at the time, they took it upon
themselves to create various forums to progress beyond the problems in their nation. Among these were
the famous Conferências do Casino, a series of debates and discussions about the need for Portugal's
emergence from the cultural, technological, and political malaise that plagued the nation. In the chapter
"A revolução Setentista", from his book Geração de 70, uma geração revolucionária e europeísta,
Professor João Medina states: "As Conferências do Casino foram, no seu programa, no seu propósito vago
mas firmemente sentido por quantos nele participaram ou o redigiram, e, sobretudo, na acção ulterior de
muitos dos que ali acharam a sua inspiração essencial, uma insurreição cultural no sentido mais amplo do
termo, aquele que inclui na noção de Cultura todas as formas superiores do espírito, sem esquecer a visão
crítica da Política, como tudo quanto diz respeito à vida na polis, os seus sistemas de valores, normas e
finalidades que articulam o ideário social dos homens, sem perder de vista a Estética, acervo de valores e
programas propriamente espirituais e artísticos. Os Setentistas tinham, aliás, desde a Questão Coimbrã
de 1865-66, interligado Estética (ou Ética) e Política, precisamente na medida em que concebiam que as
literaturas oficiais representavam uma perversa mancebia entre literatos e políticos, entre candidatos ao
mundo da cultura e avalistas de um Tibur entronizado no aparelho do Estado..." p. 23-4
47
who most developed the literary narrative as a form of critiquing or blatantly
condemning the state of Portuguese society at the time in novels such as A Reliquia
(1887) and A Cidade e as Serras (published postumously in 1901), utilizing his
experiences of traveling abroad as inspiration for the creation of characters that were
symbolic of the decadence and stagnation that he saw in Portuguese intellectual and
elite circles. Though divergent in both thematic and literary capacity, the novels of
Miguel Sousa Tavares are in a way modeled after the types of narratives in the works of
Eça, and Sousa Tavares also utilizes his narratives to admonish the problems he saw and
continues to see in his own nation.
Bearing this in mind, Equador is a novel that deals with many aspects of
Portuguese cultural and national identity. The novel addresses the Portuguese colonial
history at a point where Portugal had publicly lost all semblance of power in relation to
England. Furthermore, the issue of political and colonial decadence is strongly
accentuated, maintaining that the lack of responsibility and awareness for governance
practices was the reason for Portugal's decline throughout the overseas empire but,
specifically, at the onset of the twentieth century, a time when other nations were
strongly pushing forward towards modernization. Through the voice of Sousa Tavares's
26
In his article "Viagem na literatura portugusa", Nuno Júdice states: “Para estes homens *Geração de 70+,
que constituem uma geração que acredita, por algum tempo, na capacidade de os intelectuais poderem
intervir de uma forma pedagógica na modificação da estrutura mental, social e política do país, viajar tem
o duplo aspecto de recolha de informações e de modelos para essa evolução desejável e de fuga à
estreiteza cultural dos seus contemporâneos. Para alguns, virá a ser o destino final que arrasta a
mitificação da pátria perdida....Um dos seus méritos, de qualquer modo, é a crítica relativamente à
tradição e a primeira tentativa – essa, de resto, conseguida – de desmitificação da atitude que consiste
em alimentar o presente das glórias antigas." p. 52.
48
narrator the reader is repeatedly made aware of this, as he makes statements such as
"Portugal era o mais atrasado país da Europa, o mais inculto, o mais pobre, o mais
triste." (82) Most importantly, the novel deals with the issue of the transatlantic slave
trade and the resistance with which Portuguese colonial landowners and governors
greeted those who attempted to end it.
However, what most resonates about the novel are the changes that the
protagonist, Luís Bernardo Valença, undergoes throughout his travel experience.
Initially, Luís Bernardo is a typical depiction of a wealthy Lisboan bachelor of his time.
As was customary for wealthy young men in Portugal, Luís Bernardo attended the
University of Coimbra, from which he desisted at 22 years of age. Not particularly
young, Luís Bernardo is a 37 year-old bachelor who, upon having returned to Lisbon
from Coimbra when he was 22, took over his father's shipping company and settled into
a comfortable life of socialite dinners, polemical debates on politics and foreign policy,
and attempting to seduce any women that interest him, particularly the married ones.
The narrator describes him in the following manner:
Tinha 37 anos de idade, era solteiro e tão mal comportado quanto as
circunstâncias e o berço lho permitiam – algumas coristas e bailarinas de fama
equivalente a todas as suspeitas, ocasionais empregadas de balcão da Baixa, duas
ou três virtuosas senhoras casadas de sociedade e uma muito falada e disputada
soprano alemã que estagiara três meses em S. Carlos e de que constava não ter
sido o único frequentador. Era, pois, um homem dado a aventuras de saias mas
também a melancolias. (12)
As well as:
49
Tudo, na sua figura, na maneira como se vestia, na sua forma de andar,
denunciava a sua atitude perante a vida: cuidava da aparência, mas não tanto que
isso se transformasse num incómodo; estava a par da moda, do que se passava lá
fora, mas não prescindia do seu próprio critério; passar desapercebido era motivo
de angústia, ser demasiado notado, apontado a dedo, era-lhe constrangedor. A
sua qualidade era não alimentar demasiadas ambições, o seu defeito o de não
alimentar, provavelmente, ambição alguma. E, todavia, quando se examinava a si
próprio, tentando manter uma distância razoável para análise, Luís Bernardo
reconhecia, se, excesso de vaidade, que estava vários planos acima do meio da sua
frequência: era mais bem-educado do que os imediatamente abaixo, mais
inteligente e culto, menos fútil do que os acima. (16-7)
Luís Bernardo is a projection of the prototypical male bourgeois bachelor that populates
much of the realist fiction of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in both
Portuguese and Brazilian literature. He dresses in the style of the latest fashions, while
attempting not to be so fashionable as to attract excess attention. He is educated and
stays informed of cultural and political situations in Portugal, if only to be a better
conversationalist among his peers at their fancy dinners and parties. He is a prevalent
figure in Lisboan society, though he does not serve any social or political functions other
than to be present. In this sense he is very much reminiscent of characters such as Eça
de Queiroz's Carlos da Maia and his mischevious friend Ega, or Machado de Assis's
skeptical socialite bachelors Bentinho and Conselheiro Aires. Fitting within this type,
Luís Bernardo is an ambivalent and apathetic character who spends most of his time
50
attempting to find some distraction that will liberate him from the tedium of being little
more than a social ornament.27
His opportunity arises when he is invited one day to Vila Viçosa on behalf of the
King D. Carlos, and is asked to take on the role of governor for the island of São Tomé.
Initially, Luís Bernardo is not willing to accept this task; he perceives it as a
condemnation to exile far from the luxurious culture to which he is accustomed. He has
no prior training in managing such a large enterprise, and no real awareness of the
physical or social living conditions on the equatorial islands, yet he is caught between
the enormity of the task that has been conferred to him, with all of its social and
political implications, and his desire to maintain his languid and complacent life in
Lisbon.
Luís Bernardo is the candidate chosen for this task, however, because of his
presence in social and intellectual circles in Lisboan society. As was customary for public
figures of the elite in Portugal, Luís Bernardo had written a series of articles stating his
political opinions on the state of the nation, particularly in relation to the policies and
practices of governance in the African colonies. These articles had caused significant
political debate among the elite in Lisboan society, and for a time made Luís Bernardo
the center of debate and discussion. The narrator states:
27
A commentary on the daily life of Luís Bernardo in Lisbon, from Equador: "Os dias eram compridos
demais para a ociosidade omnipresente. Era como um vício sem prazer, uma tranquilidade tão estúpida e
desprovida de sentido que o enervava e o mantinha em permanente estado abúlico. Passeava-se de dia,
arrastava-se de noite, perguntava-se frequentemente o que fazia ali, a ver escoarem-se os dias, numa
secreta e absurda expectativa de qualquer coisa de indefinido que ele sabia que não ia acontecer." p. 25
51
Interessara-se pela Questão Colonial, lera tudo sobre a Conferência de Berlim e,
quando a questão ultramarina começou a ser objecto de apaixonadas discussões
públicas, ainda como sequela do Ultimatum inglês, publicara dois artigos no
Mundo, que foram amplamente citados e discutidos pela sua análise de uma rara
frieza e equilíbrio, por entre o furor patriótico e antimonárquico dominante nos
espíritos, em contraste com a aparente condescendência do Senhor D. Carlos.
Defendia ele um colonialismo moderno, de matriz mercantil, centrado na
exploração efectiva das coisas que Portugal tivesse capacidade para levar a cabo,
através de empresas vocacionadas para a actividade em África, geridas como
espírito profissional e "atitude civilizacional", e não mais "entregue aos desígnios
dos que, aqui não sendo ninguém, lá se comportam como sobas, piores do que os
que encontraram, e não como europeus, idos da civilização do progresso, ao
serviço do seu país". (14)
What is interesting about Equador at this point is that, unlike many of the realist novels
of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the protagonist serves not only as
a critical caricature of men of his social status and time, he is called to act upon the
criticisms that he himself makes of his nation. In this capacity, the reader sees Sousa
Tavares using his fiction as the laboratory for thought experiments as identified by Paul
Ricoeur, as he uses the experience of Luís Bernardo to demonstrate and develop the
types of conflict that a person in his position would have faced in a historical important
yet inaccessible time.
While Luís Bernardo fits the same profile of other characters of his type in
Lusophone literature, his call to action by the king places him in a fascinating
predicament because he must go beyond the intellectualizing and arguing about the
state of Portugal that so often happens among intellectual circles but never bears
tangible social change. In Equador, the reader has the opportunity to follow this
52
character from his comfortable position of privilege and entitlement through the
transformation of his sense of social involvement and self-reflection that he is forced to
undergo by the circumstances he is faced with once in São Tomé. In her article,
"Equador: revisitando o passado, justificando atitudes, construindo um herói," Gisélle
Razera describes how this is the function of a Luís Bernardo in the novel. She cites the
importance of the distance in both time and space, between modern post-colonial
Portugal and São Tomé e Príncipe, and the social and cultural setting in which the novel
takes place. According to Razera, Luís Bernardo is a character that allows readers to
explore the vast implications of questions related to slavery and its reluctant end in the
islands of São Tomé e Príncipe, all the while demonstrating a hypothetical example for
the types of difficulties that would be faced in such a situation. She states that "A
estada de Luís Bernardo em ilhas africanas tornou-se uma luta constante em garantir
uma qualidade de vida humanamente decente aos trabalhadores ilhéus, dentro do que
era possível – e governar aquelas ilhas com o pulso dos seus ideais anti-escravagistas."
(4) This task ultimately proved to be impossible for Luís Bernardo, and his decision to
accept the charge given him by D. Carlos would tragically end in his suicide.
An acceptant exile
Prior to accepting the position of governor of São Tomé e Príncipe, Luís Bernardo
vacillates between accepting the king's offer and being publicly humiliated by not
abiding by his convictions and responding with a humble letter of refusal. When he is
53
confronted by D. Carlos and the Count of Arnoso, Luís is told that the fate of the very
nation is in his hands. Of course, the interest that England has in proving that Portugal
is still utilizing slave labor in São Tomé e Príncipe is more economic than humanitarian.
According to the King and the Count, England's principle concern is that cacao
production in the islands is so plentiful that it threatens their own market with the
Cadbury company. However, a public declaration on behalf of England that Portugal
continued to use slave labor in its colonies would be sufficient to end the colonial grasp
on Africa, and to destroy Portugal as a nation. In the words of the Count of Arnoso:
– Faço minhas as palavras de Sua Majestade, mas com muito mais ênfase, que a
posição dele não lho permite: você é o homem certo para esta tarefa e do seu
bom desempenho dependem coisas muito importantes para este país. Julgo que
percebeu a dimensão de tudo o que está em jogo: no dia em que perdermos a
primeira colónia, será o princípio inevitável do fim do Império e, com ele, o fim do
trono, do reino e, talvez mesmo, do país. Ficamos à espera que a Espanha venha
nos engolir. Tudo pode agora começar de novo ou tudo pode começar a acabar
agora. (63-4)
While this is indeed an immense burden to bear, Luís Bernardo maintains his
reticence in accepting the task that has been given him. He looks upon his future time
in São Tomé e Príncipe as a time of exile, of punishment for having voiced his opinion on
the politics of Portugal in the African colonies, and his projections of life on the islands
are bleak and futureless. With desperation Luís Bernardo looks to his closest friend João
Forjaz, and voices his fears about the monumental charge at hand and the isolation he
will face once on the island:
54
Não brinques comigo João! Não estás a ver bem que aquilo que esperam de mim
é que consiga fazer em meses o que deveria ter estado a ser feito há décadas? E
não medes a dimensão do sacrifício pessoal que me é exigido – que abandone
tudo, a minha casa, o meu país, a minha vida, os meus amigos, o meu trabalho,
para me ir enfiar no fim do mundo, onde não ha ninguém com quem eu possa
falar e a felicidade consiste em não ser rapidamente liquidado pela malária, pela
mosca tsé-tsé, pela varióla ou pela febre amarela?
...
Selva e mar, mar e selva! Com quem vou conversar, com quem vou almoçar, com
quem vou jantar e, já agora, com quem vou namorar – com alguma preta? (76-7)
Luís Bernardo's concerns are significant, considering the life to which he is accustomed
and the social implications of the life he is to face in São Tomé. Sousa Tavares, through
his semi-omniscient narrator, demonstrates from the beginning that Luís Bernardo is
conscious of the fact that eliminating any semblance of slavery from the coffee and
cacao plantations is almost impossible. He is aware that he is being sent on an errand
that would be attainable only by miraculous intervention, and yet the public burden of
instilling a more humanitarian, modernized form of government falls on his shoulders.
This is a major component of the strong critique of Portuguese governance and history
that Sousa Tavares makes throughout the novel. He uses this travel experience of Luís
Bernardo to demonstrate the manner in which Portuguese rule of the colonies was
inept because of the selection of ill-prepared leaders, but also because of the inability of
a select an individual or group of individuals to uproot and change systems of human
and land exploitation that had been in place for centuries.
Luís Bernardo not only has to contend with a seemingly impossible task, but he
also has to come to terms with being uprooted from everything that he knows. He is
55
called to leave his comfort zone within the urban intellectual elite of Lisbon, where he
has never had to overcome any obstacles other than finding ways to seduce married
women, to move to a small island on the equator where he will have to confront,
manage, and organize a society of landowners who could not care less about the
humanitarian ideals of modernity. And this is to say nothing of Luís Bernardo's
prejudices towards the African workers, or of his expressed racism as well as his sexist
views towards women, and his having to fight for their rights in the face of bigoted
foremen and landowners. The adjustment that Luís Bernardo's life undergoes is one
that significantly changes how he acts and relates to others, for the most part, though it
ultimately ends in his taking his own life.
However, the situation that finally pushes Luís Bernardo to accept the King's
request does not stem from any lofty ideals about the treatment of Africans in the far
off colonies of São Tomé e Príncipe. Neither is the decision made out of a sense of duty
for his nation and his people. Instead, like a petulant child who grasps at the last
opportunity to evade responsibility for his actions, Luís Bernardo accepts the position of
governor of São Tomé e Príncipe in order to flee from the latest woman he has seduced,
Matilde, João Forjaz's married cousin. With a grandiose air of self-importance Luís
Bernardo writes the following to this woman with whom he has recently become
disenchanted after having committed adultery:
Em nome disto, dispus-me a aceitar a liquidação sumária e expedita de tudo aquilo
que, até aqui, constituiu a minha vida. Abandono casa, família e amigos;
abandono comodidades e confortos, hábitos sociais e de cultura, sem os quais não
suponho sequer o que possa ser o dia-a-dia. Abandono o meu próprio trabalho, o
56
meu negócio, e vendo à pressa a minha empresa, para me ir enfiar numa ilha, no
meio do mar e no fim do mundo, para onde os condenados preferiam morrer a
embarcar e para onde, ao que sustentam os ingleses, os próprios negros só
embarcam à força. Mas de tudo isso não me queixo, visto que há alturas em que é
o destino que se impõe à nossa vontade e que razões mais altas do que as pessoais
devem passar à frente de tudo o resto: servir o meu país o melhor que posso e sei,
numa hora de necessidade, e ser digno de quem me achou digno desta tarefa é,
sem dúvida, uma dessas ocasiões em que não há escolha nem liberdade própria.
(99)
Luís Bernardo, always a classy guy. Without a doubt he is far from being a hero: he is at
once ignorant of the world despite his erudition, and he is shameless about his
indiscretions to the point of claiming a devotion to his nation and his people as an
excuse to flee from the circumstances in which he prides himself on being. Of the
aforementioned decision to use his charge in São Tomé as an excuse to flee Matilde the
narrator states:
Só lhe restava fugir. Mas fugir com dignidade, melhor ainda, com uma aura de
romantismo, de sacrifício, de heroísmo. S. Tomé era um pretexto que caía dos
céus: de repente, tudo se transformava a seu favor, a favor da imagem e da
recordação que ela guardaria para sempre dele. Partia, maldito destino, contra a
sua vontade, arrancado aos braços da sua amada, ao serviço do país e do Rei, para
que o mundo não pudesse dizer que em Portugal ainda se praticava a escravatura
ou para ser ele o homem que iria pôr termo a essa indignidade, se porventura a
calúnia fosse verdade. (98)
Yet these character's flaws are important for the development of Luís Bernardo
throughout the novel. The fact that he is not the prototypical hero creates the
opportunity for him to develop as a character that is more verisimilar, and this in a
sense strengthens the reader's capacity to identify with him emotively. At the same
57
time, Luís Bernardo ceases to be so much like the characters of nineteenth century
realism because he does undergo experiences that give him more depth and allow him
to change throughout the novel. However, he is never fully free of his one major vice,
his covetous obsession with unavailable women, and not surprisingly this ultimately
leads to his self-destruction.
The journey to São Tomé
When discussing travel and the impact that it has on us in Travelers, Immigrants,
Inmates, Frances Bartowski states that her motivation is to elucidate that
What guide my tasks here are the ways and means of provisionally losing and
finding selves. In such searches, as they become textualized, there is a complex
movement toward definition of a subject in time and place. The times and places
are ‘foreign’ in some fashion yet to be explored; the selves will also become
foreign or have been made so by the scene of the encounter at some crossroads
of cultures. The question of place and relations to place are of crucial importance.
Place evokes position, for we come to understand ourselves in place/space
through particular vantage points, none of them privileged. (xxii)
Indeed the process of travel is one that, upon conscious self-reflection, calls into
question the identity of the traveler by constantly demanding that he act in relation to
circumstances and events that diverge from the everyday norm. In this sense, as the
traveler is temporarily out of place, as Bartowski suggests, his or her sense of self is also
58
suspended in uncertainty. As such, travel requires that a subject28 maintain a fluid
sense of identity that can adapt and successfully function in moments of flux and
instability. The experience is often fraught with anxiety and excitement, as the subject
attempts to anticipate the events to come through their limited existential repertoire
while being consistently bombarded by interactions and situations that consistently
diverge from anything heretofore lived. The initial observations of travelers in an
unknown land are often some of the most fascinating, as they are the ones most filled
with awe but at the same time full of the traveler's own projections, providing at once
an attempt to create a sense of continuity between lived experiences and the new
spaces unfolding before their eyes.
In Equador, the reader is told that prior to his taking on the role of governor in
São Tomé, Luís Bernardo had only traveled outside of Portugal once, on board one of
the three ships that he inherited along with the Companhia Insular de Navegação.
Other than this one brief voyage to the Cape Verde islands, his experience had been
limited to Portugal. The narrator also informs the reader that, despite being told that
Cape Verde "não era bem África, antes um pedaço de lua caído ao mar" (13), he had no
interest in going further to see what Africa really was. However, on his voyage to São
Tomé Luís Bernardo begins to see the places he travels to with a different perspective.
28
By using the term subject we mean to refer to the traveler's sense of self in the construction of his own
self-narrative, as is used by Frances Bartowski above and in the following quote by Paul Ricoeur: “But
what he means [Descartes] is just the opposite: what tradition calls the soul is actually a subject, and this
subject can be reduced to the simplest and barest act, the act of thinking. This act of thinking, as yet
without any determined object, is sufficient to vanquish doubt because doubt already contains it. And
since doubt is voluntary and free, thought posits itself in positing doubt. It is in this sense that the “I exist
thinking” is at first truth – that is, a truth that nothing else precedes.” from Oneself as another, p. 8
59
Instead of being disinterested by Africa as he was on his initial journey, Luís Bernardo is
now intent on thinking about what the African colonies mean in terms of his nation as
well as his own identity in a concrete manner, no longer merely as abstractions. The
spaces slowly begin their emergence from the intangible colonies discussed among
elites at Lisboan soirées to concrete spaces that have an importance for Luís Bernardo
and for his nation. From the imagined spaces of intellectual discussion he begins to see
them as places that are tangible and important because they are now the settings of his
own life, of his own narrative identity.
As he travels the African coastline, the reality of the colonies takes on more
personalized terms in Luís Bernardo's imaginary, he begins to project his imagination
onto and into the places where both Portuguese and African people are fighting to
survive, to prosper, or to find freedom. As his ship skirts the city of Luanda, the narrator
states:
Depois das escalas no Mindelo, que ele já conhecia, e no Sal, no arquipélago de
Cabo Verde, Luanda apareceu-lhe no horizonte como uma verdadeira metrópole.
Havia uma dezena de vapores de grande porte fundeados na baía ou acostados no
cais e uma actividade frenética no porto, que parecia tomado por uma urgência de
cargas e descargas, de negócios, encontros e despedidas. Era difícil imaginar que
no interior do território o exército colonial ainda se empenhava penosamente a
combater tribos que lutavam com arcos e lanças, numa vastidão cujos limites os
portugueses só tinham começado a realizar verdadeiramente uma vintena de anos
antes, quando a Conferência Colonial de Berlim estabelecera o princípio de que a
posse efectiva dos territórios prevalecia sobre o direito da descoberta. Angola era
dez vezes maior do que Portugal, cem vezes maior do que S. Tomé e Príncipe: a
sua colonização efectiva, assim como a de Moçambique, parecia tarefa
manifestamente para além das possibilidades físicas, humanas e financeiras de um
país tão pequeno como Portugal. (105)
60
Between the city he left behind and the tiny islands he is to soon inhabit, the port city of
Luanda seems like an immense metropolis to Luís Bernardo. As he gazes at Luanda from
his ship he considers the enormity of the project of colonization that his tiny nation had
taken upon itself to undertake. His perspective is no longer simply that of a Lisboan
urbanite as he considers the true dimensions of the struggles that are taking place
within the vast territory that separates the Portuguese colonies of Angola and
Mozambique.
These places begin to take on a more concrete importance in his view of the
world because they are now tied into the life that he will soon be leading as a governor
of the colony of São Tomé e Príncipe. In this sense, he begins to self-identify with a
community of Portuguese men and women who have, for various reasons ranging from
exile to entrepreneurship, left their tiny nation for the vast unknown that is Africa. Luís
Bernardo considers what the experience must have been like for the first of his
ancestors who, traveling south along the African coast as he currently is, did not share
the same certainty that they would arrive somewhere hospitable, inhabited, or even
survivable,
Desde que dois dias antes tinham saído de Benguela, ele notava que o ar se ia
tornando aos poucos mais pesado, que a brisa fresca do Atlântico fora substituída
por uma camada de humidade que se depositava à tona de água, à medida que se
aproximavam da linha do Equador e o navio avançava através de uma neblina,
para lá da qual estava um mundo desconhecido à sua espera. Pensou como aquilo
deveria ter aterrorizado os marinheiros portugueses de quinhentos, quando
deixavam de ver a costa de África e navegavam, em pleno oceano vazio, rumo ao
território de trevas do Adamastor. (94)
61
As the ship carries Luís Bernardo further from Lisbon and closer to São Tomé e Príncipe
he loses himself in thought, "Debruçado na amurada, olhando sem verdadeiramente
ver, ele acariciou a madeira das guardas de protecção, como se acareasse todo o seu
passado que ia fugindo no horizonte." (103) As his immediate past becomes more of a
fleeting memory, it is apparent that Luís Bernardo seeks to identify with a more distant
and greater past, that of Portugal.
The narrator also describes the mental and physical effects that the weather and
the climate have on Luís Bernardo, and in these segments it is easy for the reader to
perceive the journalistic voice of Miguel Sousa Tavares through the narrator. When
writing about his arrival to São Tomé in Sul, Sousa Tavares states:
São só sete da manhã e estamos em Maio, o mês em que começa a "gravana", a
estação seca, sem tornados e com uma humidade considerada "suportável". Mas,
para quem vem da Europa, a sensação é a de ter entrado dentro de uma estufa a
que o organismo demorará vários dias a adaptar-se. Mas basta sair do aeroporto
e percorrer os escassos três quilómetros até ao centro da cidade para que uma
estranha euforia se vá apoderando de nós, aos poucos, sobrepondo-se ao cansaço
e ao calor. (84-5)
As his voyage comes closer and closer to its destination, Luís Bernardo is characterized
as falling progressively more under the effect of the equatorial climate, feeling the
effect of the heat and the humidity in a way that not only affects him physically, but
cognitively as well. It is interesting that in this sense he begins to express a type of
malaise or torpor that has been espoused throughout the Luso-Tropicalist literature of
62
the Brazilian Gilberto Freyre.29 The narrator relates how the judgments and criticisms
that Luís Bernardo so easily made when in the comforts of salons in Lisbon no longer
seem as clear, as if the very geography of Africa were responsible for making such clearcut opinions less valid: "Agora sentia-se preso de uma liquidescência física e mental,
como se o calor, a humidade, o cansaço da viagem e a estranheza do lugar não lhe
permitissem ver claro o que em Lisboa, entre amigos e conversas à mesa dos cafés,
comentando as notícias dos jornais e escutando as opiniões alheias, sempre lhe
parecera cristalinamente óbvio." (117) In the context of traveling through the physical
spaces of Africa the opinions and images that he had of these places while in Lisbon are
no longer adequate or even appropriate. In this sense, the narrator calls attention to
the importance of lived experience of the colonies for those who scrutinize them from
the outside. Much like the Geração de 70, the narrator demonstrates the ineptitude of
privileged elite that remain ensconced in the comforts of the nation's capital at
qualifying the struggles or considerations of the far off territories.
However, while this criticism of the intellectual elite of Lisbon is well placed and
corroborated by over a hundred years of literary production in Portugal, it is
nonetheless written by an author who has spent minimal time in the ex-colonies
29
In his initial publication, Casa grande e senzala (1933), the anthropologist Gilberto Freyre cites the
effect that the tropical climate had on European explorers and colonizers, he states that the climate
"...per se ou através de fatos sociais ou econômicos por ele condicionados, predisponha os habitantes dos
países quentes a doenças raras ou desconhecidas nos países de frio. Que diminui-lhes a capacidade de
trabalho. Que os excita aos crimes contra a pessoa." p. 13. Throughout his career, Freyre repeatedly
declares the exceptionalism of the Portuguese people and Lusophone descendents in adapting to and
succeeding in these tropical climates. During the Salazar regime in Portugal, Freyre was invited by the
government of Portugal to visit the African colonies and apply his concept of Lusophone exceptionalism to
the politically motivated Luso-tropicalist theory, which states that above all other European cultures, the
Portuguese were the best adapted and most benevolent in their colonization of the tropics.
63
himself.30 As we analyze the interstices between the author and the critiques he makes
of Portuguese culture in his literature, it becomes apparent that what is produced in
terms of literary narratives are the combinations of the author's lived experiences
throughout his travels and his brief observations of the places he encounters, while
formulating his viewpoint according to his own cultural and social attributes. Sousa
Tavares uses characters such as Luís Bernardo, João Forjaz, and Matilde to demonstrate
the stereotypical urban elite of early twentieth century Lisbon. At the same time, he
utilizes character types that are also commonly used tropes in literature about the
colonial period. He has characters such as the governor of Angola, Agostino de Jesus
Júnior, whom he calls a "Napoleãozinho dos Trópicos," a bitter power-driven bureaucrat
who wants nothing to do with Africa but is there due to his political position, and who
despises all the Portuguese colonizers that have made a home of Africa. As the narrator
describes this "little Napoleon" he states:
Sabia histórias de muitos como ele que nunca mais queriam voltar, que se tinham
enfiado pelo interior de Angola e de Moçambique, aberto tabancas em pleno
mato, desbravado e semeado fazendas, alistado no Exército ou nas obras públicas,
juntado com pretas e semeado os arredores de filhos, cafrealizando-se ao ponto
30
In his interview with Isabel Coutinho, Miguel Sousa Tavares states that it only takes him nine days to get
to know a new country. While this is obviously an overstatement, it further demonstrates the author's
relationship to the spaces to which he travels and about which he reports. Sousa Tavares does not seem
overly concerned with getting to know the cultures, customs, and traditions of a place. In this sense he is
following his function as a journalist, who formulates an opinion based on what he sees on the surface
and reports back what his immediate impressions were. As opposed to the function of the
anthropologist, who is supposed to become as immersed in the culture he is studying as possible, the
journalist or travel writer engages with what they see on the surface and interprets his initial response.
Therefore, his representations of places have more to do with his interpretive function of what he sees at
first glance, as opposed to a prolonged experience of any of the places he visits. This is what Brown
University professor Onésimo Almeida terms "antropologia de intuição".
64
de já não saberem bem de onde tinham vindo e por que tinham vindo. Mas ele,
não: ele odiara aquela terra desde o primeiro instante em que lá pousara pé e não
houvera um só dia, um só dia, na eternidade daqueles catorze anos, em que não
tivesse olhado o mar antes de se deitar, pensando se o destino lhe consentiria
essa felicidade de voltar um dia por onde viera. (138)
Many of the landowners and the overseers of the plantations that Luís Bernardo is to
evaluate and manage in São Tomé e Príncipe are similar to this character. They are all
suspicious of the government official who has been sent from Lisbon to tell them how to
run their plantations and their home, especially after centuries of being entrenched in a
system of slave labor which they refuse to end despite external appearances that claim
otherwise. This accentuates the major split between the urban elite and the people
who managed the colonies on the other ends of the empire, and it also demonstrates
the type of disconnect between the Portuguese mainland and the injustices and
atrocities that occurred at the hands of Portuguese colonizers in the African and Asian
colonies through to the Salazar dictatorship and the Estado Novo. Once again, Gisélle
Razera writes "Esta incomunicabilidade patrocinada pelo difícil acesso pode ter sido
aliada dos portugueses em cometer atos atrozes no povo da África. Além disso, por
mais que a população européia fosse consciente do modelo exploratório da época,
atitudes portuguesas tomadas longe das vistas portuguesas , em locais remotos, parecia
não afetar emocionalmente as pessoas." (7)
When writing the life and experiences of Luís Bernardo, Miguel Sousa Tavares is
bringing together all of these cultural, historic, and social considerations as well as his
own travel experience to construct this novel that at once criticizes Portugal, especially
65
the elite, but also creates a better understanding of the difficulties of trying to
implement a new way of thinking in an otherwise antiquated, isolated, and resistant
society. As Luís Bernardo travels from Lisbon to São Tomé e Príncipe he finds his ideals
and the fortitude of his character called into question by these circumstances. As the
reader accompanies the development of the narrative, she witnesses the growth that
Luís Bernardo undergoes due to his exposure to the new social, political, and
environmental climate of São Tomé e Príncipe. He is confronted with situations that
challenge his social and ideological position time and again, and this combined with the
sense of exile and isolation from his circle of influence force a type of transformation in
the character who, despite his adaptability or because of his lack of it, ultimately ends
up taking his own life. We will see this situation arise in yet another character in the
following chapter, as the lack of situational adaptability and attachment to socially
predetermined roles leads Bernardo Carvalho's Buell Quain to suicide as well. For now,
it is necessary to return to Luís Bernardo Valença and his arrival in São Tomé.
The transitions in the tropics
In his exemplary fictional work about legendary historical traveler, Marco Polo,
Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino states:
...what he sought was always something lying ahead, and even if it was a matter
of the past it was a past that changed gradually as he advanced on his journey,
because the traveler's past changes according to the route he has followed: not the
66
immediate past, that is, to which each day that goes by adds a day, but the more
remote past. (28)
This sentiment is echoed and consistently reflected throughout narratives involving
travel. As a traveler moves from one place to another, the external experiences of
traveling are intimately related to the process of self-discovery. As one moves from a
known space and arrives at another that is unknown and unfamiliar, the internal
knowledge of past lived experiences rushes forward to provide the traveler with a sense
of narrative continuity of self, and often this occurs through the resurgence of memories
that are forgotten or overlooked in our day to day environments. This same process
occurs with Luís Bernardo as he arrives in São Tomé, he grapples with the life he led in
Lisbon and the immense charge that lies before him. At the same time, he is confronted
by elements of his past that are as of that point unresolved, and he finds in the darkness
and mystery of the óbó, the surrounding jungle, the remnants of his own fractured
childhood self.31
Upon his first arrival in São Tomé, Luís Bernardo expresses the awareness and
the conviction that he is entering another world, one which is entirely foreign to him
31
A strong example of this occurs while Luís Bernardo is traveling around the island to visit all of the
different plantations, as he is getting ready to go to bed in the Rio do Ouro plantation, he smells the
petroleum of a lantern that a slave has lit, and it incites the following commentary about his childhood:
"Um dos negros da [fazenda] Rio do Ouro acendera uma lanterna e o cheiro a petróleo inundou o abrigo
dos homens e pareceu-lhe absurdamente reconfortante, familiar. Era o mesmo cheiro das noites de
pesca, ao largo de Sesimbra, no barco do António Amador. O mesmo cheiro da casa da avó, na sua
infância, quando ouvia as vozes das criadas na cozinha, a tosse do pai no quarto, anunciando a morte que
o rondava, o mesmo cheiro que ficava no corredor, quando a mãe passava de candeeiro na mão, perdida
de si e de sentido, entre o quarto que a morte já habitava e a vida que vinha da cozinha e que já ninguém
governava. A mãe, tão longe, tão só, tão perdida, nesse óbó escuro que eram, confusamente, as suas
recordações de infância.", p. 194
67
despite its Lusitanian colonial heritage. His first letter, written to his best friend João
Forjaz, is replete with insecurities and the awareness that he will not be the same
person if he is ever to return to Lisbon. It states:
Cheguei (hoje), pouco vi e nada venci – antes pelo contrário. Não sei se sou eu que
vencerei as ilhas ou elas que me vencerão a mim. Sei que tenho esta estranha
sensação de ter passado uma eternidade desde que saí de Lisboa, uma eternidade
desde que hoje, de manhã, desembarquei aqui, em S. Tomé. (146)
In this statement, Luís Bernardo qualifies his sense of feeling displaced, uprooted, as
well as his own lack of confidence and his perception of the islands as a personified
entity, to be conquered or by which to be defeated. The self-assured and blasé nature
that Luís Bernardo carries throughout his social and political arenas in Lisbon is clearly
missing in this statement, and from the beginning he seems to feel dominated by this
new place and by the circumstances in which he finds himself.
Furthermore, it is interesting to note the way that Luís Bernardo qualifies the
time that has passed between his embarking on the ship that brought him to São Tomé
and his arrival. He states that his journey has taken an eternity, which has connotations
for both time and space. As he has traveled further from Lisbon, Luís Bernardo's
awareness of himself and his place in the world he is coming into are subjected to a
substantial distancing from his prior sense of identity. The further removed he is from
Lisbon and from his social circle and quotidian environment, the more estranged Luís
Bernardo feels because there is little to no continuity between the emerging
68
environment and the environment to which he is accustomed. It is this process of
deterritorialization that creates the reflective aspects of Luís Bernardo's experience.
While Luís Bernardo is in transition from his place in Lisbon to his new home in São
Tomé, he feels this sense of deterritorialization as a discontinuity in his sense of self. In
a manner of speaking, the exiting of his home and comfortable surroundings in Lisbon
creates the disruption of the elements of his narrated-self. Absent the place and society
that provide his customary foundation, he finds the different aspects of himself
uprooted and the continuity of his self-narrative disrupted. To cite Ricoeur, Luís
Bernardo is caught between the poles of the "dialectic of innovation and
sedimentation", which Ricoeur also labels the ipse and idem.32
Both time and place are matters of uncertainty for Luís Bernardo as he travels
from the world he knows into the unknown. He experiences this uncertainty
consistently until he can begin to recreate his self-narrative with the inclusion of life
experiences in his new home in São Tomé. In this sense, his narrative continuity of
identity is not broken during the process of traveling to Africa so much as it is suspended
by the lack of awareness of what is to come. As he initially arrives in São Tomé he
continues to feel this uncertainty and the effects of the transition are made clear in his
assertion to his friend that he is not sure if he is to be the conqueror or the conquered.
32
From p. 122 of Paul Ricoeur's, Oneself as another: "The dialectic of innovation [ipse] and sedimentation
[idem], underlying the acquisition of a habit, and the equally rich dialectic of otherness and
internalization, underlying the process of identification, are there to remind us that character has a
history which it has contracted, one might say, in the twofold sense of the word "contraction":
abbreviation and affection. It is then comprehensible that the stable pole of character can contain a
narrative dimension, as we see in the uses of the term "character" identifying it with the protagonist in a
story. What sedimentation has contracted, narration can redeploy."
69
It is not until he has undergone the process of reterritorialization in São Tomé that Luís
Bernardo begins to regain his prior self-assurance and confidence. However, he fears
that the experiences he will have in Africa will change him, will make him somebody
that he and his friends no longer recognize.
Again, this is a concern born of the disparity between the two aspects of the
narrated self, the ipse and idem. As Ricoeur states, the two parts of the self that are
woven together through the process of narration relate to the paradox that individual
identities must have at the same time elements of permanence and of flexibility. In the
face of an experience of extreme displacement, such as Luís Bernardo's move from
Lisbon to São Tomé e Príncipe, it requires an extremely adaptable and flexible sense of
self-identity to navigate this paradox successfully. The fact that the self will change
throughout the lived experience is undeniable, but the degree to which the self will
consciously engage with and lead that change is a different story. In the case of Luís
Bernardo, he is a character that is predominantly affected by exterior circumstance.
While he is demonstrated as the prototypical urbanite dandy prior to his departure for
São Tomé, his character is mostly rooted in the external circumstances in which he lives.
His life, for the most part, is made up of exteriors, of his relationship to the social and
political world as far as appearances are concerned, but there is little depth to him that
is otherwise demonstrated. In this sense, he attaches his own identity to the external
situations in which he finds himself, in order to be able to maintain his coherent selfnarrative he requires the constant presence of socialite friends that discuss the same
types of literature and politics, of high society soirées that cater to his customary social
70
milieu. When this is disrupted by his displacement from Lisboan society, his own
identity is significantly shaken, producing in him the fear that he will lose his sense of
continuity, of stability, and hence the fear that he will end up being unrecognizable to
himself and to his friends. This process continues to be elucidated in the following
excerpts from his first letter to João:
Se alguma coisa faz sentido em toda esta confusão, é que me devo
manter fiel àquilo que sou e que penso, sem me transformar noutra pessoa que tu,
e eu próprio, não reconheceríamos mais tarde.
Mas hoje, nesta primeira noite, não te quero falar disso. Queria apenas
dar-te conta da primeira impressão que sente um inocente português que sai
directamente do Chiado para uma aldeia metida dentro da selva e deixada à
deriva no meio do Atlântico, à latitude do Equador: sente-se esmagado pela chuva,
derretido pelo calor e pela humidade, comido vivo pelos mosquitos, espantado
pelo medo. E sinto, João, uma imensa e desmedida solidão... (147)
Unlike some of the characters in the chapters that follow, Luís Bernardo is overwhelmed
by this solitude and fear at finding himself in a new space because the foundation for his
identity is an externalized one. Without the continuity of life "do Chiado", Luís Bernardo
has a difficult time reconstructing or re-narrating his sense of self. It is worth noting
that the only glimpse the reader sees of Luís Bernardo's own voice in first person is
through these letters he writes to João Forjaz, as he is otherwise constructed through
the narrative of the semi-omniscient narrator. Even in this respect, Luís Bernardo has a
performative function rather than an introspective or contemplative one. This also sets
him apart from the narrators and characters that we will see in the future chapters on
71
Nove noites, by Bernardo Carvalho, and Um estranho em Goa and Fronteiras Perdidas by
José Eduardo Agualusa.
Interestingly enough, it is in this solitude and this place that inspires fear that
Luís Bernardo develops as a character. His experience in São Tomé e Príncipe is fraught
with difficulty, as he struggles to attempt to change the landowner system that
continues to maintain slave-like labor. He is consistently the outsider to the residents of
São Tomé, and no degree of pomp and circumstance elevates him in their eyes, as they
begin to perceive him as being more aligned with the British consul, David Jameson, and
his wife, Ann.33 While Luís Bernardo certainly finds a greater affinity in the company of
the British couple, he also demonstrates significant character development in terms of
his own perception of São Tomé and in terms of his own social responsibilities as a
leader, an abolitionist and humanitarian.
Luís Bernardo's relationship to the African workers in São Tomé is a strong
indicator of the change he undergoes while living on the islands. Prior to his arrival and
experiencing São Tomé, every comment he made of the African residents of São Tomé
was dismissive or petulant. However, his experiences on the island begin to change his
perceptions, and because of it the character becomes significantly more engaging. The
first of these instances occurs when he is recently arrived to São Tomé and he comes
across the hut that one of the African civil workers of the city lives in. He gives a
33
One of the major narrative threads that spurs on the action of the novel is the love triangle between
Luís Bernardo, Ann, and David. It will not be discussed in this chapter as it relates only tangentially to the
subject of this dissertation.
72
detailed description of the type of misery that he finds in the living conditions of the
African workers on São Tomé and the experience shocks him. The narrator states:
A miséria e a tristeza daquele cenário tinham-no chocado. Nenhum branco
conseguiria sobreviver naquelas condições degradantes. O governador acabara de
ver com os próprios olhos aquilo de que nenhum discurso oficial em Lisboa se
ocupava. Quase vomitara ao descobrir o lado oculto da "missão de progresso e
desenvolvimento que Portugal conduz em S. Tomé e Príncipe". Sim, é verdade,
que havia a contra-argumentação: na noite do baile, em conversa na sua mesa,
alguém comentara: "Dêem a um negro uma casa de branco, com paredes de
alvenaria, lavabos e tudo, e num instante ele transforma-a num pardieiro." (167)
Seeing the living conditions of the African workers on São Tomé is the beginning of Luís
Bernardo's awakening to the realities of colonial life on the islands, and it is also the
beginning of his own humanization. As he moves from the urban environment of Lisbon
to the plantations of São Tomé, his perspective towards these people becomes much
more grounded, more real, as he sees the conditions they are living and working in they
stop being merely topics of drawing room discussions and arguments at dinner parties.
The counter arguments that he hears at the governor's dinner that he holds for the
plantation owners and their families are irrelevant to Luís Bernardo's perception of the
immense injustice which is being perpetuated towards the African inhabitants of the
island, and this, yet again, is cause for him to be hated and despised by the Portuguese
colonizers.
In his time in São Tomé, Luís Bernardo takes it upon himself to act upon the
ideals that he so effusively espoused while in Lisbon, the same ideals of
humanitarianism and progress that were the cause for his selection to the role of
73
governor. He learns to extend himself beyond his own self-interested identity in an
attempt to engage and interact with the African workers on the plantations, and the
experiences that shape these interactions cause a shift in Luís Bernardo from apathy to
empathy. At a certain point he asks "Já se imaginou no lugar deles?" (186-7), a question
that reverberates throughout the narrative as it demonstrates the extent to which Luís
Bernardo has begun to see beyond his own privileged and self-absorbed urban life. At
this point the character is no longer merely focused on his self-interest, but he is
actually beginning to experience perceiving himself as an other. At another point in the
narrative, he sits beneath a tree with three other men, one his assistant and companion
at the governor's mansion and the other two workers from a nearby plantation, the
three of them African. As he watches the rain coming down around them he comments
to himself, "Em todo o mundo, neste momento, não existe ninguém de quem eu esteja
mais próximo. Nem amigos, nem mulheres, nem amores, nem família. Só este homem
que divide comigo dois metros quadrados de abrigo contra a chuva." (194-5)
The experience that Luís Bernardo gains throughout his time in São Tomé results
in the effect that he had initially feared. When he is visited, finally, by his friend and
confidant João Forjaz, he is perceived as a different person, and yet it is not with
negative connotation that his friend becomes aware of these changes, but rather with a
sense of admiration. In making the comparison between the Luís Bernardo he knew in
Lisbon and the one he finds in São Tomé, the narrator states that
74
João Forjaz calou-se, surpreendido com a veemência do discurso do amigo. Estava
ali um Luís Bernardo que ele não conhecera nunca em Lisboa. Não era
propriamente a forma empenhada com que defendia as suas ideias e pontos de
vista – isso já o tinha visto fazer várias outras vezes, entre amigos, em rodas de
salão, em discussões políticas que tantas vezes ocupavam os seus jantares de
quinta-feira no Hotel Central. Mas agora havia qualquer coisa de diferente,
qualquer coisa de mais pessoal, mais radical. S. Tomé mudara o Luís Bernardo que
ele se habituara a conhecer. (302-3)
In the eyes of João Forjaz, the lived experiences of Luís Bernardo have made him a more
vibrant and inspired character. He speaks with more conviction, and is more adamant
about defending his perspectives now that he has seen the conditions he once argued
about blindly. At the same time, the challenges that Luís Bernardo faces in adapting and
becoming accustomed to his new environment also strengthen the sense of resilience in
him. This is a process that Frances Bartowski, in Travelers, Immigrants, Inmates, refers
to as the "consolidation of identity," a process whereby the identity that has its
continuity disrupted through the experience of dislocation regains its unified selfreferential nature. Once he has built up some referential experiences in São Tomé, the
new setting becomes a part of Luís Bernardo's self-narrative.
In this manner, the sense of being uprooted diminishes as he has once more
found a sense of stability in terms of his place in the world. Throughout the novel, the
degree of self-assurance that Luís Bernardo has is consistently reinforced in relation to
the degree with which he gets to know the islands and make them a part of his own
narrative. Upon first arriving to São Tomé he takes the initiative to learn all the ins and
outs of the island and its plantations. As he learns the different geographical nuances of
the island, he also begins to see himself as a part of them. By the time the novel
75
concludes, and despite all of the challenges that he faces at the hands of the colonizers,
as well as the tragedies he heaps upon himself because of his affair with Ann, the British
consul's wife, Luís Bernardo knows that the islands of São Tomé e Príncipe are
inextricably a part of him:
Apesar de tudo, apesar do sem fim daqueles dias, do sufoco daquele clima, apesar
daquela ser a terra do seu angustiante amor por Ann e a terra onde aprendera a
ler o ódio no olhar dos outros, ele amava aquela ilha, o verde da mata, o azul do
mar e o cinzento translúcido do nevoeiro que o envolviam, como se o protegessem
nos seus braços de seiva, de sal, de névoa. Agora, que o seu mundo de outrora se
tornara apenas uma recordação antiga, alimentada em notícias de jornal ou
esparsas cartas de amigos, aquela paisagem das ilhas era o que lhe restava de
íntimo, de familiar, de território seu. Agora, que tudo parecia aproximar-se do fim,
ele compreendia pela primeira vez o que sempre lhe parecera incompreensível: o
apego de tantos homens brancos a África, aquela ligação desesperada e quase
doentia que prendera tantos para sempre àquelas ilhas, de que só pensavam
partir, mas de que verdadeiramente não conseguiam desprender-se. (495-6)
With this narratorial statement, Miguel Sousa Tavares ties together the final comments
on both of his narratives on São Tomé e Príncipe because he reiterates the idea that
Africa has become a part of the Portuguese identity.
However, while Luís Bernardo does develop throughout his experience in São
Tomé e Príncipe, there are aspects of his character that contribute to his inevitably
tragic end. His propensity for womanizing in Lisbon is no less diminished as a result of
his departure to the African colonies, and his lust leads him to engaging in an adulterous
relationship with Ann Jameson, the British consul's wife. This is an interesting scenario,
as it relates to the sort of lascivious tendencies that have been attributed to the
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Portuguese character throughout the history of Portugal.34 And yet, Luís Bernardo at
first diverges from the representation of the Portuguese traveler who is drawn to
women without considering their race or ethnicity.
While still in Lisbon, one of his major concerns is who he will sleep with when he
is in São Tomé, and he is mainly worried that there will only be African women to
seduce. Consider the following:
Lembrou-se de uma das suas últimas conversas com o João, em Lisboa, quando se
queixava de abstinência sexual a que se imaginava condenado pelo seu exílio
voluntário em S. Tomé, ele, tão bem habituado ao reconforto das mulheres. E o
João respondera-lhe, meio a sério, meio a brincar: "Tu? Qual quê! Ao fim de um
mês, prometo-te que as pretas vão-te parecer mulatas, ao fim de dois meses já te
vão parecer brancas morenas e, ao fim de três meses, em a necessidade
apertando, vão-te parecer loiras de olhos azuis!" 35 E agora, ali estava ele, ao fim
de três horas, lançando já olhares gulosos sobre a sua criada de quarto, que a
natureza favorecera com um corpo de deusa grega, pintado de negro. (136-7)
34
This is discussed at length in Miguel Vale de Almeida's An Earth-Colored Sea, p. 50 – 51, where Vale de
Almeida analyzes the different anthropological and literary currents in Portugal that corroborate what
Gilberto Freyre would later term "Luso-Tropicalism." In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, he cites
such scholars as Teófilo Braga, poet Teixeira de Pascoaes, and more contemporary scholars such as Jorge
Dias and João Leal who identify specific qualities of Portuguese identity such as a propensity for
adventurousness, envy, and lascivious behavior. Vale de Almeida cites Teófilo Braga: In O Povo Português
(The Portuguese People, quoted by Freyre in MS), published in 1885, Braga lists the ethnic qualities of the
Portuguese: excessive pride, mimetic and amorous genius, a nonspeculative character, an inclination
toward fatalism, softness of character, adventurous genius, and an inclination toward maritime
expansion." p. 51.
35
I have italicized this section of the quote, as it is directly taken from Sousa Tavares' journalistic article
"As ilhas maltratadas," which appears in Sul in the following quote: “Elas *as são-tomenses], então, são
tão bem lançadas e tão sensuais que, conforme me esclareceu um português aqui residente, ‘ao fim de
um mês, já nos parecem mulatas, e ao fim de dois, se for necessário, até as vemos brancas, loiras e de
olhos azuis’!” p. 86.
77
Upon traveling to São Tomé, Luís seems to quickly fall in line with the popular
conception of Portuguese plasticity, as he soon finds himself attracted to Doroteia, his
beautiful African servant. However, it is with the English woman, Ann, that he actually
pursues an affair.
Luís Bernardo's obsession with possessing yet another married woman, in this
case one that maintains the dominant position in the extramarital affair is what leads
him to the point where he takes his own life. While in Lisbon, he is demonstrated as a
dandy who lives to seduce married women, he considers this exploit a game of sorts,
and prides himself with his capacity to be successful in these endeavors. However,
when he begins his relationship with Ann it is obvious that he will not succeed in the
same fashion, as she never becomes overwhelmingly enamoured with him, as do the
Portuguese women in Lisbon. Even though Ann is willing to have an affair with Luís
Bernardo, and she in fact pursues the affair voraciously, she maintains a sense of
composure that he cannot penetrate. While he falls obsessively in love with her, he
cannot fully possess her, for as she tells him, she will never leave her husband. In this
situation, the power dynamic between the two lovers is turned against Luís Bernardo,
and he finds himself in a place with little or no control.
As the novel progresses, Luís Bernardo's obsession leads to a type of fatalism
that is prevalent throughout Portuguese literature. Luís Bernardo refuses to accept that
he simply cannot have Ann all to himself and this drives him to a point of utter despair.
At the same time, Ann retains her composure and even begins to chastise Luís
Bernardo's behavior for being childish and egotistical. Playing the role of the
78
sterotypical femme fatale, Ann maintains her position and her composure in the
situation while Luís Bernardo is playing the caricature of the romantic hero, dying for his
unrequited love. This adherence to these character traits and the inability to see
outside of them is what finally leads Luís Bernardo to commit suicide after having lost all
legitimacy and agency in the face of his lover, as well as the landowners he is supposed
to be overseeing and managing in São Tomé e Príncipe. When confronted with the fact
that Ann has taken a new lover, he takes the only possible way out for a tragic romantic
hero, he writes to the king detailing the reasons for his failure on the island, and he
shoots himself in the heart.
This type of adherence to an antiquated social role that, ultimately, leads to
suicide in the face of a world with new or different social paradigms is what Ken Wilber
terms "script pathology." It is present in travelers such as Luís Bernardo who, unable to
adapt to different concepts or forms of social existence, find themselves bound to their
cultural scripts and ultimately are drawn to despair and possibly death. In the following
chapter, a similar process will be defined for Bernardo Carvalho's character Buell Quain,
and the narrator will provide a counterexample as he learns and breaks away from
these types of pretermined social roles.
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CHAPTER 2: THE NARRATED SELF IN BERNARDO
CARVALHO'S NOVE NOITES
As histórias dependem antes
de tudo da confiança de
quem as ouve, e da
capacidade de interpretá-las.
- Manoel Perna
A morte no interior é muito
diferente do que a que
acontece aqui.
- Luiz de Castro Faria
In the modern world at least,
most men live lives of
patterned desperation.
- Clifford Geertz
For the most part, contemporary travel in literature is concerned with exteriors,
with seeking experiences that are not normative or not found within one's immediate
cultural sphere. Observations and characters are externalized, viewed from outside, like
Sousa Taveres's Luís Bernardo. As such, this literature that deals with travel tends to
represent the experience of confronting spaces and cultures that are significantly
different from one's own. As in the case of Luís Bernardo in Equador, these experiences
are sought out in different countries, away from one's cultural and geographic, if not
80
linguistic spaces. However, there are authors who demonstrate unknown social and
cultural spaces within their own nations, who present to the reader the people and
places that share the same geographical boundaries, but whose perspectives,
perception, and ways of life are completely foreign to mainstream society. The
following two authors, Bernardo Carvalho and José Eduardo Agualusa, accomplish this
for their respective countries of Brazil and Angola.
By writing from multiple perspectives and experiencing some of the social
intricacies of the people and places he visits firsthand as a journalist, Bernardo Carvalho
then creates fictional narratives that engage the reader and invite her to look selfcritically at her own nation, and her own perception of reality and fiction, from a
different point of view. Bernardo Carvalho accomplishes this by looking beyond the
regional differences to looking at the stark contrast between contemporary urban
Brazilian society in São Paulo and the living remnants of culturally and geographically
isolated tribes in the Amazon River basin.
If there is a constant in the works of Bernardo Carvalho, it is the motif of travel
to unknown spaces. Whether that space is the Mongolian steppes in the company of
the native tsaatan people in the 2003 novel Mongôlia, 2009's O filho da mãe which is
set in St. Petersburg, or the non-descript first and third world nations of the earlier
novel Teatro (1998), Bernardo Carvalho always manages to weave each of these places
into his own native Brazil. However, in two of his works, O sol se põe em São Paulo
(2007) and Nove noites (2002), Bernardo Carvalho focuses on spaces that exist within
Brazil but are often unseen or unheard of by the masses. In each of these two works,
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Bernardo Carvalho focuses on locations that seem completely foreign to modern urban
Brazilian culture, but which are indeed a major part of Brazil, despite their insular and
seemingly self-contained nature. In the case of O sol se põe em São Paulo, this is the
Japanese-Brazilian enclave that exists within the massive urban expanse of São Paulo. In
Nove noites, however, it is the deep interior space of the Brazilian Amazon that
Bernardo Carvalho's narrator travels to in search of the story behind an American
anthropologist's suicide in the 1930s. In both cases, these hidden spaces are
emblematic of geo-social isolation or otherness, which at the same time reflects the
dark or hidden places within the consciousness of Carvalho's characters and narrators.
In this sense, as his characters travel to divergent parts of their own country or outward
to other parts of the world, their journey is also an inward journey, whereby they see
themselves reflected by the experience of the Other.
Nove noites is emblematic of Bernardo Carvalho's travelogues of the self, as it
brings to the foreground the Xingu region of the Amazon River Basin; one of the last
spaces that modernity has yet to assimilate, though it has indelibly made its mark there.
In its discussion of the interactions between anthropologists, landowners, and the
indigenous people of the Amazon, it reconnects with an anthropological and literary
tradition that spurred on the development and study of the fields of anthropology and
ethnology while at the same time following the travel experiences of various characters.
Nove noites deals with the internal journey of the traveler as well as the external
experience of traveling. The novel is composed of two distinct narratives that involve
travel and displacement, each in its own way centering around the life, fieldwork, and
82
suicide of American anthropologist Buell Quain in the Brazilian jungles on August 2,
1939. These two narratives are driven by the search for a sense of self and belonging
among the Other. Each narrative is about the ways that physical displacement into an
unknown world reflects the same internal process of seeking self-awareness or
understanding by leaving behind quotidian experience and social conventions. 36 In this
case, Nove noites is at once about traveling into the unknown but also about the
characters' confrontations with their own fragmented selves.37
In Nove noites two narrative threads come together, one being the story of Buell
Quain, a young anthropologist who studied the Trumai and later the Krahô tribes38 of
the Brazilian Amazon, told collectively through the letters of Manoel Perna, who was the
last person to interact with Buell Quain besides the Krahô, and by the narrator. The
36
In her dissertation, Belonging and displacement: cultural interspaces in Brazilian literature, Patricia
Sobral provides an excellent discussion of the need for belonging and its inverse, the despair of
displacement in the context of the Brazilian novel, she states: "Regardless of age, class, place of origin, or
culture human beings yearn to inhabit a space of their own. This need to belong can derive from many
different sources such as the desire to live in a particular geographical location, the ties that bind us to
others, or our need to maintain a connection with our inner self. Anyone who severs these ties is taken into
a state of displacement, a world of estrangement, or lives in a state of inbetweenness partaking of several
cultures, and sometimes belonging to none." p. 1
37
This fragmentation of the dispersed elements of a single identity is discussed at length in Paul Ricoeur's
Oneself as Another. (1992) Ricoeur specifies how narrative is used as a method of providing a discernably
consolidated, usable identity in Study 6, "The Self and Narrative Identity": "If my life cannot be grasped as
a singular totality, I could never hope it to be successful, complete. Now there is nothing in real life that
serves as a narrative beginning; memory is lost in the hazes of early childhood; my birth and, with greater
reason, the act through which I was conceived belong more to the history of others – in this case, to my
parents – than to me. As for my death, it will finally be recounted only in the stories of those who survive
me. I am always moving toward my death, and this prevents me from ever grasping it as a narrative end."
p. 160
38
The following is an excerpt by Charles Wagley from the Foreword of the book The Trumaí Indians of
Central Brazil, (1955) by Robert F. Murphy and Buell Quain: "In 1938 Buell Quain spent four months,
from August to November, among the Trumaí Indians of the upper Xingú River area of central Brazil. In
December of 1938 he was recalled to Rio de Janeiro, and failing to obtain governmental permission for his
return to the upper Xingú, at least under conditions allowing minimal possibilities for field research, he was
unable to continue his studies among the Trumaí. He went instead to do ethnographic and linguistic work
among the Gê-speaking Kraho in the state of Maranhão. There, in April 1939, he died." p. v
83
second narrative line is that of the narrator some sixty years later, a journalist who is
intrigued by the anthropologist's suicide in the 1930s and decides to seek out the entire
story in order to write a novel based on this tragedy. In a sense, these two main
narrative lines are both concerned with the search for the self, or a sense of identity
that was not provided in the narrator's and the anthropologist's own environment; their
own cultural and social spaces. Again, this differentiates the character and narrator of
Nove noites from Miguel Sousa Tavares's Luís Bernardo, because they both are
voluntarily seeking their sense of self in foreign spaces, not out of a political or social
sense of obligation, but of their own volition.
Buell Quain is represented as the quintessential anthropologist, an avid traveler
and disciple of Columbia University professor Franz Boas39(among whose other disciples
is included Gilberto Freyre40). Quain's colleagues are the well known anthropologists
39
The German born anthropologist, Franz Boas, was an extremely influential figure in the development of
the field of anthropology in the United States and beyond. Often referred to at the "Father of Modern
Anthropology," Boas was the first to apply the scientific method to the field of anthropological research,
focusing specifically on the importance of culture in the interaction between the people he studied and their
environments. Boas created the first Department of Anthropology in the United States at Columbia
University. Among his disciples were anthropologists Ruth Benedict, Margaret Mead, Zora Neale Hurston,
and Gilberto Freyre. In his introduction to A Franz Boas Reader: the shaping of American anthropology,
1883 – 1911, George W. Stocking, Jr. states: "Although German-born and deeply rooted in the intellectual
traditions of his homeland, Franz Boas more than any other man defined the "national character" of
anthropology in the United States. There had been debate over whether it is appropriate to speak of a Boas
"school" (White 1966, pp. 3-4), but there is no real question that he was the most important single force in
shaping American anthropology in the first half of the twentieth century. And while his influence has been
greatly attenuated in the last two decades, it continues to be felt down to the present day, in some cases
even in the work of anthropologists who are conscious of no specific debt to him." p. 1
40
Gilberto Freyre is an extremely important figure in Brazilian history and national identity. Having
received his MA under Franz Boas at Columbia University, Freyre was the first proponent of the "myth of
three races" in the development of the Brazilian national image. With his pivotal book Casa Grande e
Senzala, published in 1933, Freyre was the first public intellectual to include the importance of the African
heritage in the Brazilian national image, claiming that Brazil was a nation that was strengthened by the
inclusion of the African element, as opposed to pre-existing deterministic views that considered
miscegenation a negative process that led to social and cultural deterioration. Later in his career, Freyre
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Ruth Landes and Charles Wagley, all under the mentoring eye of Ruth Benedict. As Buell
Quain's story unfolds, the reader is told about his encounters with other well known
anthropologists such as Claude Lévi-Strauss. Bernardo Carvalho's choice of using this
historical figure and the colleagues that surrounded him give the character added
depth, as they ground him and the narrative itself in that finely delimited space where
fiction and non-fiction are difficult to discern. While in Sousa Tavares's work the
historical figures are present and briefly relevant to the story, they are not woven
throughout the narrative to the extent that they are in Nove noites, and much less are
they given the internal depth of character that the reader finds in characterized
historical figures like Buell Quain and his colleagues.
Using a literary technique that adds yet another layer of depth to the novel, the
narrator is given a life that closely parallels that of the novel's author, Bernardo
Carvalho. This type of narrative, which weaves the factual and the fictional together, is
a major part of the literary work of Bernardo Carvalho and José Eduardo Agualusa,
though it is absent in the novels of Miguel Sousa Tavares. In Nove noites the narrator
remains unnamed, he is only perceived through his monologues and his internal
musings. This first-person perspective allows the author to maintain a connection with
the narrator that is comfortably nestled in narrative ambiguity. Furthermore, by
creating a metanarrative that extends throughout the book, Bernardo Carvalho
consistently refers back to the action of researching and then writing a fictional account
would collaborate with the Portuguese Salazar regime and espouse the theory of Luso-tropicalism, which
claimed that the Portuguese were the ideally adaptable and benevolent colonizers of their territories in
Brazil, Africa, and Asia. Needless to say, Freyre's contribution to Lusophone intellectual and cultural
production has been important but extremely polemical.
85
that revolves around the life and mysterious death of Buell Quain. In other words, the
narrator's process supposedly replicates that of the author throughout the course of the
novel. Another factor that accentuates this overt approximation between author and
narrator are the pictures of Bernardo Carvalho as a young boy standing next to a
member of the Krahô tribe in the Brazilian Amazon.
Exploratory narratives
In his work, Bernardo Carvalho is concerned with creating narratives that engage
and challenge the reader, that invite the reader to become a part of the interaction, to
insert themselves into the "game" of constructing the narrative. As such, Carvalho's
work consistently pushes the boundaries of conventional narrative structures, often
creating polysemous storylines that can be read in multiple ways. Carvalho's narratives
flow from one genre to the next without acknowledging the boundaries that separate
one from the other, and often his works do so by combining fictional lines with historic
events and characters. This is most definitely the case with Nove noites, a novel of
which Carvalho states
A indistinção entre fato e ficção faz parte do suspense do romance. Por isso não
vejo sentido em dizer o que é real e o que não é. Isso tem a ver com meus outros
livros. Também neles há um dispositivo labiríntico, em que o leitor vai se perdendo
ao longo da narração. Nesse caso isso fica mais nítido porque existem referências a
pessoas reais. Mas mesmo as partes em que elas aparecem podem ter sido
inventadas. Em última instância, é tudo ficção. (Moura, 2002)
86
And indeed, behind this assertion of everything being fiction, Bernardo Carvalho takes
much creative license to write about people who were known historical figures, some of
which, like Lévi-Strauss, were still living at the time of publication of Nove noites.
Of the fictionalized factual people that inhabit the world of Nove noites, the first
person narrator, who shares many parallels with Bernardo Carvalho himself, is the most
compelling. Among the commonalities that the author and narrator share are the fact
that both are journalists, both live in São Paulo, and both spent time in the Amazon as
childen with fathers who owned land near the Krahô tribe, and both actively seek out
the family of Buell Quain in an attempt to get their version of the truth behind why
Quain killed himself. Carvalho constructs these parallels between himself and the
narrator both inside and out of the text of Nove noites. He plays with these parallels,
artfully constructing a double of himself within the novel, inserting a picture of himself
as a boy next to a Krahô tribesman on the inside cover of the book. The narrator also
expresses many of the same concerns that Bernardo Carvalho has himself addressed in
various interviews and public appearances. Take the following excerpt from Nove
noites, where the narrator decides to proceed with his fictional novel, but remains
fearful that the family of Buell Quain will step forward and contradict his work
Porque agora eu já estava disposto a fazer dela realmente uma ficção. Era o que
me restava, à falta de outra coisa. O meu maior pesadelo era imaginar os
sobrinhos do Quain aparecendo da noite para o dia, gente que sempre esteve
debaixo dos meus olhos sem que eu nunca a tivesse visto, para me entregar de
bandeja a solução de toda a história, o motivo real do suicídio, o óbvio que faria
de meu livro um artifício risível. (157)
87
Compare with the following from an interview with Flávio Moura, of Revista Época
Eu queria fazer um romance, não queria fazer um livro de jornalismo. Foi como se,
retrospectivamente, a história de Buell Quain desse sentido ao que eu já tinha na
cabeça. As coisas se encaixam. Conforme eu ia fazendo, percebia que talvez a
história já estivesse pronta. Mas só tive certeza que seria ficção quando percebi
que não encontraria a família dele. Ao longo do processo, porém, muitas cartas
que eu tinha enviado começaram a ser respondidas. Então fiquei morrendo de
medo: se a família aparecesse, ferrava com a minha história.
The concerns of the author are echoed in the narrator, a narrator who can be seen as an
alter ego for Bernardo Carvalho, but who also remains a character, a construct of the
author and, according to the latter, not a reflection of himself. This is an issue that
Bernardo Carvalho has also addressed before the press, and he claims that although he
may use autobiographical information, and may model aspects of his narrators after
himself, they are ultimately not expressions of his own identity.41
What emerges from this multi-layered discourse, this literary "game" as the
author calls it is a narrative that seeks to go beyond the limitations of one novel and one
discursive register. By layering historical people, places and events with his fictional
narratives and his fictionalized doubles, Bernardo Carvalho is inviting the reader to
partake in this literary labyrinth where, above all else, what can be believed in, given
faith to, and experienced is the narrative for the narrative's sake. It is in the process of
41
"Outra professora universitária escreveu um ensaio longuíssimo sobre Nove noites e Mongólia,
dizendo que em ambos o personagem era um gay enrustido. E como os romances eram autobiográficos, só
podia ser eu o gay enrustido. Então, com O sol se põe em São Paulo, eu queria fazer um livro que essa
professora não descobrisse que o gay enrustido era eu. Até agora ela não descobriu. Então, essa idéia de
uma literatura que não é testemunho, não é representação imediata do autor, e não serve para o mercado,
Igreja, estado, que não serve para nada, é fundamental para a minha vida. Ela não é a expressão de mim ainda que seja; é óbvio que vai ser; se eu trato de gay enrustido, é porque isso me interessa, mas aquele não
sou eu." This quote is from an event that Bernardo Carvalho participated in, in 1997, hosted by Rascunho.
88
threading together these multiple storylines that range from the historical, biographical
and autobiographical, to the purely fictional, that Bernardo Carvalho demonstrates that
the finding of a definitive truth is impossible in a world with constantly shifting and
multiplicitous narratives. Bernardo Carvalho is playing at once with literary convention
and also with the public's perception of what constitutes valid truth.42 His literature
attempts to create narratives that are dissident, that stray from the norm in that they
strive to break the literary boundaries and conventions that the writer sees as dominant
in modern literature.
At the same time, he asserts that Nove noites is his response to a global
readership that is obsessed with "real stories." He states, "Então, eu fiquei irritado e
entendi o que as pessoas queriam: história real, livro baseado em história real."
(Rascunho, 2007) With this in mind, and after coming across the story of the
anthropologist Buell Quain, Bernardo Carvalho wrote Nove noites in a way that would
mix what the readership wanted and what he wanted; he constructed a text that
incorporates historical and biographical data but subverts it, infuses it with different
perspectives and calls into question whether the veracity of a narrative is ever fully
known. Carvalho's preoccupation with challenging the boundaries of reality and fiction
is a conscious task, setting him apart from authors such as José Eduardo Agualusa
42
"Os meus livros explicitam a manipulação do leitor até quase o grotesco. É muito visível. Minha obra é
quase só a manipulação do leitor. É o princípio de todo romance, de toda obra romanesca - o que o romance
faz é manipular o leitor e fazer com que ele participe. Agora, quando se explicita isso, como é o caso dos
meus livros, dá-se ao leitor uma participação mais ativa. Você mostra que está jogando com ele. É quase
um convite explícito. No romance do século 19, este convite está lá, mas é mais implícito. Nos meus livros,
eles quase se reduzem à explicitação desse jogo." Rascunho, 2007.
89
because he considers this binary a point of contention while Agualusa writes over it
without expressing concern for, or acknowledgement of, this narrative division of fact
and fiction. Nonetheless, Bernardo Carvalho creates the stories of two extremely
interesting characters that travel to the most adverse places in search of themselves. In
the case of Buell Quain, these travels range from Asia and the Middle East to the
Brazilian Amazon Basin. In the case of the narrator, he also travels to the Amazon, to
the site where Buell Quain committed suicide, as well as to New York City in order to try
to piece together the puzzle of Quain's death.
Travel in Nove noites
Nove noites is a novel that circles around the experience of travel. The
characters are in constant motion from one space to another: be it the Amazon, New
York, the Fiji islands, or Asia. The layered narratives also leap from one place to
another as they switch from one narrative voice to the next: there are a total of three,
which include the narrator, Buell Quain, and Manoel Perna. The depictions of the
spaces that the characters visit are vivid and explicit, especially those surrounding the
character's experiences in the Brazilian jungle. However, this novel, and in fact all of
Bernardo Carvalho's novels, is not meant to be travel literature, it is not meant to
encompass a "true" depiction of what the reader would find if she were to go to these
places in person.
90
Like Bernardo Carvalho attests to Rascunho, the versions of the places he creates
in his fiction have nothing to do with direct representation. He writes these spaces into
existence based on his own experiences of them, and he does not seek to create realism
with his narratives, but instead to take from his own experience and create "...um país
imaginário, que eu inventei." (Rascunho, 2007) In this sense, novels such as Nove noites,
Mongólia, and O filho da mãe are all set in physical spaces that Bernardo Carvalho
himself has experienced, but they are his versions of each of these spaces. They are
representational of his narrative alone, and not directly indicative of the external
realities of any of these places. Carvalho's work is shaped by his own experiences as he
travels, it is inspired by the emotions and interactions he has, but it does not directly
reflect these things. Instead, the spaces that Bernardo Carvalho creates through his
narrators, characters, and storylines are the ways that he has chosen to express these
places through that particular narrative. Interestingly enough, his lived experiences
shape the narratives he wants to write while he declares that his narratives are not a
reflection of him, even as he writes autobiographical aspects of his life into his narrators
and characters. This awareness of his own influence in constructing the places he
rewrites through his narratives is yet another point of divergence with authors like
Sousa Tavares, as Carvalho's conscious awareness of the artifice involved in creating a
fictionalized space adds a layer of conceptual depth through his metanarratives that
aren't found in novels like Equador.
This interplay between fact and fiction underlies the notion that it is ultimately
the narrative itself that must have the final word and be the focal point of the reader's
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attention. In this manner the reader is transported through the narrative into a world
that mirrors elements of our external reality, but is at the same time unique and
separate from it because it is given through the lens of the storyline. What the author
accomplishes through this is the approximation of the world he represents, which is
constructed internally, through his own imaginary process, to the external world that
both author and reader can collectively relate to. As the reader progresses through the
text the division and similarities between the author and the narrator become less
important, less evident, as the story itself becomes the object of focus. The fundamental
element of all of these layers of narrative, which transcends the complications and
intricacies of metanarrative and the binaries of reality and fiction, is the travel
experience of the author and his utilization of this experience as the source and
inspiration for the characters he develops and the events they experience.
Buell Quain travels the world
Whether seen through the historical information, letters, third-person narratives
on the life of Buell Quain, or through the first-person perspective of the narrator, the
experience of travel is demonstrated as essential in the search for understanding the
self. In terms of selecting an historical figure to be fictionalized in a novel that deals so
extensively with the experience of travel, Bernardo Carvalho could not have chosen a
better one than the anthropologist Buell Quain. Buell Quain traveled restlessly
throughout his youth and young adulthood, until his untimely death by his own hands in
92
the summer of 1939. He is depicted as a precocious individual, who had by the age of
sixteen traveled throughout the United States, and who, upon his completion of high
school, traveled extensively throughout the Middle East and Asia before studying
zoology in Wisconsin and, later, anthropology at Columbia University. In Nove noites,
Bernardo Carvalho paraphrases the preface of Quain's book The flight of the chiefs
(1942), originally written by William Ellery Leonard, as
Ao terminar o ginásio, aos dezesseis anos, Buell já tinha atravessado os Estados
Unidos de carro. Em 1929, antes de entrar para a universidade, passou seis meses
na Europa e no Oriente Médio, percorrendo Egito, Síria e Palestina. Nas férias do
ano seguinte, foi para a Rússia. Depois de prestar os exames, em fevereiro de
1931, embarcou numa viagem de seis meses, como marinheiro, num vapor para
Xangai. Em 1935 estava em New York, e no ano seguinte, em Fiji.43 (18)
Indeed, this intrepid young traveler, whose mysterious suicide was never explained, is
an ideal foundation upon which to create a character for whom travel encompasses the
search for belonging and a sense of self as well as a constant fleeing from an
unreconciled past.
What Bernardo Carvalho does with the character of Buell Quain is create an
internal life to this historical character, this tragic young suicide, in order to explore the
43
The flight of the chiefs, is in fact a book of the historical Buell Quain's work, published posthumously by
his mother, Fannie Dunn Quain in 1942. The actual excerpt from W.E. Leonard's foreword to this volume
reads: "From schooldays on, he used his vacations for travel, at fourteen accompanying his father to a
Rotarian convention in Europe and visiting Holland, Germany, and the three Scandinavian Countries; and
by the time he had graduated from High School he had covered on auto-trips all of the States of his
country and many of the Provinces of Canada. In the vacation of 1928 he held his first job, time-keeper
for the Dominion Construction Co., who were building a railroad to James Bay, and in time-off he explored
wild islands, making sketch-maps to send home...Before entering Wisconsin in 1929 he was six months
traveling in France, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, England, Scotland, Egypt, Syria, and Palestine; and in the
vacation of the next year he visited Russia...After passing his semester examinations in February of '31, he
took time out on his own, and shipped as a common sailor on a freight-steamer to Shanghai...", p. vi.
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possible reasons for his untimely death. He uses the historical account of Buell Quain in
order to provide a historically entrenched story, while at the same time using this
foundation as a point of departure for the discussion of why people seek the Other, why
individuals such as Buell Quain (factual or fictional), leave their comfort zones and sociocultural environments in order to experience cultures that are drastically different and
sometimes oppositional to their own. In this sense, this historiographic metafiction44
goes beyond the simple fictionalizing or retelling of the story of one person who existed
in history, it uses the life and travels of Buell Quain as a counterexample for the travels
and existential preoccupations of the narrator, in a series of doubles that extend beyond
the book itself by hinting at the tenuousness of fact and fiction in the realm of narrative.
This aspect, however, will be dealt with in greater detail further ahead in this chapter.
In terms of the character of Buell Quain, the need to leave the space he grew up
in is evident. As a young man, modeled after the historical Quain, he travels all over the
United States and Canada, evidently seeking something that wasn't intrinsic to himself
or his environment. As the reader progresses through the novel, the relationship that
Quain had with money and with coming from a privileged background is reiterated
various times, as in this quote from one of Quain's colleagues, Luiz de Castro Faria:
Segundo se dizia, era muito rico. Era filho de médicos. Tinha muito dinheiro. Mas
detestava usar dinheiro. Era uma obsessão. Essa preocupação de não deixar
transparecer que tinha recursos, e de viver sempre em condições que
escondessem a sua verdadeira condição. Uma vez, para você ter um idéia, ele me
44
To use the term defined by Linda Hutcheon in A Poetics of Postmodernism. New York; Routledge, 1988.
94
pagou um jantar num restaurante de luxo em Copacabana, quando morava num
hotel de terceira na rua do Riachuelo. Para não gastar dinheiro. Ele detestava ser
rico. (34)
As Castro Faria and others note, the fact that Buell Quain came from a rich family is an
issue that haunts and disturbs the young man. He seeks to find an identity outside of
this sense of privilege, and at the same time he fights against being identified as one
who comes from his background.45 At another point in the narrative, Castro Faria
remarks that Buell Quain's resistance to his rich upbringing goes beyond the desire to
flee from it or deny it, what Quain actually wanted, he says, is a world without rich
people.46
The repulsion to wealth that Buell Quain expressed is a pervading theme that
emerges through various other accounts of him. In his travels, he seeks to find the most
humble lodgings, he takes on the types of labor that are designated to the working class
by necessity. Quain, in essence, seeks to separate himself, his own sense of identity,
progressively further from the socioeconomic circumstances into which he was born.
For instance, the narrator of Nove noites informs the reader that
45
In an ironic twist that lends itself to an uncomplicated Freudian reading, especially after the narrator's
multiple assertions that the novel is about paternalism, it is with his wealthy father that Buell Quain first
travels abroad as a young teenager, a fact that also serves as a unifying factor between Quain and the
narrator himself: "Buell Quain também havia acompanhado o pai em viagens de negócios. Quando tinha
catorze anos, foram a uma convenção do Rotary Club na Europa. Visitaram a Holanda, a Alemanha e os
países escandinavos. E daí em diante nunca mais parou de viajar." p. 64.
46
From Nove noites, p. 36: "'A única miragem que eu posso admitir que ele tivesse era essa de um mundo
sem ricos, porque era realmente uma ideologia. Ele não queria parecer rico. Era seu traço de caráter
mais marcante. Não tenho dúvidas.'" Again, the quote is from Luiz de Castro Faria.
95
Quain chegou ao Brasil em fevereiro de 1938. Desembarcou no Rio de Janeiro às
vésperas do Carnaval. Foi morar numa pensão da Lapa, reduto de todos os vícios,
da malandragem e da prostituição. Um ano e cinco meses depois estava morto.
(16)
Prior to his death, Quain's incessant search was part of seeking a rupture with his own
history, with the narrative of privilege and, to a degree, dependence into which he was
born and which is associated with western ideals of wealth and social status. Initially,
Quain's voyages abroad are brought about by his search for a place where social status
and wealth are not the measure of an individual's value, which is why he embarks on
the ship in which he sails around the world as a common sailor, and why he chose one
of the least reputable places as his home when he first arrives in Brazil. However, in
seeking to find himself and his own narrative through finding an external, physical place
that would offer him what he was seeking, Quain was setting himself up for disaster.
The narrator discusses Buell Quain's associations between travel and the
experience of the exotic, of how his search among other peoples and cultures was
something idyllic. In Nove noites, Buell Quain sought to find himself among the
unknown in order to seek what he didn't have in his sociocultural environment, and his
notions of the exotic places he expected to find were based on the hope of finding his
own paradise. However, what he found in the different places that he visited around
the world was never quite what he was seeking. Having traveled all over North America,
Asia, Europe, and the Middle East, Quain comes to Brazil as a man who no longer seeks
to find this idealized space in the external world. And yet, Quain does not have the
capacity to seek this place of acceptance internally. He is, in a sense, broken by his
96
experiences and by the cruelty that he has found in many of the different spaces he has
visited. Instead of being able to realize his dream of finding the place that would allow
him to be free of all of the social and familial constraints that were the causes for his
suffering, Quain finds evidence of the potential for desperation, greed, cruelty, and fear
that exists within humanity as a whole.47 By the time Buell Quain meets Luiz de Castro
Faria on the Amazon River, his expectations on travel and on his search for the
paradisiacal exotic has come to an end. Once in Brazil, Quain's experience is narrated
predominantly through the letters of a secondary narrator, Manoel Perna. It is through
these letters that the reader is provided with a lens into the thoughts and emotions of
Buell Quain in the last days before his suicide.
The letters of Manoel Perna
Manoel Perna's voice adds to what Júlio Naves Ribeiro calls "polifonia" in his
chapter "No labirínto narrativo de Nove noites: percepções sensoriais e a exacerbação
da alteridade" in the collection Devires Imagéticos: a etnografia, o outro e suas
imagens. (2009) This polyphonic writing style is indicative of the type of narrative that is
47
Manoel Perna refers to the effect that some of these episodes had on Buell Quain: "Ele deve ter lhe
falado dos portos que visitou, do que viu pelo mundo, sempre um pouco mais além numa busca sem fim e
circular, e do que trouxe para casa, não os objetos que passaram a assombrar a mãe depois da sua morte,
mas o que lhe marcou os olhos para sempre, deixando-lhe aquela expressão que ele tentava disfarçar em
vão e que eu apreendi quando chegou a Carolina na distração do seu cansaço, os olhos que traziam o que
ele tinha visto pelo mundo, a morte de um ladrão a chibatadas numa cidade da Arábia, o terror de um
menino operado pelo próprio pai, a entrega dos que lhe pediam que os levasse com ele, para onde quer
que fosse, como se dele esperavam a salvação. Ele me disse que ninguém pode imaginar a tristeza e o
horror de ser tomado como salvação por quem prefere se entregar sem defesas ao primeiro que aparece,
quem sabe um predador, a ter que continuar onde está." p. 42
97
emerging in various modern authors such as Bernardo Carvalho and Agualusa. It
demonstrates the importance given to the cohesive, rhizomatic narrative as opposed to
literary or stylistic conventions that would separate narratives along genre lines and
limit the scope of a work into classifications such as anthropology, biography, history, or
even fiction. Nove noites is emblematic of this type of postmodern narrative, as it
incorporates significant elements of multiple genres, to the point where it frequently
leaps across the border between fiction and non-fiction, social science and literature.
Bearing this in mind, a significant portion of the narrative is told through the use of
letters that are presented as historical artifacts, but which are fictionalized accounts of a
real life individual who met Buell Quain, they are the letters of Manoel Perna.
The following is an example of one of Manoel Perna's letters:
Isto é para quando você vier. É preciso estar preparado. Alguém terá que prevenilo. Vai entrar numa terra em que a verdade e a mentira não têm mais os sentidos
que o trouxeram até aqui. Pergunte aos índios. Qualquer coisa. O que primeiro
lhe passar pela cabeça. E amanhã, ao acordar, faça de novo a mesma pergunta. E
depois de amanhã, mais uma vez. Sempre a mesma pergunta. E cada dia receberá
uma resposta diferente. A verdade está perdida entre todas as contradições e os
disparates. Quando vier à procura do que o passado enterrou, é preciso saber que
estará às portas de uma terra em que a memória não pode ser exumada, pois o
segredo, sendo o único bem que se leva para o túmulo, é também a única herança
que se deixa aos que ficam, como você e eu, à espera de um sentido, nem que seja
pela suposição do mistério, para acabar morrendo de curiosidade. Virá escorado
em fatos que até então terão lhe parecido incontestáveis. (7)
98
Manoel Perna is the last person to see Buell Quain alive, the one who was with
Quain during his last combined nine nights among the "civilized" world.48 He is a type of
secondary narrator, one who is used by the author to demonstrate different aspects of
Buell Quain, to demonstrate the internal conflicts and perspectives of the young
anthropologist in the days just before his suicide. In his interview with Flávio Moura,
Bernardo Carvalho commented that
Esse personagem, o Manoel Perna, é uma e spécie de desejo do autor de
resolver as lacunas que não são resolvidas pela pesquisa. Várias pistas
me induziam a certas conclusões, mas eu não tinha certeza. Precisava de
um negócio que fechasse. E a única pessoa que podia ter visto era ele.
Por isso logo no início percebi que ele seria um dos narradores. No livro
ele aparece como engenheiro. Na verdade, ele era barbeiro. Mas achei
que ia ficar muito inverossímil, ele escrevendo daquele jeito empolado
com essa profissão. Foi a única coisa que eu mudei com relação a ele.
Manoel Perna creates the opportunity to develop an internal life for Buell Quain. His
letters perform a similar function to Luís Bernardo's letters to his friend João Forjaz in
Equador. Without the use of this secondary narrator, the story of the young American
anthropologist would lack the emotive depth that engages the reader. It is through the
letters that Manoel Perna leaves behind for the person he is expecting to come looking
for Buell Quain that the reader presumably has the most access to the last thoughts and
48
Due to the over-romanticized rhetoric of this stylized, secondary narrator, Bernardo Carvalho was asked
during an interview by Flávio Moura if he was concerned with having Manoel Perna's narrative voice
confused with his own, to which he replied: "De jeito nenhum. Você coloca na boca de um o utro
personagem. Seria uma apreensão ridícula da literatura tomar a opinião de um personagem pela do
autor. É o que os americanos fazem, com esse negócio do politicamente correto. Se eu incluo um
sádico assassino no livro, eles acham que estou fazendo prop aganda do sádico assassino. Quando no
fundo essa é a graça da literatura, do romance." from "A trama traiçoeira em 'Nove noites'". Revista
Época: 9/23/2002.
99
emotions of the young anthropologist. The narratives that Manoel Perna adds to the
overall work are essential for the reader to have a sense of Buell Quain himself, as
without them the story about Buell Quain would contain no information about Quain's
final days in the village of Carolina or among the Krahô. This is what Paul Ricoeur refers
to as "the thought experiments occasioned by fiction" (Ricoeur 1992) which in this case
allow the reader to engage with psychological and emotional situations that are
potentially deleterious but which, nonetheless, stimulate the imagination and incite the
consideration of why a person would commit suicide in such a hideous manner as Buell
Quain.
It is through the letters that Manoel Perna leaves behind that the reader gains
some insight into why Buell Quain became disillusioned throughout his travels; one
becomes acquinted with his difficult experiences and is given a glimpse into the
paradisiacal moments that he did have while immersed in other cultures. When Manoel
Perna remembers the drunken conversations that he and Buell Quain had late into the
nights in Carolina, what stands out the most is Quain's experience on the island of
Vanua Levu, in the Fijian islands:
Na primeira noite, ele me falou de uma ilha no Pacífico, onde os índios são negros.
Me falou do tempo que passou entre esses índios e de uma aldeia,que chamou
Nakoroka, onde cada um decide o que quer ser, pode escolher a sua irmã, seu
primo, sua família, e também sua casta, seu lugar em relação aos outros. Uma
sociedade muito rígida nas suas leis e nas suas regras, onde, no entanto, cabe aos
indivíduos escolher os seus papéis. Uma aldeia onde a um estranho é impossível
reconhecer os traços genealógicos, as famílias de sangue, já que os parentes são
100
eletivos, assim como as identidades. O paraíso, o sonho de aventura do menino
antropólogo.49 (47)
This island, Vanua Levu, is the closest thing to the idyllic place that Buell Quain was
searching for. And yet again, what is most salient about Vanua Levu is not the people
themselves, but the fact that in their society each person had the ability to choose their
own family, their own place in society, their own identity. Identity in Vanua Levu is not
limited to the situation in which a person was raised, it is not at the mercy of any social
limitation except one; the need to choose who to be and with whom to be. 50 Vanua
Levu seems to be the ideal place for a person who is looking to be freed from the
constraints of social attachments to a certain family, a certain class, a certain identity.
Despite having found a place where each individual choses their own role in
society, Buell Quain could not remain for various reasons. First and foremost, Buell
Quain was a perpetual outsider. His search for the ideal place is constantly hindered by
this state of being, as he cannot accept becoming part of any of the cultures that he
visits and observes. Regardless of his personal issues with belonging and displacement,
which we will also discuss to a greater degree further in the chapter, the issue of
involvement and integration is one that has consistently plagued the field of
anthropology. In his Interpretation of Cultures, Clifford Geertz addresses this problem
by explaining how the different levels of anthropological involvement and interpretation
49
The text is italicized by the author in the novel to differentiate the primary narrator from Manoel Perna.
In fact, the historical Buell Quain compiled a significant amount of work on the people and folktales of
Vanua Levu, which is the source material for the book that was published posthumously in his name as The
flight of the chiefs. (1942)
50
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function. As Geertz points out, anthropology is ultimately the interpretation that one is
making of another's culture through one's own experiential lens which is in turn shaped
and defined by one's experiential repertoire.51 Therefore, anthropology itself is a
narrative construct, or chronicle, of human experience as observed and catalogued by
someone who automatically, subconsciously, filters what they observe through their
own limited experiences. To cite Geertz:
In short, anthropological writings are themselves interpretations, and second and
third order ones to boot. (By definition, only a “native” makes first order ones: it’s
his culture.)2 They are, thus, fictions; fictions, in the sense that they are
“something made,” “something fashioned” – the original meaning of fictiō – not
that they are false, unfactual, or merely “as if” thought experiments. (15)
In fact, these anthropological narratives carry as much a representation of the observers
in them as they do the representation of the people being observed. The degree to
which an anthropologist represents himself as being involved is directly correlated to
the narrative that he constructs about his interactions, experiences, and interpretations
of the culture he visits.52 With Buell Quain, the narrative is consistently one of exclusion
51
This is also a phenomenon studied in social psychology, as demonstrated in the introduction to the
collection The Self in Social Judgment: "Social judgments contain an element of subjectivity, and the exact
nature of this subjectivity depends on biases arising from the egocentric limitations of the self. This is not
to say that people always expect others to share their beliefs or to use the same values as a basis for moral
judgment; nor does it guarantee that people always evaluate the characteristics of others less favorably than
their own, or that they expect others to be at greater risk of misfortune and disease. Research has
established, however, that the self tends to influence social judgment in all these ways and more. People's
own histories, preferences, desires, goals, beliefs, and self-views, as well as the emotional, physical and
environmental states they find themselves in, exert a powerful influence on the way they see others." p. 3-4
(Krueger et. al., 2005)
102
and displacement, which is developed throughout Nove noites from multiple
perspectives that are woven together to create this character who is always the
outsider.
The limited involvement that Buell Quain has with the people of Vanua Levu
demonstrate his incapacity to transgress the narrative delimitation between self and
other, which brings him back to the space of the outsider-observer. This is illustrated by
the following excerpt from one of Manoel Perna's letters;
A ele, só restava observar, que em princípio era a única razão da sua presença
entre os Trumai. Quando chegou aqui, estava cansado desse papel. Mas também
tinha horror da idéia de ser confundido com as culturas que observava. Me contou
que, entre os nativos com que convivera na sua ilha da Melanésia, não podia haver
pior desgraça para um rapaz do que ser acusado de espreitar mulheres. Era um
sinal de infantilidade: diziam dos que espreitavam que não eram capazes de
alcançar a satisfação sexual pelas vias de fato. Ele estava cansado de observar,
mas nada podia lhe causar maior repulsa do que ter que viver como os índios,
52
Clifford Geertz describes the importance of engaging with these narratives in Interpretation of Cultures
and how these narratives function to bring about a type of interpersonal awareness, or a world-centered
perspective, by which a person can be exposed to other cultures despite never having engaged them. He
states: "Anthropologists have not always been as aware as they might be of this fact: that although culture
exists in the trading post, the hill fort, or the sheep run, anthropology exists in the book, the article, the
lecture, the museum display, or, sometimes nowadays, the film. To become aware of it is to realize that the
line between mode of representation and substantive content is as undrawable in cultural analysis as it is in
painting; and that fact in turn seems to threaten the objective status of anthropological knowledge by
suggesting that its source is not social reality but scholarly artifice.
It does threaten it, but the threat is hollow. The claim to attention of an ethnographic account does
not rest on its author's ability to capture primitive facts in faraway places and carry them home like a mask
or a carving, but on the degree to which he is able to clarify what goes on in such places, to reduce the
puzzlement – what manner of men are these? - to which unfamiliar acts emerging out of unknown
backgrounds naturally give rise. This raises some serious problems of verification, all right – or, if
'verification' is too strong a word for so soft a science (I, myself, would prefer 'appraisal'), of how you can
tell a better account from a worse one. But that is precisely the virtue of it. If ethnography is thick with
description and ethnographers those who are doing the describing, then the determining question for any
given example of it, whether a field journal squib or a Malinowski-sized monograph, is whether it sorts
winks from twitches and real winks from mimicked ones. It is not against a body of interpreted data,
radically thinned descriptions, that we must measure the cogency of our explanations, but against the power
of the scientific imagination to bring us into touch with the lives of strangers." (16)
103
comer sua comida, participar da vida cotidiana e dos rituais, fingindo ser um deles.
Tentava manter-se afastado e, num círculo vicioso, voltava a ser observador. (55)
Buell Quain is the reluctant observer, one who wants to stop being the outsider of the
situations and interactions he sees, but who is unable to go beyond his own selflimitations. For Buell Quain the ways of life that he experiences around him are
exclusionary, he allows himself to remain on the outside because of his own reticence to
see himself as being able to exist within any of these spheres. Whether the place is on a
ship sailing across the Atlantic, wandering along a beach in the United States after
abandoning a group of friends, or living among the Krahô in Brazil, Buell Quain is
constantly looking for a way to see beyond himself and his own incapacity to integrate
into any group of people. By looking to escape his background, his family, his social and
cultural situations, what Quain is actually doing is seeking a way to be free of himself. It
is because of this that he is incapable of finding what he is searching for in all of the
places he travels to, because the flaw that he carries and that he constantly runs from
exists within himself, it is inescapable. In this sense, Quain is not looking for a place
where he fits in among the Other, Quain is actually looking for a way to stop being the
Other. In the various cultural and social spheres that Quain inhabits, the one thing that
never fits is himself, it is because of this that he leaves the United States, that he leaves
Fiji, that he continues to wander until he finally forfeits his own life.
Once again this is corroborated by the letters left behind by Manoel Perna. In
their long conversations over the last few nights that Buell Quain was in Carolina,
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Manoel Perna asks and chronicles the answers that Buell Quain had for questions such
as why he was so determined to live a life of constant travel. The answers that Quain
gives Manoel Perna all demonstrate the degree to which Quain himself was the outsider
in his own skin. He states
Numa das vezes em que me falou de suas viagens pelo mundo, perguntei aonde
queria chegar e ele me disse que estava em busca de um ponto de vista. Eu lhe
perguntei: 'Para olhar o quê?'. Ele respondeu: 'Um ponto de vista em que eu já não
esteja no campo de visão. (111)
and later
Via-se como um estrangeiro e, ao viajar, procurava apenas voltar para dentro de
si, de onde não estaria mais condenado a se ver. Sua fuga foi resultado do seu
fracasso. De certo modo, ele se matou para sumir do seu campo de visão, para
deixar de se ver. (112)
For Buell Quain travel was a way to avoid seeing himself, a way to find solace or
distraction from the person he was and with whom he could not come to terms. This is
why Buell Quain had to leave behind his home and his wealth, and also why he
subsequently tried to eliminate the traces of it in his interactions with others.
Buell Quain learned to despise all of the places he visited and the people he
interacted with because he constantly saw himself projected upon them. At first it was
just the privileged circle he was raised in, but by the time he had arrived in Brazil, Buell
Quain had traveled around the world and lost hope that he would find a place where he
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would no longer be in his own "campo de visão." Again, Luiz de Castro Faria provides
some insight into the inner workings of this character when he states:
Uma vez ele me disse: 'Castro Faria, eu não tenho mais nada para ver no mundo'.
Tinha sido embarcadiço, o trabalho mais grosseiro, mais humilde de todos, num
navio ao redor do mundo. Ele me disse que tinha andado pelo mundo todo, não
tinha mais nada para ver. Era uma pessoa muito solitária. Era muito fechado.
Essa expressão de alguém que já não via nenhum interesse de estar presente. O
convívio dele era muito reduzido. Acho que não aprendeu português, nem se
interessava pelo Brasil. (41)
By this point, Buell Quain is no longer looking for the idyllic place he dreamed of as a
college student, inspired by black and white films of faraway cultures and their taboo
love affairs. Buell Quain does not even bother to engage with other people. Like Castro
Faria says, he was very solitary and closed off. In all of his travels he failed to find a cure
for the emptiness he carried inside himself, the sense of perpetual displacement that
was the cornerstone of his identity and self-image.
The idyllic becomes helplessness and despair
Several of Buell Quain's experiences accentuate the reasons that led him to turn
his enthusiasm for travel from the exaltation of the exotic to the feeling of despair and,
to a degree, ambivalence that he demonstrates to colleagues such as Castro Faria and
Manoel Perna upon his arrival in Brazil. The stories that Buell Quain tells both of these
characters, as well as the jadedness with which he approaches his time with the Krahô,
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are indicators of the perceptual shift that occurs within him during his experiences
throughout his travels. Ultimately, these are experiences that emphasize the extreme
difficulty an individual has of escaping the situations and circumstances that he is born
into. In this sense, Quain finds and reaffirms his own sense of helplessness and lack of
agency reflected on the world he encounters abroad.
As Buell Quain interacts with the world around him, be it in Asia, the Pacific Isles,
or South America, he is attracted to individuals that are in difficult situations and that he
perceives as needing to be saved. Each of the individuals that he spoke of with Manoel
Perna manifests some degree of exclusion from one's own cultural or social group, and
each of these are perceived by Quain as outsiders in need of his help. However, in all of
these cases what occurs is an externalization of Quain's own personal problems, of his
own attachments and resentments in relation to his family, his social class, and his
sexuality. In social psychology this is a phenomenon called projective identification.53
Through the process of projective identification or "projection," the individual displaces
his own emotions, attitudes, and perceptions onto a chosen Other in order to
externalize his pain. Paradoxically, this externalization of personal pain also creates a
sense of persecution or guilt in the individual doing the projecting. This accounts for the
53
We will utilize the terms 'projective identification' and 'projection' interchangeably. A more in-depth
definition of projective identification: "Projective identification can be seen in its most sublimated form as
the quality of empathy, and its most primitively defense form as the phenomenon in which the individual
denies his/her emotional experience, relocates (disidentifies) it in phantasy to his/her image of another
person, where it is now identified as belonging. The projecting subject now feels free of the specific pain,
yet paradoxically feels persecuted by the object into which he/she projected them, as if these were the
"Siamese-twinship" – "Möbius-strip" connection between them. Thus, the subject is persecuted by
"nameless dread" (Bion 1962), "nameless" because the specific name of the experience was lost in the
denial, relocation, and projective identification." p. x, from Intersubjectivity, Projective Identification and
Otherness, by Maurice Apprey and Howard F. Stein, 1993.
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increasing weariness with which Buell Quain relates to the world around him. As stated
above, by the time he arrives in Brazil to work with the Trumai and the Krahô, Buell
Quain is no longer interested in relating with others, as time and again he has
experienced his incapacity to save the people onto whom he has projected his own
suffering.
This self-identification with others who are social outcasts or seem to be
displaced within their own communities occurs during several of Buell Quain's trips. In
one instance, Quain identifies with a Trumai boy who is the village outcast:
...talvez por uma estranha afinidade decorrente do lugar incômodo que ele próprio
ocupava na aldeia, justamente como observador, logo percebeu um órfão de dez
ou doze anos que era mantido à margem. Era um desajustado. O único ali que,
como ele, não tinha família. Nunca participava das lutas que os outros meninos
organizavam. Como não havia meninas adolescentes, os jogos sexuais aconteciam
entre meninos ou entre meninos e homens, quase sempre por iniciativa dos
primeiros, que os adultos não reprimiam. Observou que o órfão tinha um interesse
especial por esses jogos. Costumava procurar os homens mais velhos, que não o
rechaçavam. (56)
Buell Quain identifies with this Trumai boy because of his apparent displacement within
his community, a displacement which is not expressly correlated to sexual orientation,
but which emphasizes the boy's interest in sexual games with men. In a situation where
Buell Quain feels pestered and annoyed by the incessant attention he receives from the
children and the young women of the village, he develops a sense of attachment for this
one specific child who embodies many of the characteristics that he has himself. For
one, the child is an outsider, one who is left to the margins of his society; much like Buell
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Quain in the narratives of his time with his friends and peers in the United States.
Secondly, the child is attracted to men in a way that interests the character of Buell
Quain because of his own sexual ambiguity.
Throughout the novel, Buell Quain's sexuality is constantly alluded to, it is an
element of his character that remains consistently present and that is related to his
desperation and his need to find a place to belong. As stated above, Quain tells Manoel
Perna that the pivotal moment that made him devote his life to anthropology was
watching a love story about a taboo love affair in a South Pacific tribe. It was this image,
of a place where such a love affair could exist, that sparked the young anthropologist's
interest in exotified places such as Vanua Levu or the Brazilian Amazon. At the same
time, it is also due to a homosexual encounter with a transvestite during Carnaval in Rio
de Janeiro that Buell Quain presumably contracted syphilis, a disease that would slowly
destroy him until the night he committed suicide. Buell Quain's relationship to sex and
to his own sexuality was a source of torment and inner turmoil for the character.
Incapable of being able to come to terms with this, Quain is consistently tormented by
sex, as it makes him feel like more of an outsider in his own skin. The narrator states
that:
Volta e meio o etnólogo via os mais jovens em abraços ou jogos sexuais. Para
evitar que os índios deitassem na sua rede, dizia a todos os que o procuravam com
esse pedido que sua 'mulher ficaria zangada' se soubesse. Não havia virgens na
aldeia. Para afastar as mulheres que o visitavam, ameaçava estuprá-las, e elas
logo fugiam, em geral às gargalhadas. Estava completamente só. (55)
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and later Manoel Perna adds that "O sexo assombrava a solidão do meu amigo." (56)
In fact, Buell Quain's fascination with exotic cultures in far off places seems to
have begun as an expression of his frustrated sexuality. When recounting the
experience that first made Buell want to become an anthropologist, Manoel Perna
recalls the story that Quain told him about a night at the cinema where he saw the first
depiction of indigenous people in the South Pacific islands.
E até a noite em que me contou ainda não sabia o quanto havia do efeito da
bebida no que viu. Na escuridão do cinema, a luz de prata se acendeu na tela e
uma vida impensada se descortinou diante dele, uma nova possibilidade e uma
saída, como se um caminho inexplorado se abrisse à sua frente. Não fazia idéia do
filme a que assistiria quando entrou no cinema, assim como não fazia idéia do
destino que ali lhe era apresentado. Assistiu vidrado a uma história de amor no
Pacífico Sul. A um amor proibido pelas leis de uma sociedade de nativos. Um amor
condenado pelos deuses. Um tabu. Até a noite em que me contou suas
lembranças, não sabia o quanto havia do efeito daquele amor proibido na própria
vocação. (47)
This night at the cinema gives direction to Buell Quain. It provides for him a possible
alternative to the life he had led up until that moment, a life in which he was out of
place and from which he wanted to escape. Manoel Perna asserts that Buell Quain was
transformed once he saw this film about a taboo love affair in the South Pacific, that it
fueled his desire to explore the different cultures of the indigenous groups of that
region and that it ultimately led him to the island of Vanua Levu. And yet, Buell Quain
did not remain on that island. He left once again, returning to the United States briefly
before he headed to his final resting place in Brazil.
110
Indeed, sex and sexuality are major contributing factors to the sense of
displacement that Buell Quain feels, not only in his own environment, which he left
behind at a young age, but also in the cultural spaces that he visits throughout his work
as an anthropologist. The narrator states that Quain would go so far as to threaten to
rape the young women of the Trumai village if they came near him—a threat from
which, perhaps to his disdain, they would run laughing hysterically. However, this one
boy catches his attention because he is both sexually ambiguous and an outsider. What
Quain is drawn to, in this case, is again the projection of himself onto another individual.
His externalizing of the self keeps Buell Quain moving from one place to another until
his own suicide. As Quain himself states, he wants to find a place where he is no longer
in his own field of vision: "Um ponto de vista em que eu já não esteja no campo de
visão.” (111) And yet, as he travels to each new space he finds himself perpetually in his
own field of vision, not because he sees people who are living the same struggles and
conflicts as himself, but because he is projecting himself onto others in each place he
visits. He is externalizing his own personal issues and torments, as opposed to dealing
with them internally.
In his article "The reading process: a phenomenological approach," Wolfgang Iser
also relates the experience of projection in interpersonal communication by focusing on
what he calls the "gaps" (216) in communication. According to Iser, individuals fill in the
gaps of communication, the unspoken or withheld information, with their own
narratives which encompass all the experiences within their lived repertoire. As Iser
asserts, this tendency can be extremely detrimental if a person projects his own set of
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characteristics or fears onto others because he is also continually adjusting his self
image according to the way he believes himself to be perceived. In a sense, this creates
a double displacement within the individual's conscious self-image, or a double negation
of the sense of self. In the case of Buell Quain, he projects the characteristics of himself
that he cannot deal with onto others that he identifies with, like the Chinese man in
Shanghai or the little Trumai boy, but at the same time he perceives his own inability to
help them and therefore on a subtle level he grasps his inability to help himself.54 While
he sees himself in these people he also sees his incapacity to alleviate their suffering,
and conversely sees himself as a failure through both his eyes and theirs. In this sense,
travel and encounters with the Other are a perpetual reminder of his displacement and
his inability to find a sense of belonging.
Bearing this in mind, it becomes less difficult to comprehend why Buell Quain's
life would end in a tragic suicide in the middle of the Amazon. If his travels were
consistently a search for a place where he could not see himself, his life would have
been one of constant frustration and self-induced helplessness. He comments to
Manoel Perna about having seen the atrocities that people commit against one another
throughout the world: the thief that was whipped to death in Arabia, the young boy
whose horror he witnessed as he was operated on by his own father, the people who
would ask him to take them along in order to escape their current situation. In each of
54
In Interpersonal Perception, R.D. Laing states: "My field of experience is, however, filled not only by my
direct view of myself (ego) and of the other (alter), but of what we shall call metaperspectives – my view
of the other's...view of me. I may not actually be able to see myself as others see me, but I am constantly
supposing them to be seeing me in particular ways, and I am constantly acting in the light of the actual or
supposed attitudes, opinions, needs, and so on the other has in respect of me." p. 4
112
these circumstances Buell Quain was unable to help. What began as a life of travel and
adventure in search of paradise would quickly become its polar opposite. In Travelers,
Immigrants, Inmates, Frances Bartowski writes of the close relationship between travel
and displacement, and how one can quickly become the other:
Where travel suggests an affirmative sense of groundlessness, a delight in the
necessary fictions of language and pleasures of motion, displacement suggests an
other/underside of the dialectic – that moment when the headiness of motion
turns into fear, into disavowal, and into the abyss in the ground. (xx)
Buell Quain sought to find a place where he would no longer feel like the outsider, like
the displaced individual, only to find a world full of displaced individuals who mirrored
his own despair but who were also in situations far worse than his.
Perhaps the most extreme anecdote among these takes place in China. Upon
meeting a young man in Shanghai that wanted to leave China at all costs, Buell Quain
helped him onboard his ship as a castaway. However, the young man was discovered,
kicked off the ship, and punished at the nearest port. The burden of Quain's
responsibility for this young man's fate weighed heavily on his conscience. 55 Manoel
55
Joseph Conrad's masterful story "The Secret Sharer" recounts the experience of a young captain who
takes aboard a stow-away who fled from a nearby island after having killed a man. In his tale, Conrad's
narrator becomes immediately enthralled by this man with whom he shares his quarters and his free
hours, all the while struggling to maintain the stowaway's presence a secret. Fortunately for the
stowaway in Conrad's story, he is never discovered. This fortune was not on the side of Buell Quain's own
"secret sharer," whose brief story follows: "Em Xangai conheceu um rapaz chinês que queria deixar a
China para sempre. O dr. Buell lhe falou da América como de um sonho. E, na sua ingenuidade, achou
que pudesse ajudar o chinês a realizar o sonho dele, como ele próprio já estava decidido a realizar o seu.
Prometeu o que não podia. O sonho de uns é a realidade dos outros. E o mesmo pode ser dito dos
pesadelos. Conseguiu fazer com que o rapaz embarcasse clandestinamente no navio. Mas não que
chegasse à América. Foi descoberto, expulso e castigado no primeiro porto, sob os olhos horrorizados do
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Perna relates the episode and also comments at length on the disillusionment and grief
that travel experiences like these had on Buell Quain. He states that Quain suspected
that this young man he had brought aboard, his own "secret sharer" of sorts, was
probably even killed for having boarded a ship with white men. Indeed, Quain's
incapacity to assist the people with whom he identified along his journeys only
exacerbated his own feelings of disconnectedness and despair.
The time that Buell Quain spends during his final days is Brazil does not alleviate
his sense of isolation or detachment, but instead allows him the opportunity to find in
the cultures of the Trumai and the Krahô a new source of projective identification. At
this point, what Quain encounters are two cultures that have been pushed into the most
inhospitable places by the nation's government and landowners, who live in a state of
perpetual fear, and who are condemned to either physical or cultural extinction. After
having traveled the world in search of an idyllic place which does not exist, and having
to come to terms with that reality, Quain continues his process of self-identification or
projection onto the Trumai, and later onto the Krahô. He sees in their fear and
condemnation the same fear and condemnation he imposes upon himself. Manoel
Perna, the last person to spend time with the young anthropologist before his suicide,
aside from the Krahô, relates the sense of association that Buell Quain has with the
Trumai, a culture that is in the process of dying. On page 57, Manoel Perna recalls one
of these conversations:
seu jovem benfeitor americano. Não descartava a hipótese de que o tivessem matado, por ter se
misturado com os brancos." Nove noites, p. 48
114
'O importante', ele me disse ainda na primeira noite em Carolina, sem que eu
pudesse entender do que realmente falava, 'é que os Trumai vêem na morte uma
saída e uma libertação dos seus temores e sofrimentos.'
Buell Quain's statement is not only about the Trumai, it is also self-referential. After
having traveled extensively in search of a culture or a place where he was no longer an
outsider, and realizing the inability to escape himself, his hopelessness leads him to
align his self-perception with a culture that is also in a scared and hopeless situation.
Beyond this, the Trumai believe that death is a solution to suffering, an attitude that
Buell Quain is considering as he speaks to Manoel Perna on his first night in Carolina. A
final comment that the reader has in relation to this tragic and somewhat melodramatic
projection of self onto the Trumai is once more through the voice of Manuel Perna:
Ele me disse: 'Uma cultura está morrendo'. Agora, quando penso nas suas
palavras cheias de entusiasmo e tristeza, me parece que ele tinha encontrado um
povo cuja cultura era a representação coletiva do desespero que ele próprio vivia
como um traço de personalidade. (57)
In retrospect, Manoel Perna perceives the connection between Buell Quain's suicide and
his attachment to the tragic people of the Amazon. This association between his own
conscious self-narrative and that of the Trumai and the Krahô further reiterates that the
purpose of his travels was to find a place of belonging. However, the only sense of
belonging he found was one based on despair, abandonment, and hopelessness.
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Quain's incessant traveling was demonstrative of a search for something he
would never have because he sought a sense of belonging that was provided by an
external culture or environment. The lack of self-consciousness, or self-awareness, that
is represented through the character of Buell Quain demonstrates one instance where
travel is an act of desperation, and where it ultimately results in failure and
hopelessness. As opposed to Buell Quain, the narrator's purpose for travel and for
seeking out this story is fueled by a determination for internal understanding. The
narrator seeks information outside of himself that will help orient and guide his selfunderstanding. In this sense, for the narrator, travel is both an external and internal
process on a conscious level: in traveling from one place to the next to uncover the life
and death of Buell Quain, he is actually bringing together the fragments of his own
internal self-narrative.
As the narrative of Nove noites shifts from the character of Buell Quain to the
narrator, the reader experiences the ways that the narrative of an Other can inform the
creation of a self-narrative. In this sense, the depth of consciousness and perception
that the narrator of Nove noites demonstrates creates a literary shift from the type of
novel that only focuses on telling the tale of an observed protagonist, like Miguel Sousa
Tavares's Equador. While Equador is a novel about observing and representing an
experience from the outside, and thereby using that experience as a point of sociohistorical critique, the narrative shift that occurs in Nove noites to the first-person
demands that the reader consider the introspective aspects of engaging with such a
narrative. Through narrators in works such as Nove noites and later in Agualusa's Um
116
estranho em Goa, the reader has the opportunity to observe how stories are integrated
into one's own self-narrative, providing more depth and dimension to the work itself,
but also to the reader's engagement with that work.
Furthermore, this sense of introspective consciousness provides more agency for
the narrators in the development of their narrated-selves: instead of being seen solely
as observable objects, they become active participants in constructing the self and the
world that self interacts with, a world which emerges as they travel. Bernardo
Carvalho's narrator seeks to understand himself vis-à-vis the experience of Buell Quain,
but it is a search that inspires him to travel to the innermost recesses of his nation and
his own personal history. This glancing inward is reminiscent of the Brazilian nationalist
project, as it strives to consolidate the sense of self from what is both external and
internal to the nation and the nation's history. In comparison, Miguel Sousa Tavares's
Luís Bernardo Valença is a caricature of a frozen point in time in Portuguese history, a
point to which much of the national identity is tied. In this sense, while Sousa Tavares
looks back at a fixed point in time to speak of Portuguese identity, Bernardo Carvalho's
narrator actively seeks to understand his identity as an ongoing process, through
synthesizing elements of the past from different perspectives while at the same time
engaging with an ever-emerging present.
The narrator's search for Buell Quain
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The first few pages of Nove noites read like a detective novel. When the reader
is introduced to the narrator for the first time, a tone of suspense has already been set
through one of the letters of Manoel Perna: a letter which expresses the impossibility of
ever finding definitive truth among the tribes of the Amazon. This is the same striking
sense of suspicion and obsession for the life and death of Buell Quain that the narrator
expresses to the reader. In first exposing the reader to the letter of Manoel Perna,
which speaks of the incapacity for truth within the space surrounding the story of Buell
Quain, Bernardo Carvalho shares the burden of deciphering truth from fiction with the
reader. This situates the reader and the narrator in a position of mutual camaraderie, as
both are left with the task of sorting out the truth from the fiction, which is an
ultimately unaccomplishable feat. Furthermore, the constant traversing of fictional and
historical spaces accentuates the fact that the narrative is the only thing that can be
considered real, because it is the only thing that leaves behind a verifiable referent.
As the reader engages with the text, the reasons for the narrator's own search
for Buell Quain's story are relatively obscured. Initially, the narrator writes about having
found the name "Buell Quain" in a newspaper article about the mysterious death of
another anthropologist in Brazil, he writes:
Não posso dizer que nunca tivesse ouvido falar dele, mas a verdade é que não
fazia a menor idéia de quem ele era até ler o nome Buell Quain pela primeira vez
num artigo de jornal, na manhã de 12 de maio de 2001...Li várias vezes o mesmo
parágrafo e repeti o nome em voz alta para me certificar de que não estava
sonhando, até entender—ou confirmar, já não sei—que o tinha ouvido antes. (134)
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The name "Buell Quain" resonates with the narrator, though he initially does not explain
why. Instead, he proceeds to tell the story of the young anthropologist that took his
own life in 1939 among the Krahô Indians in Brazil. He also tells the reader of the
circumstances surrounding his initial process of seeking to fill in the gaps in Buell Quain's
story. However, he fails to address why the story is of personal importance for the
majority of the novel. In this manner, both author and narrator manage to keep the
novel engaging, as suspense is provided on more than one level: the first being why
Buell Quain killed himself, the second, why the narrator is hunting down the story so
obsessively.
As the narrator's story progresses, the reader is informed of the experiences that
he had in the Xingu region during his own childhood, where his father had bought some
property. Throughout the novel, the narrator tells of the (mis)adventures that he had
with his father in the middle of the jungles of Brazil. However, the experiences of travel
in his youth are somewhat divergent from those of Buell Quain. While Buell Quain
initially found an opportunity to seek pleasure in the experience of the exotic, the
narrator always associated the exotic with terror and with uncertainty. As he examines
the trips that he took into the Xingu with his father, his experiences with the indigenous
people and with the jungle itself are shrouded in fear. In his childhood, the narrator
could not find any sense of wonder in traveling to the interior of his nation, he did not
see any potential paradises; he saw only the potential for death, danger, and separation
in the world around him. Here is the following description of his own personal hell:
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Ninguém nunca me perguntou, e por isso nunca precisei responder que a
representação do inferno, tal como a imagino, também fica, ou ficava, no Xingu
da minha infância. É uma casa pré-fabricada, de madeira pintada de verdevômito, suspensa sobre palafitas para a proteção dos moradores contra os
eventuais animais e ataques noturnos de que seriam fácil presa no rés-do-chão.
É uma casa solitária no meio do nada, erguida numa área desmatada e plana da
floresta, cercada de capim-colonião e de morte. Tudo o que não é verde é
cinzento. Ou então é terra e lama. Há uma estrada de terra que chega até a
escada à entrada da casa mas que dali não parece levar a nenhum lugar
conhecido. A maneira mais fácil de chegar é de avião, que não deve ser grande,
no máximo um bimotor, para poder pousar na pista de terra aberta ao lado da
casa. (60)
The jungle and the exotic pose a very different type of image for the narrator than for
Buell Quain. In part, his fascination with Quain is a result of this, he has the shared
connection of having experienced the Xingu and interacted with the Krahô as a child.
Also, in the story of Buell Quain the narrator sees the realization of his childhood fears
because of Quain's brutal suicide. The jungle as a personification of death is fulfilled in
the story of Buell Quain, confirming the narrator's fears and associations as he recalls his
childhood experience.
As the narrator progressively learns more about the life and death of Buell
Quain, what he is ultimately doing is seeking a new understanding of himself and his
own life. In the second half of the novel, the narrative shifts focus from the life and
death of Buell Quain to the process by which the narrator researches, develops, and
writes his own novel. Due to the parallels between the narrator and Bernardo Carvalho,
there is an implication that the novel to which the narrator refers is actually Nove noites,
thereby giving the collective work a different significance because it demonstrates the
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calculated artifice in the arrangement of the different genres of writing, as well as the
layering of the various narratives involved in the story. Ultimately, as the reader
progresses through the two narrative threads of Nove noites, she is actually following
the narrator through the development of his own self-narrative.
The narrator views Buell Quain as a sort of double, he associates his own life
experiences and his travels with those of the young anthropologist. Both of them began
traveling with their fathers at a young age, both had traveled to various places
throughout the world, and both had the experience of interacting with the Krahô and
spending time in the Xingu. However, their perspectives on what it meant to travel
differed significantly. The narrator states:
Buell Quain também havia acompanhado o pai em viagens de negócios. Quando
tinha catorze anos, foram a uma convenção do Rotary Club na Europa. Visitaram a
Holanda, a Alemanha e os países escandinavos. E daí em diante nunca mais parou
de viajar. Mas se para Quain, que saía do Meio-Oeste para a civilização, o exótico
foi logo associado a uma espécie de paraíso, à diferença e à possibilidade de
escapar ao seu próprio meio e aos limites que lhe haviam sido impostos por
nascimento, para mim as viagens com o meu pai proporcionaram antes de mais
nada uma visão e uma consciência do exótico como parte do inferno. (64)
What intrigues the narrator is how the shared experience of traveling to the jungle led
to Buell Quain's death, and whether or not this has any possible connotations for him.
In a sense, Buell Quain provides a type of mirror for the narrator, through which he can
consciously seek to better understand his experiences both as a child and as an adult.
121
The connection between the narrator and Buell Quain is strengthened because
of another parallel between the two: their broken relationships with their fathers. As
stated above, the narrator reads the name of Buell Quain for the first time in a
newspaper article, and he instantly recognizes it and begins to repeat the name to
himself until he situates it in his own memory. In the latter half of Nove noites, the
narrator explains how his father fell ill while living with a Lebanese woman, and how he
and his sister had to take his father from their apartment by force in order to find him
medical treatment in São Paulo.
While his father was bed-ridden during his last few days of life, he shared a room
with an older American photographer, a man who had been in Brazil for decades. As he
stayed with his father throughout the last of his days, the narrator overheard a young
man reading Joseph Conrad stories to the old American man on a daily basis. He
became intrigued with this figure that, alone, had traveled to Brazil without friends or
family and had remained until his hospitalization and his pending death. As the man
died, he repeatedly called the narrator "Bill Cohen," a name that the narrator would
later realize was actually Buell Quain.56 In essence, the narrator realizes that the story
of Buell Quain intersects with his own story at two pivotal moments; his childhood
56
"Segurei a mão dele. Ele apertou a minha com a força que lhe restava e começou a falar em inglês, com
esforço, mas ao mesmo tempo num tom de voz de quem está feliz e admirado de rever um amigo: "Quem
diria? Bill Cohen! Até que enfim! Rapaz, você não sabe há quanto tempo estou esperando". De repente,
começou a respirar de uma maneira estranha. Eu estava nervoso com aquilo tudo que não entendia
direito. Continuava perguntando se ele precisava de alguma coisa, se estava se sentindo mal, se queria
que eu chamasse a enfermeira, e ele repetia: "Bill Cohen! Bill Cohen! Quem diria! Quanto tempo!", cada
vez de uma maneira mais rouca e ininiteligível, como se a voz viesse das entranhas, como se alguém
falasse por ele. Ele apertava a minha mão e repetia: "Bill Cohen! Que peça você me pregou!". E ia
ficando cada vez mais ofegante. "Eu sabia que você não estava morto!" Foi a última coisa que conseguiu
dizer antes de revirar os olhos e entrar em convulsões." Nove noites, p. 146.
122
voyages into the jungles of Brazil, and his experience with this old American man in the
hospital, both of which surround his relationship with his father.
After this connection is established, Buell Quain is inextricably tied to the
narrator's life and sense of self, which in turn is strongly influenced by the estranged
relationship he had with his father. As the narrator progressively learns more about
Buell Quain, it becomes apparent that Quain also had a problematic relationship with
his father and his family. Quain's own propensity to leave his home, his cultural and
social status, and his family behind demonstrates the degree of detachment and/or
animosity that defined his relationship with them. Furthermore, Quain's persistent
refusal of being identified with the upper class and attempting to find a place where he
could choose his own social and familial circumstances illustrate how strongly he felt
about not being associated with his father or his family. However, as Buell Quain
travelled around the world he sought to find an externalized place that would allow him
the opportunity to be who he wanted to be. This is what ultimately differentiates Buell
Quain and the narrator, while Quain's search was based on the external; the narrator's
is concerned with his internal identity.
Buell Quain manifests what Ken Wilber refers to as "script pathology," or the
inability to look beyond the social structures that were imposed on him in his childhood
and early adulthood. In an attempt to escape these structures and limitations, Quain
sets out to travel around the world in order to find a place where he is no longer
subjected to them. However, what he fails to realize is that, much like Luíz Bernardo
Valença in Equador, these social structures are firmly embedded within him, they are a
123
part of who he is internally, and therefore they cannot be dealt with simply by changing
the external circumstances. Wilber elucidates further
...pathology at this stage is known generally as "script pathology." One is having
trouble, not with the physiosphere (psychoses), not with the biosphere
(borderline and neuroses) – rather, one is stuck in the early roles and scripts
given by one's parents, one's society, one's peer groups: scripts that are not, and
initially cannot be, checked against further evidence, and therefore scripts that
are often outmoded, wrong, even cruel ("I'm no good, I'm rotten to the core, I
can't do anything right," etc.; these do not so much concern bodily impulses, as
in the psychoneuroses, but rather social judgments about one's social standing,
one's role).
Therapy here involves digging up these scripts and exposing these myths
to the light of more mature reason and more accurate information, thus
"rewriting the script." (234)
Having an externalized self-image, one which is defined by exterior perspectives,
circumstances, etc., Buell Quain fails to realize his own agency in "rewriting the script."
He accepts what he has been told about who he is and he tries to escape it by fleeing
from one place to the next, but he is unaware of the fact that he also carries these
attitudes and judgments internally. Ironically enough, it is only in the internal space that
an individual truly has any agency.
Ken Wilber's model for integral consciousness theory focuses on the importance
of acknowledging and engaging the external and the internal experiential fields in order
to continually evolve as individuals. This model is reflected in the writing and travel
processes of the narrator. As the narrator of Nove noites travels in search of an
understanding of Buell Quain, he is also using Quain as a mirror through which he sees
himself and has the capacity to "rewrite the script" of who he is and what his life has
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been. Initially, it is important for him to set up the similarities between Quain and
himself, he needs to establish the connection that would allow him to see himself
emotively linked to Buell Quain. He accomplishes this first and foremost by
acknowledging the times in his life that intersected with the life of the young
anthropologist. However, even these are potential false points of reference, a reality of
which the narrator is fully aware
Na verdade, nada me provava que o velho fotógrafo tivera alguma relação com
Buell Quain, ou mesmo que o tivesse conhecido, além do fato de ter falado o
nome dele antes de morrer – se é que realmente falou. Ele podia simplesmente
ter ouvido falar de Buell Quain e se interessado, como eu, pela história, a ponto de
ter vindo ao Brasil para investigá-la, como eu agora ia aos Estados Unidos. Tomei
o avião para Nova York com pelo menos uma certeza: a de que, não encontrando
mais nada, poderia por fim começar a escrever o romance. (158)
In any case, the processes of traveling and writing are intrinsically connected for the
narrator, as they are for Bernardo Carvalho himself. As he moves from one space to the
next, from São Paulo to the Amazon, and on to New York, he is constructing his own
self-narrative as he recreates the narrative of Buell Quain. This is a type of creative
license that Quain apparently did not have. Quain was concerned with externalized,
verifiable "truths," while the narrator has no such limitation. The narrator has the
awareness that what he creates is what matters, at least in relation to himself. While he
is concerned that the veracity of his account of Buell Quain can be contested, as he was
a living, historical individual, he does not carry these concerns over to what he writes
about himself.
125
Nove noites is ultimately a novel about self-exploration and the connections that
happen between an individual and the world around him. What the novel astutely
demonstrates is an individual's incapacity to flee from the personal limitations,
preconceptions, and shortcomings that he has internalized from his socially imposed
circumstances. No amount of fleeing or travel would allow such an individual to find a
sense of belonging, as he would be perpetually displaced in any situation because he
resides in a state of ongoing internal displacement.
At the same time, Nove noites demonstrates the alternative: through the
narrator's self-identification with Buell Quain, and his emphatic pursuit of the "truth"
behind Buell Quain's suicide, he manages to reconcile his own self-narrative and come
to terms with the associations he had between his childhood, his father, and death.
Through using Buell Quain's story as an impetus to revisit the traumatic events and
places of his childhood, the narrator sees how tragedy occurred in the life of Quain, and
how it is averted in his own. This sense of narrative agency and consciousness is taken a
step further in the following chapter, as José Eduardo Agualusa not only creates these
types of self-aware narrators, but also characters that also understand and manipulate
their own narratives to find a sense of belonging in various different environments.
In this sense, we progress from a narrator and characters that have little or no
introspective consciousness in Miguel Sousa Tavares, to the introspective narrator who
sees himself through the reflection of the Other in Bernardo Carvalho, and on to an
introspective narrator who learns about narrative self-construction and introspection
from engaging with his own characters in the work of José Eduardo Agualusa. Each of
126
these narrators demonstrates a different degree of self-awareness through the
narrative creation process: evolving from the binary of Self and Other in Miguel Sousa
Tavares, to Self vis-à-vis Other in Bernardo Carvalho, and ultimately to Self as Other in
José Eduardo Agualusa. And now we move on to Agualusa and Plácido Domingo.
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CHAPTER 3: TRAVEL AND CONSCIOUSNESS IN
AGUALUSA'S PLÁCIDO DOMINGO
Como a vida, a fronteira é
móvel, apesar de todas as
tentativas humanas de se
agarrar às vezes a ela como a
um elemento estável e
imutável.
- Luciana Stegano
Picchio
O romance não examina a
realidade, mas sim a
existência. E a existência não é
o que se passou, a existência é
o campo das possibilidades
humanas, tudo o que o homem
pode vir a ser, tudo aquilo de
que ele é capaz. Os
romancistas elaboram o mapa
da existência ao descobrirem
esta ou aquela possibilidade
humana.
- Milan Kundera
José Eduardo Agualusa utilizes the experience of travel as an informative and,
indeed, transformative experience in the development of his characters' identities.
128
Throughout Agualusa's works there is a consistent discourse of travel which engages the
Lusophone tradition of travel literature both explicitly and implicitly. Agualusa uses
intra- and intertextuality extensively in order to create the connections between his
fictional world and that of previous Lusophone authors and poets such as Eça de
Queiroz, Almeida Garrett, Fernando Pessoa, Manoel de Barros, and Guimarães Rosa, to
name a few. By doing this, Agualusa situates his characters in a larger web of literary
tradition while at the same time maintaining his unique style, a style which continually
blurs the borders between fiction and non-fiction, erudite and pop57 culture, current
events and Lusophone and world history. Indeed, Agualusa's capacity to maintain a
consistently intriguing narrative allows the reader to travel through multiple spaces,
times, and traditions, all the while retaining a lucid cohesion that makes these leaps
flow almost without seams.
This narrative fluidity is present in all of Agualusa's works, whether they are
classified as fiction or non-fiction, and some of the most fascinating examples stem from
works whose classification itself becomes difficult. In three works in particular,
Fronteiras Perdidas: contos para viajar (1999), Um estranho em Goa (2000), and As
mulheres do meu pai (2007), Agualusa inserts his voice as either implicit or explicit
narrator and utilizes it narratively to blur the line between the genres of fiction and nonfiction, all the while focusing on his own experiences of travel. Each of these works
centers around a voyage or series of voyages, through which the narrator and the
characters are exposed to cultural traditions, circumstances, and people different from
57
Here we are using the term "pop culture" to relate to popular mass media culture as opposed to "popular
culture", which will be utilized in relation to folkloric or traditional beliefs of a specific region or people.
129
their own. In his narratives, the reader can follow the ways that the characters' views of
the world change as they are exposed to a greater experiential repertoire58 when
confronted with variant lifestyles and beliefs. This brings their own sense of identity or
way of being into question, as they transcend their previous experiential holon,59 or
circle of experiential awareness, for one that is greater and more encompassing. At the
same time, through Agualusa's ludic process of inserting himself into his literary works,
the reader gets a sense of the importance of travel experiences as discovery and
growth, if not transformation, in the worldview of the implicit author.
This element of his work sets Agualusa apart from the previous two authors
because Miguel Sousa Tavares makes a clear distinction between his journalism, which
carries his own voice, and his fiction, while Bernardo Carvalho is concerned with being
mistaken with his narrators, despite his use of biographically-inspired narratives, to the
point where he publicly declares to the press that he is not a figure in his own fiction.
Agualusa, on the other hand, writes his experience into his narratives and does so
explicitly, leaving the identity of his narrators up to his readers or assuming the
58
Iser, Wolfgang , The Act of Reading. P. 69 - “The repertoire consists of all the familiar territory within
the text. This may be in the form of references to earlier works, or to social and historical norms, or to the
whole culture from which the text has emerged – in brief, to what the Prague structuralists have called the
“extratextual” reality.”
59
From Sex, Ecology, Spirituality: "Arthur Koestler coined the term holon to refer to that which, being a
whole in one context, is simultaneously a part in another...Normal hierarchy, then, is simply an order of
increasing holons, representing an increase in wholeness and integrative capacity – atoms to molecules to
cells, for example." (26) In this case, we are using the term holon to refer to the sphere of experience that
the characters have prior to the different occurrences within the novel. In other words, the character's
"experiential holon" is the sum of perspectives demonstrated to the reader to this point, which is challenged
or expanded by the confrontation with the Other, forcing an expansion of experiential awareness which in
certain characters is more evident than in others. For further explanation of the concept of the holon see the
Ken Wilber Appendix.
130
narrative voice and constructing a fictionalized version of himself. Through literary
techniques such as intertextuality and metanarrative, Agualusa flows from historical to
fictional spheres but he calls the reader to question the relevance of the difference
between the two in relation to their validity as formative lived experience, and often his
own persona provides the narrative bridge.
In order to begin a discussion of Agualusa's works, it is first important to
establish the level of intertextuality within his literary world. Indeed, no work of
Agualusa's is in itself dependent upon any of the others, as none of them are parts of a
series, and yet they are all inter-connected through the appearance of the same
characters, symbols, and motifs. As such, Agualusa will have a character from a short
story appear in one of his longer works of fiction, and for a brief moment this character
will maintain his or her own narrative, giving further validity to that character's initial
literary appearance, but at the same time expanding Agualusa's literary universe and
further accentuating the verisimilar nature of his literary productions. Agualusa's work
is truly, and methodically, what Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari termed rhizomatic60
60
Deleuze & Guattari use the structure of the rhizome as a metaphor for not only literature, but all of
human interaction and inter-connectivity, they use the rhizome (a horizontally expanding structure that is
continually growing) to contrast the vertical hierarchical structure of neocapitalistic thought: "Let us
summarize the principal characteristics of a rhizome: unlike trees or their roots, the rhizome connects any
point to any other point, and its traits are not necessarily linked to traits of the same nature; it brings into
play very different regimes of signs, and even nonsign states. The rhizome is reducible neither to the One
nor to the multiple. It is not the One that becomes Two or even directly three, four, five, etc. It is not a
multiple derived from the One, or to which the One is added (n + 1). It is composed not of units but of
dimensions, or rather directions in motion. It has neither a beginning nor end, but always a middle (milieu)
from which it grows and which it overspills. It constitutes linear multiplicities with n dimensions, having
neither subject nor object, which can be laid out on a plane of consistency, and from which the One is
always subtracted (n – 1). When a multiplicity of this kind changes dimension, it necessarily changes in
nature as well, undergoes a metamorphosis. Unlike a structure, which is defined by a set of points and
positions, with binary relations between the points and biunivocal relationships between the positions, the
rhizome is made only of lines: lines of segmentarity and stratification as its dimensions, and the line of
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because his narrative lines branch out beyond the boundaries of each individual work,
extending into his other works and at the same time into the worlds of popular culture
and media. Though Agualusa is often criticized for the hybrid or multiplicitous nature of
his writing,61 he is nonetheless a forerunner of an extremely integrative style of writing,
one that demonstrates the fluid nature of cultural identities and affiliations in what
Zygmunt Bauman terms the "liquid modern" world.62 Therefore, it is no surprise that
Agualusa would choose to name one of these traveling characters after the famous
opera tenor, Plácido Domingo, and that he would reappropriate the name, which he
claims, in both Fronteiras perdidas and Um estranho em Goa, has a larger destiny,
"Certos nomes deviam ser obedecidos, isto é, deviam implicar um destino," (Fronteiras
perdidas, 43; Um estranho em Goa, 11). While both Sousa Tavares and Bernardo
flight of deterritorialization as the maximum dimension after which the multiplicity undergoes
metamorphosis, changes in nature. These lines, or lineaments, should not be confused with lineages of the
arborescent type, which are merely localizable linkages between points and positions." In the same
manner, Agualusa inter-connects his literature with other works of literature, music, and media freely
without discriminating between what is popular and what is erudite, what is canonical and what is
colloquial. His work reaches out to include all narratives types and styles.
61
Renata Flávia da Silva, "Fronteiras Perdidas: Uma literatura em viagem": "Atualmente, grande parte da
crítica literária demonstra uma recepção bastante controversa da obra do jovem escritor angolano. Boa
parte dessa controvérsia deve-se à dificuldade em situar seu texto puramente como uma narrativa ficcional
ou como uma narrativa de cunho histórico. Em sua obra estão presentes vários registros discursivos, tais
como a biografia, ou a autobiografia romanceadas, o romance epistolar, o romance histórico e a crônica;
todos registros que levam o leitor a um pacto de veracidade mais que de verossimilhança."
62
From the book Vida Líquida: "A "vida líquida" é uma forma de vida que tende a ser levada à frente numa
sociedade líquido-moderna. "Líquido-moderna" é uma sociedade em que as condições sob as quais agem
seus membros mudam num tempo mais curto do que aquele necessário para a consolidação, em hábitos e
rotinas, das formas de agir. A liquidez da vida e da sociedade se alimentam e se revigoram mutuamente. A
vida líquida, assim como a sociedade líquido-moderna, não pode manter a forma ou permanecer em seu
curso por muito tempo.
Numa sociedade líquido-moderna, as realizações individuais não podem solidificar-se em posses
permanentes porque, em um piscar de olhos, os ativos se transformam em passivos, e as capacidades, em
incapacidades. As condições de ação e as estratégias de reação envelhecem rapidamente e se tornam
obsoletas antes de os atores terem uma chance de aprendê-las efetivamente. Por essa razão, aprender com a
experiência a fim de se basear em estratégias e movimentos táticos empregados com sucesso no passado é
pouco recomendável: testes anteriores não podem dar conta das rápidas e quase sempre imprevistas (talvez
imprevisíveis) mudanças de circunstâncias." p. 7 - 8
132
Carvalho use historical figures in their work, they both choose figures that are no longer
living to utilize as peripheral or leading characters. This is not the case with Agualusa, as
he takes names from people who are not only still alive but in the public eye, and
creates doubles of them, as is the case with his own Plácido Domingo. He utilizes the
famous tenor's name to write the story of a character that appears to him in his travels
to Corumbá, Brazil, and to Goa, India.
Journeying across Agualusa's Fronteiras Perdidas
The initial appearance of Plácido Domingo as a fictional character in Agualusa's
work is in his 1999 collection of short stories Fronteiras Perdidas: contos para viajar.
The title of this work in itself speaks volumes about the type of literature that Agualusa
produces. At first glance it may seem somewhat straightforward, "Fronteiras Perdidas",
loosely translatable as "lost frontiers" or "lost borders," the title implies the blurring or
transgression of previously established borders, limitations, or frontiers. However, one
of the beautiful things about the Portuguese language is its capacity to encompass a
multiplicity of meaning within one word or phrase. Utilizing this capacity for double or
even multiple meanings for each signifier is a trademark of Agualusa's work.
"Fronteira" can apply to any rigidly defining line, in this case it implies the
transgression of boundaries or frontiers in the act of physical travel, and each of the
short stories in the first half of the book is accompanied (in parenthesis) by the location
where they presumably took place. In depth reading of any work by Agualusa elucidates
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the fact that there are few borders, if any, within the Portuguese language or the act of
writing that limit the author's narratives. Actually, this notion of lost borders or lost
frontiers merits specific attention when read in relation to Angola, Agualusa's native
country, as Angola was one of five Portuguese colonies in Africa that fought for their
independence from the fascist Portuguese dictatorships of Salazar63 and Caetano.64 In
this sense, Angola itself is a "fronteira perdida" for Portugal.
It is fitting that, utilizing the Portuguese language, Agualusa repeatedly
transgresses lines between erudition, popular myth and folklore, and global pop media
to create his narratives. By doing this Agualusa integrates many of the elements that
made up the Portuguese colonial empire into one narrative that includes but exceeds
the rhetorical or categorical limitations of the colonizer. Agualusa's writing does not
bear in mind European-based conventions or delimitations as to what is and what is not
"literature." As opposed to a writer like Sousa Tavares, whose work strives to resemble
the realism of a bygone Portuguese literary tradition, Agualusa will play with multiple
genres and literary motifs to create a unique work of his own. Again, this is indicative of
Wilber's view of cognitive evolution, whereby the individual's perception expands
beyond the structured delimitations of the previous worldview and at the same time
incorporates it into the new one, creating a wider scope of understanding while at the
63
António de Oliveira Salazar was dictator of Portugal from 1932 to 1968, he instituted the Estado Novo in
Portugal, which lasted 41 years and was characterized by its censorship and brutal repression of criticism or
political dissent.
64
Marcelo José das Neves Alves Caetano succeeded Salazar as the second dictator of the Estado Novo,
acting as Presidente do Conselho de Ministros until the Revolução dos Cravos on April 25, 1974.
134
same time increasing the depth of their perception.65 Indeed, and as stated above,
Agualusa's capacity to transgress delimiting spaces and definitions in his writing has led
to his work being greatly criticized because of its fluidity and its resistance to being
categorized into a delimiting genre.
His utilization of different literary genres is apparent in works such as Fronteiras
Perdidas, where he alternately flows through narratives that could be labeled
biography, autobiography, short story, or crônica. In this sense there are no frontiers,
borders, or boundaries that apply to Agualusa's work because his writing encompasses
and transgresses all of these genres. However, Agualusa is not concerned with
challenging dichotomies in the same fashion as Bernardo Carvalho, who makes it a point
to call into question the division between fiction and reality. Instead, Agualusa moves
across that expanse without acknowledging that such divisions are present. Just as his
characters and narrators (himself included) bring a global or globalized vision of
geographical space and its fading delimitations, so does Agualusa travel freely from one
narrative sphere to the next.
In this sense, the last part of the title "contos para viajar," illustrates yet another
instance where a word with multiple meanings is astutely utilized by the author. In
Portuguese the word "viajar" implies more than the physical act of traveling or
65
In Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, Ken Wilber states: "Holons emerge holarchically. That is, as a series of
increasing whole/parts. Organisms contain cells, but not vice versa; cells contain molecules, but not vice
versa; molecules contain atoms, but not vice versa. And it is that not vice versa, at each stage, that
constitutes unavoidable asymmetry and nested hierarchy (holarchy). Each deeper or higher holon embraces
its junior predecessors and then adds its own new and more encompassing pattern or wholeness – the new
code or canon or morphic field or agency that will define this as a whole and not merely a heap (as
Aristotle clearly spotted)." (56)
135
journeying. Colloquially, it is also used to indicate a mental divagation, such as to
daydream or to travel within the mind. In this case, traveling through the literary work,
the reader is exposed to different cultural and social spaces as well as different literary
genres and stylistics. This emphasizes the reader's own internal journeying as the mind
engages the text and flows through the spaces the text presents but at the same time, it
subtly encourages the reader to journey beyond the text and to let their own mind
wander along the fringes of the story without the hindrance of genre limitations or the
literary binaries that separate fiction and non-fiction. This process of traveling within is
accentuated in the epigraph to Agualusa's Um estranho em Goa (2000) in the following
quote by Javier Moro,
Los viajes son una metáfora, una réplica terrenal del único viaje que de verdad
importa: el viaje interior. El viajero peregrino se dirige, más allá del último
horizonte, hacia una meta que ya está presente en lo más íntimo de su ser,
aunque aún siga oculta a su mirada. Se trata de descobrir esa meta, que
equivale a descobrir-se a sí mismo; no se trata de conocer al outro. (11)
This emphasis on the internal journey is evident in Agualusa's characters and narrators
as they engage with, and witness, their constantly emerging selves throughout their
travels. It is also evident in the actual writing process of each work.
Agualusa has a writing style that, through the incorporation of multiple genres,
references, and media, very closely approaches what Ken Wilber has termed the
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"integral,"66 as it goes beyond the cognitive or literary fragmentation of perceptual
experience into genre categorization. Instead, it unifies elements of all of these into
what most engages the reader, and indeed all individuals, in relation to the literary and
external world: the narrative. The narratives accomplish this precisely because they are
so multifaceted. While the reader is engaged with a narrative about post-colonial
Angola, he is at the same time confronted with references to popular icons in film,
music, and literature. In this way, Agualusa's fiction not only transports the reader to
the far off places that are the settings for his novels but also elicits the emotive
response that cultural recognition inspires, therefore making the experience of reading
about these far off places that much more tangible to the reader's imagination.67, 68
These narratives that transport the reader through completely foreign situations and
66
In his book, Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, Ken Wilber asserts that the great achievement of the
Enlightenment, and therefore modernity, was the differentiation of the subjective world, the objective
world, and the collective or shared world, what he calls the Big Three, or "I," "We," "It." On page 150 of
Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, Wilber cites Habermas on the topic: "With any speech act...the speaker takes up
a relation to something in the objective world [it], something in a common social world [we], and
something in his own subjective world [I].' And the claims made with reference to each of those worlds
have their own validity criteria, namely, propositional truth (referring to an objective state of affairs, or it),
normative rightness (cultural justness or appropriateness, we), and subjective truthfulness (or sincerity, I)."
The philosophical discourse of modernity. Trans. F. Lawrence. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1990: P. 313 – 314.
Beyond this, Wilber posits that the differentiation of each of these experiential fields has led to a
dissociation of one from the other, whereby the experience of reality is significantly fragmented, which
ultimately leads to paroxysms of interpersonal misunderstanding on individual, cultural, and global scales.
Therefore, Wilber states that "the great task of "postmodernity" is their integration, overcoming what
Taylor called a "monster of arrested development..." (SES 153).
67
Inge Wimmers “Introduction: The Motivated Reader”; Proust and Emotion: the importance of affect in À
la recherche du temps perdu. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003: 3-18.
68
In the Act of Reading, Wolfgang Iser discusses the reading of the text as an event which is created
through the dialogue between the printed text and the reader's repertoire, or life experiences. As such, each
time the reader comes across something in the text that they recognize as a part of their own lived
experience outside of the text, it strengthens the intensity of the interaction between the text and the reader,
thereby making the experience more visceral and more personal. With an author such as Agualusa, the
capacity for these types of instants of recognition, or connections between text and reader, are heightened
due to the frequency of allusions to global pop culture as well as erudite culture. Again, Agualusa has
many critics who scorn this aspect of his work, but ultimately it makes his work more engaging to a wider
audience, who can in turn be more invested in his narratives.
137
landscapes also manage to hook the reader's personal experiences by intertextually
including a vast array of references to global culture, erudite as well as popular and
mass media.
Agualusa's characters, like his narratives, are in constant motion from one
country to the next, from one cultural space to another. In characteristic Agualusa
fashion, when talking about geographical spaces, Fronteiras Perdidas encompasses the
triangle of Africa, Brazil, and Portugal as well as other countries such as Germany, South
Africa, and Senegal. Within the first thirty pages of the collection, Agualusa has
introduced a narrator and situated him on a road between Luanda and Sumbe, Angola,
in "O perigo do riso," on a flight from Luanda to Dakar in "Os mistérios do mundo," in a
taxi cab with a cab driver who claims to drive Jesus Christ every week to the Mosteiro
dos Jerónimos in Lisbon in "O taxista de Jesus," and in a rundown hotel in Paraíba, Brasil
in "Um hotel entre palmeiras." The spaces that the narrator occupies are not limited by
any type of border or frontier. In fact, the continuity of the narrative voice 69, which
implicitly is the voice of Agualusa himself,70 makes the geographical distance and
69
In the story "O taxista de Jesus," the narrator tells the taxi driver that he doesn't believe in Jesus Christ or
in extraterrestrials, but what he does believe in is Saci Pererê, a figure from Brazilian folklore. Later on, in
the story "Um hotel entre palmeiras," this narrative thread is continued as the narrator describes a silent
hotel manager that resembles Saci Pererê who runs the hotel where he is staying. Upon leaving this hotel
for another town he tells a local bartender about the mysterious old man he encountered only to find out
that the place he was staying in had been abandoned for fifteen years, to which he concludes: "É por isso
que eu acredito em Saci Pererê." Again, Agualusa disregards another "border" by blurring the boundary
between one story and the next. In a collection of stories that can very well function independently of one
another, he still manages to subvert the division between one and the next.
70
The continuity of the narrator's voice throughout Fronteiras Perdidas is maintained in Um estranho em
Goa, where José Eduardo Agualusa directly inserts himself as the narrator. This will be discussed in
greater detail in the second half of this chapter, dealing with Plácido Domingo in Um estranho em Goa.
138
cultural disparity of these places disappear, allowing the reader to follow a narrative
thread that spans multiple geographic and cultural settings.
At the same time, the stories take place in any and all modes of transportation
necessary for local or global travel. As the reader progresses from one story to the next
it is apparent that these "lost borders" are definitely more than those set into sociogeographic space. In each of the stories, the narrator is actively in transit or in
preparation for, or reminiscence of, a journey in the near past or future. For example,
the story "O perigo do riso" takes place in a car on the highway between Luanda and
Sumbe. In this story, the narrator stops to buy a gecko from a vendor on the side of the
road only to have to fake the assassination of the animal after his driver, a veteran of
the Angolan war of independence, decides the animal must die because its laughter
seems too human and makes him think the lizard "knows too much."71 The subsequent
stories take place in airplanes, on trains, and even in an elevator where a young
assailant holds the elevator operator and its occupants hostage as he demands to be
taken, by elevator, from Recife, Brazil to Cuba. In each of these we find a narrator
engaging with other characters in spaces of transition, constantly moving from one
place to the next and collecting stories and experiences from the people he meets along
the way. In a sense, the space of travel, the in-between or what Deleuze & Guattari call
71
This type of laughing gecko would make an appearance later in Agualusa's novel O vendedor de
passados, as the narrator, a laughing tiger gecko named Eulálio. This is yet another example of the
interconnected web of characters, concepts, and events that make up the rhizomatic work of José Eduardo
Agualusa.
139
"deterritorialized" spaces, are where the true interactions happen for these characters,
where they see and invent themselves for the people they meet along the way.
Along with the theme of travel, another important and ever-present thread
throughout Agualusa's works is the conscious self-construction or identity construction
of his characters. Constantly moving from one place to the next, Agualusa's characters
are afforded the opportunity to re-create themselves because as they travel alone there
is no socio-cultural structure in place that demands of them a static identity. During
travel most interactions are transitory, existing for periods lasting from a few moments
to a matter of days, but in each case the interaction is based on the identity that each
individual projects of him/herself through the self-narratives they create and share.
When traveling alone it is the individual who has the freedom to choose who she will be
when she meets someone new, as there are no social ties that demand adherence to
prior actions, attitudes, or inhibitions. Many of Agualusa's characters have had multiple
and often contradictory lives, and not always in the same lifetime. This is the case with
the aforementioned laughing gecko, Eulálio, who pops up again in the 2004 novel O
vendedor de passados as the narrator who dreams of his past life as a man who was
afraid to live. It is also the case of multiple characters throughout the 2007 novel As
mulheres do meu pai. Unlike the characters of Sousa Tavares and even Bernardo
Carvalho, who always maintain a steadfast continuity of identity despite the ways they
are transformed throughout their travels, Agualusa's characters at times consciously
recreate themselves and their identities in a chameleonic manner that greater facilitates
their sense of ease and belonging in new and diverse environments. One of the best
140
examples of this is the aforementions and aptly re-named Plácido Domingo who, in a
short five pages in Fronteiras Perdidas, has lived three different incarnations by the time
he is approached by the narrativized José Eduardo Agualusa.72
Introducing Plácido Domingo
Fronteiras Perdidas is divided into two parts, the initial nine stories are grouped
together under the heading "Fronteiras Perdidas"73 and the second half of the
collection, stories ten through seventeen, are entitled "Outras Fronteiras." These two
parts of the collection are distinguishable by the different narration styles that the
author uses to tell each story. In the first half of the book, "Fronteiras Perdidas,"
Agualusa uses a first-person narrative where his own voice is included as narrator and
character in most of the stories. Each of these first nine stories is a short fictional
anecdote that takes place, presumably, in any of a number of locations where Agualusa
has personally traveled. In this collection each story is an individual voyage through
72
In the fifth study of Oneself as Another, "Personal Identity and Narrative Identity," Paul Ricoeur
discusses the way the self is consolidated through narrative and given a narrated persona, which is exactly
what Agualusa does in many of his works. Agualusa constructs a literary double that takes the form of the
first-person narrator but doesn't necessarily abide by distinctions of fiction and non-fiction, he continually
blurs the lines between genres, which is a major attribute of his literary production and one of the focuses
of this chapter.
73
The name "Fronteiras Perdidas" is actually taken from one of the short stories in the initial half of the
book entitled "Não há mais lugar de origem," where Raquel, a friend of the narrator, tells him, "Quando era
criança...os meninos, na escola, chamavam-me Fronteiras Perdidas, porque em certos dias eu parecia
mulata, e noutros acordava com cara de branca. Acho que essa alcunha marcou o meu destino." Indeed,
the transitory nature of racial identity is another major "fronteira" that Agualusa transgresses and calls into
question in all of his works, including Fronteiras Perdidas. Later in the collection, he tells the story of
Pascoal, an albino Angolan man who is hired to play Santa Claus because of his albinism in "A noite em
que prenderam o Pai Natal." This albinism also appears later in O vendedor de passados, in the character
Félix Ventura.
141
both time and space, where the narrator engages and interacts with characters that are
fictional and historical at diverse times surrounding the independence of Angola. These
stories contain multiple layers of narrative significance, where the reader often sees the
internal thoughts of the implicit author/narrator, and then proceeds into the fictional
accounts that involve other characters.
This is the case with Plácido Domingo, who appears initially after Agualusa talks
about his fascination and sense of duty to the name carried by the opera singer. The
first part of the story begins with the voice of the narrator talking about wanting to
write the story of Plácido Domingo:
Há algum tempo que pretendo contar a história de Plácido Domingo. Hesitei em
fazê-lo porque já existe o Plácido Domingo, o tenor, mas nunca me conformei com
isso. Certos nomes deviam ser obedecidos, isto é, deviam implicar um destino.
(43)
At this point the narrator, Agualusa presumably, establishes a connection with the
reader through this metafiction. He starts by introducing the name of the character and
asserting that there is already someone famous with this name. The narrator, however,
is not satisfied with that fact and decides to write a story of his own about this name,
Plácido Domingo. Initially, "Plácido Domingo contempla o rio, em Corumbá" begins as a
story about writing a story, a sort of ars poetica, where Agualusa is creating the scenario
and description of his character in dialogue with an implicit reader. He continually uses
terms such as "na minha história" and "o meu personagem," which bring the reader
142
back to the conscious awareness that this is a story in the process of being created. It is
as if Agualusa were walking the reader through the narrative creation process, involving
them personally, demonstrating the artifice as the emergent narrative arises and, all the
while, painting the scenery of Corumbá with vivid imagery, and developing an intriguing
description of Plácido Domingo and his environment.
The reader witnesses the creation of this figure, Plácido Domingo, an older man
whose features are etched into his thin face as if carved by a razor, who sits alone by the
river, watching the river, eating his daily piranha soup. There is initially a distance
between the reader and Plácido Domingo, one that is created and corroborated by the
complicity between the narrator and the reader, both sharing a voyeuristic glimpse into
the tropical world that this man inhabits and that is, likewise, intrinsically tied to him.
This method of maintaining the reader's awareness suspended on the outside fringes of
the narrative allows for a greater development of the scene at hand and though Plácido
Domingo, or the construction of Plácido Domingo, is the focal point, the reader is
allowed to absorb the rich description of the river in Corumbá. Though the scenery
seems peripheral, Agualusa goes to significant lengths to develop it before completely
immersing the narrative in the dialogical interaction between himself as narrator and
Plácido Domingo. This type of engagement with the reader is uniquely found, among
the work of the three authors discussed here, in the literature of José Eduardo Agualusa.
In Equador and Nove noites, the characters are presented as completed beings, to be
observed by the reader, while in this case the reader is given a firsthand vantage point
into the creation of Plácido Domingo and the spaces he occupies. As a result of this, the
143
reader is further drawn in to the character interactions and the scenery, as there is a
sense of intimacy developed between the narrative voice and the reader through the
metanarrative.
The engagement of the reader through being addressed directly by the narrator
develops this sense of complicity while the reader is also being exposed to the scenery
of the places where the narrator travels. The reader learns, for example, that this place
where Plácido Domingo is situated by the narrator is on the Paraguay River, the frontier
between Brazil and Bolivia. Plácido Domingo crosses the border every Sunday and
travels to Puerto Suarez, Bolivia. And yet, nobody knows exactly what it is that Plácido
Domingo does on his weekly trip across the border. Like Agualusa's narrative voice tells
the reader, he was once spotted looking through the dusty bins of curiosities in the
rundown shacks of local indigenous people, which was enough to start the rumor that
he traded the famous shrunken heads made by the local Jívaro tribe. Comments like
this, while unconfirmed by the narrator, insinuate that Plácido Domingo, this older man
of dark skin and striking features, is somewhat of a mystery. In this story, he lives in a
tropical town along the Paraguay River in the Amazon Basin, a place that is still
inhabited by a large indigenous population, that is rich in wildlife and all the voracity of
a jungle: with its piranhas, shrunken heads, flooding rivers, and rundown impoverished
shacks. Plácido Domingo fits perfectly into this setting's mystery. His character, though
it begins ephemerally through the introduction of the name and its connection to an
already known popular singer, takes on all of the savagery and stark vibrancy that
144
characterize the ever-present but unseen depths of his environment, all the while
maintaining the languid, placid demeanor that is displayed on the surface.
With the progressive development of both the character and the jungle
landscape, the reader is drawn further into the world that is being created through the
narrative. Like the jungle he inhabits in this story, the reader is told that Plácido
Domingo "esconde, debaixo do grande sol de Corumbá, sob a mansidão de um
quotidiano sempre igual, um antigo segredo." (43) Beneath his placid demeanor, he
carries his own ancient secrets, much like the setting of Corumbá itself. In this sense,
this character whose story originates in Angola is at this point a manifestation of his past
and of the physical environment he now occupies, but it is the space of Corumbá that
most defines him in this narrative. Though Plácido Domingo isn't from Corumbá, he
takes on the characteristics that the narrator gives to that specific corner of Brazil,
which Agualusa later associates with the Kwanza River, in the Dondo region of Angola.
It is here that Agualusa inserts himself and the reader into the story. After the
scenario has been set, the background established, and Plácido Domingo has gone from
being a famous name to being an enigmatic, weathered man whose secrets mirror those
of the jungles around him, the story can proceed into a direct dialogue with the
character himself.
Foi naquele café, precisamente àquela hora, que o encontrei. Assim que o vi,
soube que era ele. Tinha comigo velhas fotografias. (44)
145
At this point, Agualusa shifts from being an omniscient narrator who is consciously
sharing the process of creating this character with his reader, to being a character on
the same level as Plácido Domingo. In other words, Agualusa's omniscience disappears
in favor of having the capacity to engage the character as he would any individual on the
street because, as he himself has pointed out, he writes in order to know the ending, to
find out who the characters are and to have a dialogue with them.74 At the same time,
by forfeiting his omniscience and his stance as author/narrator to that of
narrator/character, Agualusa also brings the reader further into the narrative because,
by association, Plácido Domingo's voice is now as valid as Agualusa's own narrative
voice. Descending into the narrative in this fashion is also unique in the work of
Agualusa. In his works, the reader gets a sense of the interaction between the authorturned-narrator and the characters that make the narrative seem more verisimilar. The
conversational style with which Agualusa engages his characters is not present even in
the introspective musings of Bernardo Carvalho's narrators, as their focus is turned
inwards and they recount interactions in retrospect, while Agualusa writes dialogues as
if the reader were present. Stylistically, these narrative techniques allow the reader's
focus to shift from the position of witnessing the creation of literature to witnessing a
seemingly real conversation.
74
From Um estranho em Goa: "'Escrevo porque quero saber o fim.' Começo uma história e depois continuo
a escrever porque tenho de saber como termina. Foi também por isso que fiz esta viagem. Vim à procura
de um personagem. Quero saber como termina a história dele." (13) This quote is also about Plácido
Domingo, albeit in the biographical/travel/fiction Um estranho em Goa. There will be an in depth
discussion of Plácido Domingo in this work as well later in the chapter.
146
Another subtle detail that aids in this transition and gives the reader the
impression of veracity in the character of Plácido Domingo is the sentence "Tinha
comigo velhas fotografias." As the reader glances over this it registers that the author
has photographs of Plácido Domingo, a person who is no longer the character born out
of a name five paragraphs earlier, but an individual whose reality seems more tangible
because, as the reader finds out later, there are photographs of Plácido Domingo with
Agostinho Neto75 and Mário Pinto de Andrade76. At this point the reader comes to yet
another "fronteira perdida", because the line between fact and fiction is once more
transgressed. The story now has multiple levels of discourse all at once: it has
interwoven the semi-biographical narrative of Agualusa as a writer who is creating a
story, with the fictional narrative of his character Plácido Domingo, and the historical
narrative of the early leaders of the Movimento Para a Liberação de Angola (MPLA).77
However all of this is done smoothly, fluidly, without the reader necessarily becoming
75
Agostinho Neto was a famous leader of the MPLA (Movimento para a Libertação de Angola), he
survived the war of Independence and went on to become the first MPLA president of Angola. He died of
cancer in 1979, long before his country would see an end to its wars. In A History of Postcolonial
Lusophone Africa, David Birmingham states: "The Angolan wars of liberation ended with the death of
Agostinho Neto." (155)
76
Mário Pinto de Andrade was a famous Angolan poet and politician, as well as one of the founders of the
MPLA. He was the first president of the MPLA and was succeeded by Agostinho Neto. Mário Pinto de
Andrade: uma entrevista dada a Michel Laban (1997).
77
The Movimento Para a Liberação de Angola (MPLA) was one of three major factions that fought for the
independence of Angola from the Portuguese colonial regime and later fought for dominance of the nation
during the Angolan civil wars. Founded by mestiço intellectuals from Luanda, the MPLA fought against
the FNLA (Frente Nacional de Libertação de Angola) and UNITA (União Nacional para a Independência
Total de Angola). During the Cold War, the MPLA was aligned with the communist Soviet Block, and
received assistance from the Soviet Union and Cuba while the United States backed UNITA. However, the
complexities of these wars are not easily summed up, as there were many factions (from the U.S. and the
U.S.S.R. to South Africa and Zaire, not to mention various other Angolan factions) that were involved in
this bloody thirty year span of Angolan history. Throughout the civil wars, the MPLA was the dominant
party in power of Angola, and would emerge in this position at the end of the civil wars in 2002.
147
aware of the transition points, and all the while adding more validity to the story by
shifting registers from what is perceived as fiction to what is perceived as fact.
The story shifts once more when Agualusa thinks to address the old man and
calls him "Comandante Maciel." In this next section of the story, the reader becomes
aware that Agualusa has been traveling throughout Brazil, that he knew the history of
this Plácido Domingo, aka Comandante Maciel, and that the construction of the
character, which the reader thinks to have witnessed a few paragraphs before, is based
on a person who was being sought out by Agualusa as he traveled.
Eu estava em Corumbá há uma semana. Tinha viajado durante dois dias, de
ónibus, entre o Rio de Janeiro e Campo Grande. Em Campo Grande entrevistei o
poeta Manoel de Barros. Já a caminho de Corumbá, enquanto o ónibus seguia aos
solavancos por uma estrada de terra, tive tempo para reler a minha colecção de
artigos sobre o comandante Maciel. Pouca gente conhecia o seu verdadeiro
nome: Plácido Afonso Domingo. Em 1962 ele era capitão do exército português.
Nesse ano, numa operação cujo escândalo o regime de Salazar não conseguiu
sufocar, desviou um avião para Brazaville e juntou-se aos guerrilheiros do MPLA.
Desaparecia o capitão Afonso Domingo e nascia um mito: o comandante Maciel.
Após a Revolução de Abril, desembarcou no Aeroporto de Luanda, com outros
dirigentes do movimento, e foi levado em ombros por uma multidão eufórica. (45)
What emerges here are two different travel narratives: that of Agualusa traveling in
Brazil, from Rio de Janeiro to Campo Grande to Corumbá, and that of Plácido Afonso
Domingo/Comandante Maciel who in 1962 deviated a plane to Brazzaville, in the
Republic of the Congo, where he allied himself with the MPLA and, ceasing to be Plácido
Domingo, became Comandante Maciel.
148
Plácido Domingo in Corumbá
Both of these travel narratives are important in that they demonstrate the
transitional capacity of identity and of ways of perceiving the world. In the case of
Plácido Domingo/Comandante Maciel, each of the geographical spaces he occupies in
this story is connected with a different identity. He is, in one space, a captain of the
Portuguese army, an army and a nation which later dissolves and leaves him, in a sense,
homeless. In another geographical space he is this Comandante Maciel, a man who
infiltrated and became a part of the MPLA, leaving behind one world and one identity,
and integrating himself into another that, at that time, was not only different but in
armed opposition to his own nation. And, as he states later in the story, this nation
abandoned him and left him without a home or identity.78 The third geographical space
is the setting of the story, Corumbá, Brazil, where Plácido Domingo is an enigmatic old
man, arrived there twenty years earlier on a worn-down steamboat, who every week
crosses the river and visits Puerto Suarez, Bolivia, some say to buy and sell shrunken
heads.
As the story progresses through each of these places it becomes evident that
each space, with its individual cultural, social, and political circumstances, has provided
the opportunity or the necessity for this chameleonic character to change his identity.
78
"- Imagine uma criança segurando um papagaio de papel. Imagine que alguém aparece de repente e com
uma lâmina corta o cordel que segura o papagaio. Quando se deu o 25 de Abril eu senti-me como esse
papagaio. Num dia tinha uma pátria, tinha uma missão, era um soldado e cumpria ordens. No dia seguinte
Portugal, aquele Portugal que era a minha pátria, já não existia, já não existia quem segurava os cordéis.
Tudo isso tinha deixado de existir, e eu era realmente um terrorista pago por Moscovo. " Fronteiras
Perdidas, p. 47
149
Through the narrative the reader learns that Plácido Domingo was ordered by the
Portuguese government to infiltrate the MPLA by essentially hijacking a plane and flying
it to Brazzaville, where he became Comandante Maciel. Initially, it was under the
service of the Portuguese government that Plácido Domingo had to be displaced from
his ideological nation. Though he was born in Angola, it is apparent that Plácido
Domingo's allegiance was to the Portuguese government, at that time the Salazar
Regime and the Estado Novo, and that he was charged with the duty of living another
identity, becoming the Other. In this situation the shift from one identity to the other is
extremely complex, as it encompasses the external change of allegiance from one
sovereign nation to the group of revolutionaries that are completely and violently
against that same nation. Along with this change of allegiances, even if only superficial,
Plácido Domingo had to leave behind any apparent residual attachments to the
Portuguese nation or to Portuguese sovereignty. He had to become a member of the
MPLA, adopting their ideologies, their tactics, their struggle and their actions.
It is at this point that what Agualusa writes about Comandante Maciel becomes
more intriguing, adding a depth to the story of the character that invites the reader to
go beyond the text. He calls Comandante Maciel "um mito," a myth, who not only
managed to become a part of the MPLA, the revolutionary group who waged
unrelenting war against his nation, but did it so well that he was carried on the
shoulders of a euphoric crowd upon his arrival at Luanda, after the Revolution of April
150
25th.79 This Comandante Maciel, this myth, was the mask that Plácido Domingo wore
throughout his years with the MPLA. For twelve years, Plácido Domingo fought
alongside the other members of MPLA, working his way up the ranks and presumably
fighting with the intensity and ferocity needed to not only survive, but to become
known by the leadership of the MPLA and by their supporters in Luanda. This is, of
course, what the reader sees through the narrative of Agualusa-as-author, prior to his
entering into dialogue with Plácido Domingo.
However, there is more to this story of Plácido Domingo that Agualusa has
carried throughout his voyage, until the moment of actually speaking to this character.
As their conversation commences, Agualusa goes on to detail all of the assumptions that
were made of what happened to Comandante Maciel after his disappearance in 1975.
According to Agualusa's narrative voice he was expected to become the Angolan
Minister of Defense, when he was sent on a secret mission to Cuba by Agostinho Neto
from which he never returned. Again, and under the charge of different superiors,
Plácido Domingo/Comandante Maciel is sent to another country in which he disappears.
This leads to multiple speculations about his whereabouts and whether or not he is still
79
This idea of the myth is extremely important in narratives about the African wars of independence. The
appearance of the mythified warrior in literature on the African wars of independence can be found in the
works of Pepetela, Manuel Rui, and others, including Agualusa himself. In Pepetela's Mayombe, as well as
Agualusa's O ano em que Zumbi tomou o Rio, the protagonists, Capitão Sem-Medo and Francisco
Palmares, are both modern representations of Ogum, the Yoruban orixá that is a predominant symbol for
masculinity, warfare, and the forge. In Brazilian candomblé, Ogum descends during ceremonies called
macumbas and possesses his priests or priestesses (mãe ou pai-de-santo) and infuses them with his powers
and character traits. This mythified warrior figure originates in West Africa, and was diasporically spread
throughout the Luso-Afro-Brazilian triangle during slavery. Here, he is a mythic ideal for the warrior in
combat. To say that Comandante Maciel was "um mito," then, is to not only say he was a myth because of
his undercover allegiance to Portugal, but also to exalt him as a having been a great warrior. For more
information on orixás and their diasporic counterparts see Reginaldo Prandi's Mitologia dos orixás,
Companhia das Letras, 2001.
151
alive. It leads to compounded stories about treacheries, scandals, political
disagreements, but it never leads to him. Once more, this person that already lived two
different and potentially antagonistic lives disappears from the world, only to be found
by the narrativized José Eduardo Agualusa, eating his piranha soup by the Paraguay
River in the Brazilian pantanal. And yet, no one in his current life knows who he was, as
stated earlier, "Plácido Domingo, o meu personagem, esconde, debaixo do grande sol
de Corumbá, sob a mansidão de um quotidiano sempre igual, um antigo segredo." (43)
Through Plácido Domingo, Agualusa demonstrates a subject that recreated
himself in each of the spaces that he occupied by manipulating the narratives that
pertain to him. Initially his allegiance and his identity were tied to the Portuguese
colonial government, and he followed their orders into the midst of a warzone, where
he left the safety net of his social and political connections in order to fulfill a duty given
to him by his government. While within the MPLA he becomes a new person, changing
his name to Comandante Maciel, becoming at once what the Portuguese government
wanted him to be, but also becoming an entrenched member of the MPLA, and thus
carrying two narratives of self within him, that of loyal citizen and loyal soldier, and the
other of revolutionary freedom fighter.80 These self-narratives are carried to the point
when the Estado Novo was overthrown, effectively cutting off the narrative thread of
80
In the chapter "Portugal and Africa: The Last Empire," Kenneth Maxwell states: "For a long time
Portugal very successfully disguised the nature of her presence behind a skillful amalgam of historical
mythmaking, claims of multiracialism, and good public relations." The Transfer of Power in Africa, p. 337.
Indeed, this is yet another side to the "mito" of Comandante Maciel, as he becomes a myth under the
service of the Portuguese colonial government, he undertakes a new identity and manages to infiltrate the
MPLA successfully while maintaining his connection to Portugal. However, the Portuguese side of this
"mito" collapses along with the Portuguese government after the 25th of April, 1974, leaving only the
Angolan myth of Comandante Maciel, the great warrior for the MPLA, intact.
152
allegiance to Portugal as a sovereign nation because that sovereign nation ceases to
exist. After twelve years of fighting for his government while externally fighting against
it, Plácido Domingo's nation dissolves, and he is left to embody Comandante Maciel
alone. His initial purpose for being involved with the MPLA no longer exists, and yet this
persona he has created remains strongly connected to them. It is, as such, a persona
that he cannot maintain. He explains,
Trabalhei sempre para os Portugueses. Era, digamos assim, agente da DirecçãoGeral de Segurança, a PIDE. Quando desviei o avião para Kinshasa81 levava como
missão infiltrar-me nas estruturas do MPLA, e foi isso que fiz...
- A revolução apanhou-nos de surpresa. Num dia tínhamos o terrorismo quase
controlado e no dia seguinte os terroristas estavam no poder. (47)
As this conversation between Plácido Domingo and Agualusa comes to an end, the
reader is left with the impression that Plácido Domingo left Angola because he could no
longer maintain either of the identities that he had there. No longer able to return to
his "nation," that is, to Portugal or Portuguese sovereignty, he disappears from Angola
after being sent on a mission to Cuba because he has to recreate himself in a neutral
space. His first voyages were out of his control, as voyages often are, he traveled out of
necessity from one sociopolitical world to another, and changed his own identity in each
81
It is worth mentioning that in the description of Plácido Domingo that Agualusa makes, Plácido
Domingo deviates the plane to Brazzaville, while in the account given by Plácido Domingo he deviates the
plane to Kinshasa. Although both places are geographically proximate, their political underpinnings during
the wars of independence were very different. This is potentially another example of how Agualusa
subverts the supposed factual nature of historical narratives, as he discusses having the file on Plácido
Domingo early on in the story and it is evidently incorrect in this detail. For more information about
Brazzaville and Kinshasa during the Angolan War of Independence, see Chabal et. al. The History of
Postcolonial Lusophone Africa (2002).
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of these spaces in order to survive and to fulfill his duty as a soldier of the Portuguese
colonial army, but also as a revolutionary for the MPLA. When Agualusa finds him in
Corumbá, he is in a new place of his own volition, where he tells the stories he must to
recreate himself and all the while leaving his past behind. However, he finds a bit of
home in Corumbá as he echoes Agualusa's earlier sentiments that the Paraguay River
resembles the Kwanza in Angola.
This projection of the Kwanza River onto the Paraguay River, and the parallels
drawn between the Dondo region of Angola and the pantanal where Corumbá is
situated, are also important aspects of the travel experience. As the individual goes
beyond her known socio-cultural and geographic space she is constantly confronted
with new stimuli, with the experience of difference, of otherness. This process demands
that the individual expand the scope of her perceptual world, holons transcending and
becoming greater holons, which require a rewriting of the narrated-self so that the
individual may maintain an identity while at the same time incorporating the new
information that has flooded her experiential space. However, at the same time the
individual also maintains the threads of that personal narrative that were most
important to her, which in turn allows for the projection of the current self into a
narrated past. This creates the necessity for the traveler to find parallels between her
current experience in a foreign space and the experiences already written into her
narrative of self, experiences which provide comfort, grounding, a sense of temporal-
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spatial foundation.82 This is a process that Frances Bartowski referred to as the
"consolidation of identity," in Travelers, Immigrants, Inmates.83 In "Plácido Domingo
contempla o rio em Corumbá," Agualusa and, by extension, his character Plácido
Domingo, both see elements of their home projected onto the space around them.
When describing Corumbá, Agualusa states
As primeiras luzes de Corumbá brilhavam na noite quando me lembrei da velha
cidade do Dondo (Plácido Domingo era do Dondo).
followed by
Na manhã seguinte, ao contemplar o rio, eu compreendi o que tinha levado o
guerrilheiro a ficar ali. Aquele era o rio Quanza. (45)
Agualusa understands, he says, why Plácido Domingo chose Corumbá as the place
where he was to spend the next twenty years after the war, because in effect, it was a
82
In the story "Não existe mais lugar de origem", Agualusa alludes to the fact that for each individual, the
narrative of self emerges in the moment of narration. In other words, the past only exists in reference to the
present in which the individual attempts to tie together the narrative of past events and experiences with the
narrative of herself in the present moment. In this sense, the past does not exist except when utilized to
construct a sense of narrative continuity for the construction of a social identity. This process has been
discussed at length by everyone from Lao Tzu and Sri Aurobindo to Heidegger, Freud, and Paul Ricoeur.
A particularly interesting discussion of this is Jean Gebser's "aperspectival mind" in The Ever-Present
Origin.
83
From Travelers, Immigrants, Inmates: “Texts of travel, immigration, and confinement are intended to
make most bold the contrast in possible positions of subjects and writers who look, hear, speak, touch,
taste, and smell their way by, through, and into an already existing community to be deciphered. The
consolidation of identity, even if mistaken, exhibits a logic of displacement in which we can read the work
of empowerment at its most innocent and at its most presumptuous.” p. xxvi
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parallel to his own home, yet one in which he could recreate himself without the burden
of his political history and attachments. In a sense, he could be free to construct his
identity in a space that closely resembled his home without the burdens of who he had
been.
This is a singular characteristic of characters such as Plácido Domingo, because
while Equador's Luís Bernardo and Nove noites's narrator travel to understand
themselves, they always do so with the assumption that their stay in the place they
travel to is temporary. Both of the aforementioned novels have characters that see
their dislocation as necessary for personal or political reasons, but they have a projected
end to this period of displacement. This is not necessarily so for the characters of
Agualusa. As in the narrated lives of Plácido Domingo, several of Agualusa's characters
view travel, displacement, and relocation as the opportunity to take on other selves,
discarding the identities that they had in previous geographical spaces and donning new
ones. As the reader follows the trajectory of Plácido Domingo from Angola, to Corumbá,
and later to Goa it is consequently more evident that the character recreates himself in
each of the spaces he chooses to occupy, and he does so by consciously selecting the
narratives he shares of himself and his past, all the while incorporating elements of his
new surroundings into his way of being.
Corumbá through the eyes of José Eduardo Agualusa
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The second narrative thread that the reader follows throughout the story is that
of José Eduardo Agualusa, as both narrator and author, who travels to Corumbá in
search of Plácido Domingo. It is the initial search for Plácido Domingo since, as will be
discussed later in this chapter, he travels to Goa in search of Plácido Domingo a second
time. However, this narrative thread is vital to the interaction with any of Agualusa's
works because it is his voice that he personifies throughout Fronteiras Perdidas, and
which appears in other works such as Um estranho em Goa and As mulheres do meu pai.
It is the voice of Agualusa himself as a traveler through both physical geographic space
as well as the spaces of language, narrative, and time. Through this metafictionalizing of
himself, Agualusa subtly but ingeniously manages to weave himself into the fabric of his
fictions which, to reiterate, are also tightly interlaced with history and with various
aspects of global and local culture. As the true traveler of his works, Agualusa
constantly creates himself through narrative, by interacting with his fictional narratives;
ultimately situating himself both inside and outside of fiction. In this sense, he himself
flows through the boundaries between journalism, travel literature, fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and to a point, history, by not accepting any of the predetermined boundaries of
these genres or perspectives.
At the same time, the reader is a vicarious traveler through her own interaction
with these narratives, which are all the more valid and vivid due to her engaging with
global mass media. As the reader engages with the narrative, she is constantly pulled in
by the subtle inclusion of media references which she can recognize as a part of her own
external, social experience. When Agualusa includes references to A Relíquia, O livro do
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desassosego, writes his characters into Vogue magazine, inserts songs by popular
singers such as "Acalanto para um Rio" by Dora, a Cigarra,84 references rap artists such
as MV Bill,85 and Hollywood blockbusters such as Gladiator (2000),86 what he is doing is
providing cultural reference points that strengthen the ties between the reader's
experiential and emotive world outside of the text and the text itself. It is this type of
writing that has brought on criticism from various detractors and traditionalists, who
believe that the firm lines between genres are necessary to maintain intellectual order,
but it is precisely this type of writing that demonstrates the integrative capacity of
narrative, and its ability to transcend outdated limitations.87 This establishing of mass
media reference points mimics the type of recognition that Agualusa's travelers have
when projecting the Kwanza River of West Africa onto the Paraguay River on the BrazilBolivia border.
On the other hand, these reference points are interspersed throughout
narratives of constant travel and flux, where the characters and the reader are exposed
84
All of the previous examples; A Reliquia by Eça de Queiroz, O livro do desassossego by Bernardo
Soares, semi-heteronym of Fernando Pessoa, Vogue magazine, and "Acalanto para um Rio," along with
many other references to popular, "pop," and erudite media are found in the 2004 novel O vendedor de
passados.
85
The lyrics "A guerra me parece inevitável (...)/ se a população se revoltar não grite por socorro / (...)
quando o sangue bater em sua porta espero que você entenda / e descubra que ser preto e pobre é foda. /
Se uma guerra amanhã estalar / sei de que lado eu vou estar." by Brazilian rapper MV Bill are one of two
epigraphs to the 2002 novel O ano em que Zumbi tomou o Rio.
86
The 2000 film directed by Ridley Scott, is referenced in As mulheres do meu pai (2007).
87
This is what Ken Wilber refers to as the "vision-logic" developmental stage in Sex, Ecology, Spirituality:
"In other words, vision-logic is a higher holon that operates upon (and thus transcends) its junior holons,
such as simple rationality itself. As such, vision-logic can hold in mind contradictions, it can unify
opposites, it is dialectical and nonlinear, and it weaves together what otherwise appear to be incompatible
notions, as long as they relate together in the new and higher holon, negated in their partiality but preserved
in their positive contributions." (190-1)
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to different cultural and cognitive spaces. Though the primary narrative line in a story
such as "Plácido Domingo contempla o rio em Corumbá" is about the interaction that
Agualusa has with this character, and through the creation of this character, there
remains the fundamental love of travel, the attention to detail in all of the traveled
spaces, and the fascination with the geographical and cultural scenery. Again, this is a
recurrent trope in the works of Agualusa. Though the scenery at times falls into the
background in lieu of the interactions between the narrator and the characters, it is still
vibrantly portrayed with an intense attention to detail which is reminiscent of
Lusophone traditions of travel literature dating back to the sixteenth century. As he
develops the story of Plácido Domingo, Agualusa intersperses brief but powerful images
of the scenery in Corumba such as
A estrada corria por entre lagoas brilhantes. Vi os jacarés adormecidos ao sol. Vi
uma sucuri enrolada num pau. Pouco a pouco, o céu mudou de cor e as árvores
encheram-se de pássaros: garças de asas luminosas, araras vermelhas, bandos de
periquitos. As primeiras luzes de Corumbá brilhavam na noite... (45)
and later
Atordoado pelo calor, voltei a experimentar o estranho sentimento de me
encontrar num lugar esquecido. O mundo passara por aquelas ruas, e fora-se
embora. O branco casario do porto pertencia a uma outra era, quando o futuro
começava em Corumbá. Um velho pescador, limpando o suor do rosto com a
ponta da camisa, contou-me que a cidade já fora o maior porto da América Latina.
Eu conhecia a história. Primeiro a opulência, o fausto, a seguir a notícia de que o
comboio avançara do litoral até uma cidade próxima, deixando o rio de ser o
principal caminho. E depois o abandono. (46)
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These descriptions of place and time remind the reader that the story is not so much
about Angola, but another space altogether, which neither Agualusa nor Plácido
Domingo can claim as their home nor their pátria,88 but which at this point in narrative
time, in this story, is their narrative place of origin. Without having come together in
Corumbá, alongside the Paraguay River, the dialogue between Agualusa and Plácido
Domingo would not have happened.
The reader is brought to this place in the Brazilian pantanal with Agualusa and it
is a space that is vibrant with its own colors, its own life, and its own history. Agualusa
chooses this place that is inhabited by crocodiles that sleep lazily in the sun, snakes
wrapped around tree branches, and a multitude of varied colored birds to find his
character and to write him into existence. It is here, in the heart of the pantanal, one of
the world's most diverse bioregions, and yet one that seems so far removed from the
rest of the modernized world, that Agualusa creates a character whose past and whose
struggles with identity and nationality are rooted in Agualusa's own homeland.
This displacement from Angola is necessary for the creation of Plácido Domingo,
as is the setting where Agualusa finds him, because both are indicative of the search for
a home after the physical and psychological devastation of the Angolan war of
independence and the civil wars that immediately followed. Corumbá is a special place
in that it resonates with Angola, it not only has similar scenery, it is also narrated as
88
In Portuguese, the word "pátria" carries connotations far beyond mere nationalism or patriotism. It is
indicative of an almost spiritual/emotional connection to a group of people more than a specific geographic
region. As Fernando Pessoa/Bernardo Soares stated, "A minha pátria é a língua portuguesa." In fact, in
this sense, the reader can take the narrative itself as being the "pátria" of Agualusa and Plácido Domingo,
much as it was for Pessoa, regardless of the physical geographic space they inhabit.
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having the same underlying transitive nature. The reader gets the impression that there
is much more to Corumbá than what is seen on the surface. Beneath the descriptions of
the physical space, of the wildlife and the light, of the inhabitants, there is a potential
for the unknown and the unknowable. There is a darkness in Corumbá that makes the
place seem alive, beautiful but almost sinister at the same time. Agualusa describes the
history of Corumbá, talks about the times when it was the largest port in Latin America,
and how the construction of the railroad deferred that status to a nearby city. He writes
about how now, like his own character, this place was abandoned.
As such, Corumbá is presented as a place where an individual like Plácido
Domingo could go to recreate himself, without the hindrance of recognition by local
people to affect the life he is seeking to make for himself. He (and Agualusa) find this
space that is one of constant flux that, like the river that both the narrator and his
character stop to observe, is in a perpetual state of motion, of emergence, precisely
because it is a border, a fronteira. On yet another level, this place was ideal for
Agualusa to create his character because it resonated with his memories of Angola and
provided a space where he could discuss the history and traumas of his homeland.
It is necessary to accentuate this connection between the author's experience of
traveling and the creation of this character at this time and place. As Agualusa travels
he constructs his stories. He, like Bernardo Carvalho and Miguel Sousa Tavares, has
commented that travel is an important part of his creative process. In fact, he generates
his ideas through travel and uses the places he visits as both inspiration and background
for the creation of his characters and their stories. The same can be stated for Sousa
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Tavares's São Tomé e Príncipe, or Bernardo Carvalho's Xingú. However, what differs is
the language with which Agualusa reproduces these spaces, and the way that he layers
and intertwines his own biographical information into his narratives. Through this
process of creating multiple intersection points between the external process of
traveling and the internal process of narrative construction, in conjunction with the
intersecting factual and fictional narratives, Agualusa is weaving a greater macronarrative of his real and imaginary life experiences as they pertain to traveling. This
style of writing and manipulating conventional narrative boundaries is indicative of
what, in Ken Wilber's integral model, can be termed the integral narrative experience.
According to Wilber, existence is experienced in three different spheres, what he
calls the Big Three: or the I, We, and It. Wilber uses these three pronouns to speak of
the different types of interaction and experience that make up social and internal
existence. According to his theory, "I" language comprises the internal dialogue that
governs most of our sense of self awareness. In respect to literature, the closest
example would be the first-person narrator that is concerned with him/herself,
independent of the implicit reader. If the reader were to come across this type of
narrative, it would appear to the reader as a voyeuristic act, because the first-person
narrator would be unaware of the reader, it would contain all of the insecurities, fears,
inner conflicts that occur in everyday internal dialogues. An example of this would be
the letters that Luís Bernardo writes to João Forjaz. While Sousa Tavares's character
knows his friend will read the letters, he is unaware of the reader's exposure to his inner
thoughts, hopes, and fears.
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"We" language, on the other hand, encompasses the first and second-person. It
is in "We" language that people interact, that they communicate in order to attempt
mutual understandings. This is the sphere of most first-person narratives because it
includes novels like Agualusa's, where the narrator is fully aware of the implicit reader,
and the interaction progresses as if in a dialogue between the two. Ultimately, all
literature exists in "We" language because it is an attempt at mutual understanding, it is
a communicative interaction between the text and the reader, but also between the
author and his implicit audience. It is in "We" language that Agualusa's metafiction
demonstrates his authorial sagacity. With the use of metafiction, Agualusa telescopes
the spheres of the narrative from "I" language to "We" language and back again. In the
creation of his fictional narratives, this allows the reader to see the multiple layers of
narrative construction while at the same time experiencing the process of narrative
construction itself. In a sense, this discursive dynamic allows the reader the opportunity
to become aware of the narrative self and its creation.
The next of the Big Three is the "It" pronoun, which encompasses the thirdperson, everything that is external to the interaction but spoken about between two
people. "It" languages includes all of the "hard sciences" and much of the social
sciences, because they take as their subjects things, people, or events that can only be
analyzed through exteriors. Every type of knowledge that is based on empirical
evidence embodies "It" language, because what matters in these circumstances are the
observable, repeatable external reactions to a given process or observation. As such,
anything that is considered a "factual" representation of a place or event is also
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encompassed by "It" language. Therefore, dominant historical narratives, journalism,
travel literature, basically everything that is written and tagged as "non-fiction"
presumably falls under "It" language. However, there is a major limiting factor in "It"
language, and that is the lack of acknowledgement of the interior spaces that make up
cognitive existence. Characters that we have seen in this dissertation that are
represented through "It" language are the two tragic suicides of Luís Bernardo and Buell
Quain. As we affirmed in the last two chapters, these characters a made up of exteriors,
both in the ways they are represented to the reader but also in the ways they selfidentify. Their lack of introspective of internalized dialogues greatly limits their capacity
for agency in the situations that their respective stories entail, and thus both of these
characters are set into frustrated patterns of being that they choose to escape through
suicide. In this sense these characters provide a type of static tragic figure, one that is
used to recount a story without demonstrating the capacity to assume control of the
story. In Nove noites, as the focus shifts from Buell Quain to the narrator, the reader
sees the difference between on type of narrated figure and the other. The introspective
narrator in Bernardo Carvalho manages to use the experience of this static character of
Buell Quain to take control of his own narrative. Agualusa's characters, particularly
Plácido Domingo, take this type of understanding a step further, and they consciously
engage with and utilize their own narratives to confront the situations where they find
themselves.
Agualusa's fiction, written as he travels and flowing from one narrative style to
the next, very closely approaches the Wilber's integral model as it addresses these
164
multiple layers of discourse and of existential awareness. At once, he is functioning as a
journalist, and a travel writer, dealing with the "It", giving detailed descriptions of the
places he travels to, the things he sees, but he is also integrating both "I" and "We"
language into his narratives. Through his fictionalizing himself, and his metafictional
interactions with the implicit reader, Agualusa is addressing the internal experiential
sphere as well as chronicling the external. His works, in this sense, demonstrate the
inter-connectedness of narrative in general, how it provides a space for mutual
understanding through the inclusion of the external and the internal while traversing
the different spheres of "I", "We", and "It" language. In this manner Agualusa is
providing a highly developed and nuanced understanding of the importance of narrative
in the construction of self and identity. As literature functions to provide us with the
intellectual and ethical laboratory of experiments to which Ricoeur refers, it is works by
authors like Agualusa that demonstrate the ways we can apply this use of narrative
beyond the literary context.
As Agualusa first engages the implicit reader in this story, he develops the initial
discursive "We" that is necessary for the interaction between the reader and this
specific story. He establishes this level of mutual awareness by sharing his creative
process, by speaking of creating Plácido Domingo, and by showing the methods of his
artifice. At first, then, Plácido Domingo is an "It", a figure external to the interaction
between reader and narrator. However, as Agualusa's voice as narrator moves to the
level of direct interaction with Plácido Domingo, and Plácido Domingo gains the same
level of narrative significance as the voice of Agualusa, he is no longer an "It" for the
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reader, instead the interaction has now become "We". The reader sees Plácido
Domingo's voice as being as valid as Agualusa's because Agualusa's defers his status to
this character, and therefore the reader is led to respond to Plácido Domingo the same
way she responded to the initial voice of Agualusa. At the same time, Agualusa
addresses the external process of traveling through his descriptions of Brazil as he
travels to this encounter with Plácido Domingo. These descriptions of Corumbá, and the
road leading there, are all tributes to the external, observational process of traveling.
Situating this story in Brazil is also important in this collection because each
individual story relates to the diasporic effect of post-colonialism but also, and more
importantly, each story resonates the realities of global interconnectedness that are
emergent in the modern world. The majority of Agualusa's characters are travelers, and
many are from places other than Angola. In the case of Fronteiras Perdidas, the reader
goes from one short story to the next seeing the different places and circumstances
which Agualusa's characters inhabit in relation to the Angolan war of independence, but
the perspectives given are not limited only to Angolan characters. With each story, the
reader is exposed to characters that have traveled from homelands in Cuba, Brazil,
Portugal, Germany, South Africa, and Senegal. With each story the reader sees how
each character's displacement is a fundamental part of creating his narrated self, and
creating other narrated selves, particularly in the case of the first-person narrator. This
is definitely the case with the narrator's interactions with Plácido Domingo, which is only
amplified as Agualusa continues to create and interact with this character in Goa.
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Plácido Domingo in Goa
The next appearance of Plácido Domingo in José Eduardo Agualusa's work is in
the 2000 (non)fictional travel book, Um estranho em Goa, which Agualusa wrote while
living in Goa for three months through funding from the Fundação Oriente. In this book,
Plácido Domingo is a much more developed character: he is described in more detail, his
interactions with other characters have more depth, and though he remains as
enigmatic and mysterious as his initial appearance, his obscure past during the Angolan
war of independence is revealed. However, this in no way diminishes the mystique of
the character, nor does it hinder the impact he has on the reader. Um estranho em Goa
portrays yet another voyage on the part of Agualusa-as-narrator in search of this
character, it is one more departure from quotidian space to a far off culture that bears
the same Lusophone stamp as he, and it is out of the confrontation with the unknown
and the familiar that both narrator and characters emerge.
In the first few pages of Um estranho em Goa the implicit reader is brought into
the hotel room of José Eduardo Agualusa, here the (non)fictionalized narrator, who lies
awake in the middle of the night, unable to sleep in the sweltering heat, and who thinks
about things like the overrated abuse of words such as "alma" by mediocre poets as he
contemplates the hows and whys of writing. Again, as in "Plácido Domingo contempla o
rio em Corumbá," Agualusa starts his written work by situating himself in a foreign
space, observing the visceral realities of Goa's weather, as he did in Corumbá, Brazil, and
thinks about how to recreate this space through his narratives. He mentions, in passing,
167
how his screensaver is the phrase "O que faço eu aqui?",89 a quote from Bruce Chatwin.
This open-ended question resonates throughout the Um estranho em Goa. In fact, it
resonates throughout the works of Agualusa, as it connotes the incessant searching that
motivates and inspires the majority of his characters and narrators, it reiterates the
feeling of desassossego that they feel, he himself among them.
Shortly after, Agualusa delves into the first reference to Plácido Domingo which
is a direct quote from Fronteiras Perdidas, the same first paragraph of "Plácido Domingo
contempla o rio em Corumbá." Yet here it is set in quotation marks, set apart from the
current narrative, it is intertextual metafiction, with the implicit author/narrator looking
back on a story that he published two years earlier. Immediately after introducing the
quote Agualusa begins his recurrent discussion as to what constitutes veracity or reality
in a narrative,
Escrevi, há alguns anos, um conto que começava assim. Muita gente me
perguntou se a história era verdadeira. Costumo insinuar, quando a propósito de
outras histórias me colocam idêntica pergunta, que já não sei onde ficou a verdade
– embora me recorde perfeitamente de ter inventado tudo do princípio ao fim.
Naquele caso fiz o contrário. “Tretas,” menti, “pura ficção.” Disse isto porque
queria encontrá-lo. Inventei um nome para ele, ou nem isso, dei-lhe o nome de
outro homem. (13-14)
Here Agualusa addresses the question of the truthfulness of his narratives. He speaks of
how he is often asked whether or not his stories are true, to which he usually replies
that he longer knows where the truth lies, "já não sei onde ficou a verdade." This is
89
"What am I doing here?" or "What do I do here?" – both translations are equally valid, once more leaving
the interpretation up to the reader because of the double entendre. In this sense, the quote can be either
ontological or pragmatic, depending on the perspective of the reader.
168
despite his awareness of the purely fictional nature of the particular story he is asked
about. As he tells the reader this, he becomes an unreliable narrator because he calls
into question the truthfulness of his own voice, albeit in a situation that is supposedly
outside the narrative (i.e. speaking to journalists as himself).90 However, by writing this
into the fabric of his fiction, Agualusa weaves this extra-literary narrative into his book,
he demonstrates that he has the tendency to tell stories about stories, with and without
the written word. Another way to describe this is that by writing his voice into his
narratives, Agualusa constructs multiple layers of narrative significance, he proceeds
through the fictional work into the "real" world where he interacts with journalists as a
writer, but then resituates both of these spaces back into the realm of fiction. Through
this type of narrative it is in fact difficult to differentiate between the "real" and
"fictional" experiences that are being narrated. However, by continuing through the
same narrative line, Agualusa actually refutes the importance of the binary between
"real" and "fictional" because what remains is a lucidly written, cohesive account of a
traveler/narrator who can acknowledge the demarcating lines between one space and
another, but who transcends them.
The transcendence of these differentiating lines leads to Agualusa's narratives
occupying a different, emergent space, that of intersubjectivity. Following Ken Wilber's
map of the four quadrants of integral theory, literature is situated in the Lower Left
90
Wayne Booth, in his book The Rhetoric of Fiction, discusses the unreliable narrator as a usually firstperson narrator who's credibility is called into question by making claims that are either too fantastic or
improbable to believe, or who has openly expressed unreliability through admitting to lying, mental illness,
or by situating him/herself as a character within the narrative. This is the case at this point where Agualusa
states that he often lies when asked about his stories. The Rhetoric of Fiction, Chicago & London:
University of Chicago Press, 1961.
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Quadrant, the space that encompasses group cultural and social production and
interaction. To quote Wilber
In other words, the criterion for validity in the Lower-Left quadrant is not just the
truth of my statement, nor the truthfulness with which I put it, but whether you
and I can come to mutual understanding with each other. Not objective, not
subjective, but intersubjective. (144)
As Agualusa's narratives progress, they fit into this intersubjective space, where the
importance no longer lies in the dividing lines between one discipline or another,
between one literary school of thought and the next. This is evident in the fact that
Agualusa writes his journalism like he writes his fiction, and his fiction like his
journalism. He blurs the lines between what narratives are socially accepted as true or
false by combining them in one space and one cohesive narrative line. What matters
here is no longer the veracity of the stories he writes around historical people or events,
be they political history such as the wars in Angola or social history such as Agualusa
being interviewed by reporters, but the fact that through his writing the reader can
come to a "mutual understanding" of the experiences he is trying to convey. In this
sense, whether a story he has written is true or untrue is beside the point, because the
experience that the reader has by engaging with the story is going to be just as valid
regardless of whether or not it happened to a living, breathing person. Therefore, the
stories that Agualusa shares are validated by the ways that he accesses multiple
narrative lines that the reader can relate to in their extra-literary lives because they
have shared experiences in a similar cultural field, all the while they are being
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introduced to new experiential possibilities using literature as a laboratory for ethical
and cognitive experimentation by reading these narratives of different far off cultural
spaces.
Returning to Um estranho em Goa, Agualusa states that in the case of Plácido
Domingo he lied and said that the character was "pura ficção," implying that Plácido
Domingo is based on a real person, and furthermore, he is based on a real person that
was in Goa at that time. This is yet another loop of literary acrobatics that is thrown at
the reader, one that reiterates the statement above about Agualusa being an unreliable
narrator, but also demonstrating how Agualusa's playing with truth and fiction makes
his narratives more intriguing. Over the next few pages, Agualusa retells the story of
Plácido Domingo as it first appeared in Fronteiras Perdidas but separates each segment
of the initial story with quotes, while narrating how he had written the story two years
earlier, but interjecting comments about his awareness that Plácido Domingo was in fact
in Goa.
Agualusa's use of quotation marks as he integrates his earlier short story into Um
estranho em Goa is also interesting because the text that represents the initial story
about Plácido Domingo is not reproduced verbatim. In fact, in the retelling of the story
that appears in Um estranho em Goa, Agualusa slightly modifies the original story, all
the while encasing the segments of it in quotes. In this sense, when compared side by
side, the use of quotations is another affront to the literary stylistics of reproducing a
text within another text. The story is slightly altered, but it is altered in the details,
which can be and often are overlooked. Again this points to the notion that narratives
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always have the capacity to flow and change, despite the surface-level adherence to
literary convention. In a sense, this is what Agualusa accomplishes in his works, he takes
the narratives that are generally accepted as factual, and he writes his own stories into
the details, into the empty spaces, providing at once a dialogue between the
historiographic metafiction, the places and characters he creates, and the implicit
reader.91
As Agualusa writes the story of his time in Goa, he develops these connections
between history, travel literature, and fiction while maintaining an intriguing narrative
where he interacts with multiple characters from all over the world, and he further
develops the fascinating character of Plácido Domingo. In Um estranho em Goa, the
reader has the opportunity to see Plácido Domingo develop into a much more complex
character. Though the five pages in which he is first presented to the world in
Fronteiras Perdidas provide a fantastic portrait of the character, it is not until Um
estranho em Goa that he is emphasized as a complex and multifaceted character.
In Um estranho em Goa, Plácido Domingo maintains his history with the Angolan
war of independence, but he also is a more grandiose character, his statements and
actions as more refined and astute, he is an elegant, intellectual gentleman with an
extensive wealth of knowledge and awareness of his place in society. Beyond that, he is
constantly compared to and labeled as the Devil. Not the red-faced, goat-legged Devil
91
Hutcheon, Linda. A Poetics of Postmodernism: “...postmodern fiction manifests a certain introversion, a
self-conscious turning toward the form of the act of writing itself, but, it is also with that real world beyond
itself...Its relationship to the “worldly” is still on the level of discourse, but to claim that is to claim quite a
lot. After all, we can only “know” (as opposed to “experience”) the world through our narratives (past and
present) of it, or so postmodernism argues.” P. 128
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of horror stories told to scare children, but the elegant, intelligent tempter whose
charisma wins people over and makes them do his bidding, at the price of their own
damnation. In this sense, Agualusa uses Plácido Domingo to make various statements
about humanity in general, delving into universal philosophical concerns such as the
nature of good and evil, and where personal agency lies in the choice to act upon either
of the two, if that agency in fact exists.
"Please allow me to introduce myself, I'm a man of wealth and taste..."92
When Agualusa finds Plácido Domingo in Goa, he is no longer Plácido Domingo.
The reader finds out that he has changed his name yet again, in Goa his name is Enoque.
Like the name Plácido Domingo, Enoque is also a name that is famous and charged with
a different type of social significance. It comes from the Hebrew, Hanokh, and it is the
name of a figure from the Old Testament and the Apocrypha, who was the greatgrandfather of Noah, and told him of the coming deluge that was to destroy all of
humanity and the Nephilim. The Book of Enoch is one of the books of the Apocrypha
and Pseudoepigrapha of the Old Testament. It is at once a prophetic and apocalyptic
text, where Enoch is shown the destruction of mankind and the final judgment through
divine visions, foretelling the coming of the deluge that would destroy the wicked
among men, and the Nephilim, or the children of fallen angels and mortal women.
92
These are the opening lyrics to the Rolling Stones' song "Sympathy for the Devil", a song that provides
an excellent portrait of the elegant fiend that Plácido Domingo is alluded to being in Um estranho em Goa.
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In the Apocryphal Book of Enoch, Enoch is given a vision from heaven, where he
is shown how a group of angels, called the Watchers, descended from heaven and took
mortal women as their lovers. These women bore them children before they were
judged and subjected to God's wrath. Out of these unions between fallen angels and
human women arose all sorts of wickedness: among them was the beginning of warfare
and the advent of witchcraft, two themes that pervade the works of Agualusa,
particularly Um estranho em Goa. In the book of Enoch, Enoch bears witness to the
creation of steel armor and weapons, to the uprising of one brother against another, to
the advent of carnage and wickedness on Earth because of the transgression of these
angels against God. From Chapter 12 of the Book of Enoch,93
Before these things Enoch was hidden, and no one of the children of men knew
where he was hidden, and where he abode, and what had become of him. And his
activities had to do with the Watchers, and his days were with the holy ones. And I
Enoch was blessing the Lord of majesty and the King of the ages, and lo! the
Watchers called me -Enoch the scribe- and said to me: 'Enoch, thou scribe of
righteousness, go, declare to the Watchers of the heaven who have left the high
heaven, the holy eternal place, and have defiled themselves with women, and
have done as the children of earth do, and have taken unto themselves wives: "Ye
have wrought great destruction on the earth: And ye shall have no peace nor
forgiveness of sin: and inasmuch as they delight themselves in their children, the
murder of their beloved ones shall they see, and over the destruction of their
children shall they lament, and shall make supplication unto eternity, but mercy
and peace shall ye not attain.
And
[Chapter 16]
93
This text was taken from The Apocrypha and Pseudoepigrapha of the Old Testament, compiled and
edited by R. H. Charles, Clarendon Press, Oxford.
174
From the days of the slaughter and destruction and death of the giants, from the
souls of whose flesh the spirits, having gone forth, shall destroy without incurring
judgement -thus shall they destroy until the day of the consummation, the great
judgement in which the age shall be consummated, over the Watchers and the
godless, yea, shall be wholly consummated." And now as to the watchers who
have sent thee to intercede for them, who had been aforetime in heaven, (say to
them): "You have been in heaven, but all the mysteries had not yet been revealed
to you, and you knew worthless ones, and these in the hardness of your hearts you
have made known to the women, and through these mysteries women and men
work much evil on earth." Say to them therefore: "You have no peace."
Like Plácido Domingo, who witnessed the destruction and death of the Angolan wars of
independence from both sides of the war, the colonizers' and the freedom fighters',
Enoch is the witness to the initial condemnation of these children of angels and women,
who were damned to slaughter one another throughout human existence, until the time
of the final judgment. This is accentuated later when Plácido Domingo94 tells Agualusa
that, during the war, he never took sides, he is a man on all sides. He portrays himself
as a man who would not fit into or take a partisan role because the death and warfare
that humanity inflicts upon itself is an endless process, until the day of judgment, these
men and women who are the children of angels and mortals, and who walk the earth
unaware of this damned heritage, will kill one another as long as humanity exists.
Another aspect of Plácido Domingo that connects him to this Biblical and
Apocryphal character of Enoch is that Enoch was supposed to be free from suffering a
mortal death. He was to walk the Earth among men throughout the ages. Like Plácido
Domingo, who has now been presented to the reader as having lived a life in Angola, a
94
Though initially in Um estranho em Goa he is introduced as Enoque, Agualusa reverts to calling him
Plácido Domingo after their initial meeting and from there on, in order to avoid confusion we will do the
same to maintain coherency throughout the chapter.
175
life in Brazil, and now a life in Goa, Enoch was to be a chronicler, and one who would not
die a mortal death. Yet again there is this parallel between the figure of Enoch and the
character of Plácido Domingo who was also a chronicler of the world around him. In Um
estranho em Goa, Plácido Domingo is a collector of ancient Biblical and Apocryphal
texts, of effigies that come from multiple non-Christian religions, and he tells Agualusa
that he is in the process of writing an (Auto)biography of the Devil. At the same time, he
tells Agualusa
– Há muitos anos uma cigana tentou ler-me a mão e assustou-se, coitada, quase
fugiu. "O destino do senhor," disse-me ela, "não cabe numa única mão".
Plácido Domingo afagou satisfeito a longa barba branca. Lembra-se do
episódio da cigana sempre que olha para trás e vê, lá ao fundo, os dias
tormentosos daquilo a que chama a sua anterior encarnação. (94)
Um estranho em Goa is an interesting mix of these types of references to both Biblical
and Eastern religious belief systems. There is an overt narrative line that follows and
comments upon the Christian influence in Goa in relation to the presence of Hindu
beliefs. And while Plácido Domingo constantly relates back to or is associated with the
Devil, he also speaks of reincarnation and non-dual belief systems characteristic of
Eastern religion and philosophy.95 Like Goa, and like any colonized or post-colonial
95
By "non-dual" we mean that in Eastern religions such as Buddhism and Hinduism there exists an
acceptance of inter-relatedness of forces or entities that in hegemonic or mainstream Western beliefs would
be separated and viewed as binary or oppositional. In non-dual traditions, both the mundane and the
spiritual, good and evil, right and wrong, ascension and descent, are part of one and the same process of
experiencing existence and attaining enlightenment. As such, in these traditions, there are no strict
binaries, no dividing lines that would ardently separate one framework of thinking from another, there is
only the process of seeking enlightenment through finding the embrace of seemingly oppositional forces.
This is reflected in Um estranho em Goa by the co-existence of multiple belief systems that in a strictly
176
space, Plácido Domingo carries within him a multiplicity of belief systems that are
endemic to the spaces he occupies, in conjunction with the belief systems and symbols
that have been imposed by the colonizers.96 While the narrative that correlates Plácido
Domingo to the Devil is dominant, and indeed leaves the reader with the suspicion that
he is, in fact, more of a diabolical character than the Biblical namesake he chooses in
Goa, he also embodies elements of Eastern non-dual worldviews. This is interesting
because he sometimes manifests these potentially contradictory but definitely
paradoxical lines of thinking in his statements about himself. Such as the following
where he is provoked by Agualusa,
– A Lili – provoquei – acha que o senhor é o diabo.
- E sou. Já lhe expliquei isso antes. Somos todos. E também sou Deus.
Somos todos.97 Os defensores da chamada geração espontânea acreditavam na
Western Christian perspective would be blasphemous or impossible. However, Goa, being an Eastern
country that has been colonized by Portuguese Christians, manifests the two sets of belief systems in a
unique way: though there are overt conflicts between the people who affiliate with one religion over the
other, elements of both religious belief systems are woven closely together in the culture.
96
From Um estranho em Goa: "Calcula-se que em Goa persistam perto de duzentas mil pessoas (próximas
do catolicismo, umas, outras do hinduísmo) que não esqueceram por completo os antigos ritos dos Gavde,
os primeiros habitantes da região, e que cultuam ainda as forças da natureza. Vale a pena lembrar, a
propósito, que a palavra pagão vem do latim paganu, aldeão." p. 37.
97
From Sex, Ecology, Spirituality: "Sri Ramana Maharshi (echoing Shankara) summarizes the "viewpoint"
of the ultimate or Nondual realization:
The world is illusory;
Brahman alone is Real
Brahman is the world.
The first two lines represent pure causal-level awareness, or unmanifest absorption in pure or
formless Spirit; line three represents the ultimate or nondual completion (the union of the Formless with the
entire world of Form). The Godhead completely transcends all worlds and thus completely includes all
worlds. It is the final within, leading to a final beyond – a beyond that, confined in absolutely nothing,
embraces absolutely everything", p. 310. In the non-dual Hindu beliefs, Brahman or the Godhead is present
in the manifestation of all things, including man. As such, man is not only the manifestation of Brahman
(as in Christian belief man is created in the image of God), but man is Brahman. Since everything that
exists is Brahman, so too must be the devil and God, and it follows that if man is Brahman as well, man is
also God and devil.
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possibilidade de determinados seres serem gerados a partir do nada. Julgo que
comigo se deu o inverso: fui gerado a partir do tudo.
- Não compreendo...
- Estou a responder à sua pergunta. Não, eu não me passei para o lado
dos portugueses, nunca fiz isso, mas descobri entretanto que para mim não havia
um único lado. Sou um homem de todos os lados. (69)
In Um estranho em Goa, Plácido Domingo is a character that emerges from the space he
occupies more than from his history, he exists in the space and time of the narrative,
which is ripe with all the paradoxes and nuances of two extremely different
foundational cultures. In the quote above, the reader sees the overlap of Christian and
Hindu beliefs, as the Devil and God are discussed as Christian symbols, but also as their
integration, their oneness and their manifestation in each person are discussed as in the
Hindu perspective. At the same time, Plácido Domingo finishes this statement by saying
that he realized there was not only one side for him to choose during the Angolan war
of independence, but that he is a man of all sides, a concept reminiscent of the dilemma
of the warrior Arjuna from the Hindu Bhagavad Gita.
However, Agualusa continues his line of questioning of Plácido Domingo in order
to find out if he was truly a traitor to Angola. This conversation is brief, it does not take
a significant role in Um estranho em Goa, but it is important for the development of
Plácido Domingo. The reader learns that Plácido Domingo was not, in fact, a traitor to
Angola. He was sent on a mission to Kinshasa by Agostinho Neto, in the company of a
fellow MPLA soldier named Elias, in order to convince the dictator Mobuto to cease his
alliance with the FNLA. In Kinshasa he was caught, tortured, and imprisoned until 1980.
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Before leaving for Kinshasa he was suspicious that some PIDE agents had infiltrated the
movement, that they were quickly ascending ranks and would soon sabotage the MPLA.
However, he remained silent about his suspicions, planning on informing Agostinho
Neto upon his return from Kinshasa. When he was finally released, he found out that
his suspicions were true, but he was too late. The men whom he suspected were
already in control, and furthermore they had attributed their own stories to him. In
short, he was now viewed as the traitor.
It is interesting that at this point in the narrative, Agualusa notices how Plácido
Domingo's voice begins to change as he tells the story of his capture and torture.
Agualusa says
Reparei que enquanto me contava estas coisas a voz dele ia ficando tensa e o
sotaque angolano, até então quase imperceptível, se tornava nítido. Era como se,
à medida que mergulhava no passado, fosse recuperando o uso de um corpo
antigo. (100)
In the retelling of his story, after twenty years of living a different life, Plácido Domingo
begins to manifest the same accent, the same tonality, of the Angolan man he once was.
Through the retelling of this story, the characteristics of who he was in his "anterior
encarnação" return. In other words, despite having recreated himself in this new space,
and having become quite successful in Goa, the remnants of who he was still have the
capacity to re-emerge, but in order to do so they must come through the narrative he
chooses to share with Agualusa. It is through his narrating his past that Plácido
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Domingo begins to incorporate the person that he once was, a person that no longer
exists, but that emerges through the act of storytelling.
This retroactive assumption of a previous incarnation is indicative of the power
that Agualusa gives to narrative when he is developing his characters. They construct
themselves, and indeed are constructed, by the stories they tell about themselves but
also by the stories they accept about themselves and the world that surrounds them. As
stated above, Plácido Domingo, in Goa, is a character made up of the different social
and cultural elements of the space he occupies, at once Christian and Hindu, binary and
non-dual, he manifests different elements of East and West in the stories he tells about
himself and in the stories he allows others to tell of him.98 This is one of the major
contributing factors to his enigmatic nature. In Um estranho em Goa, multiple people
associate Plácido Domingo with the Devil, and he plays with these associations, allowing
the narrator (Agualusa) to fill in the gaps between the stories and his experiences with
the man. In most cases, Plácido Domingo is a character who chooses to be known on
the basis of negation of identity or nationalistic allegiance, instead of assuming a
definite stance on either. He feels that he is neither Angolan nor Portuguese, but at the
same time he is not from Goa, he does not assume the role of God or Devil, but at the
98
The concept of a character's physical appearance and attributes being altered by the story they tell about
themselves, or accept about themselves is a theme throughout Agualusa's work. Take, for example, the
character José Buchman from O vendedor de passados, who buys a genealogy and begins to transform into
the identity he has bought. The narrator notes: "Refiro-me a alterações mais subtis. Em primeiro lugar está
a mudar de sotaque. Perdeu, vem perdendo, aquela pronúncia entre eslava e brasileira, meio doce, meio
sibilante, que ao princípio tanto me desconcertou. Serve-se agora do ritmo luandense, a condizer com as
camisas de seda estampada e os sapatos desportivos que passou a vestir. Acho-o também mais expansivo.
A rir, é já angolano." (76) Buchman, like Plácido Domingo, also loses these new found attributes when
confronted with the man who tortured him during the Angolan civil war. As Buchman remembers the
times of his imprisonment and torture, he re-assumes the qualities of the man he was during that time.
180
same time he says that he, like everyone else, is both. This is interesting when taken
into context with what Plácido Domingo states about Portugal and Portuguese identity
- Talvez isto o choque, - disse-me – mas Angola deixou de me interessar.
Está tão longe daqui que por vezes chego a duvidar que realmente exista ou tenha
existido um país assim. Penso em Angola como você pensa, eu sei lá, no País das
Maravilhas...
- Hoje sente-se indiano?
- Não, indiano não, mas às vezes sinto-me goês...
- E português?
- Isso já não sei. O que é um português?
A pergunta apanhou-me desprevenido. Hesitei:
- Bem, antes de mais, suponho, um europeu...
- Os portugueses, europeus? – Riu-se com mansidão. – Nunca foram.
Não o eram antes e não o são hoje. Quando conseguirem que Portugal se
transforme sinceramente numa nação europeia o país deixará de existir. Repare:
os portugueses construíram a sua identidade por oposição à Europa, ao Reino de
Castela, e como estavam encurralados lançaram-se ao mar e vieram ter aqui,
fundaram o Brasil, colonizaram África. Ou seja, escolheram não ser europeus. (50
– 51)
Plácido Domingo claims that the Portuguese identity was constructed not by assumption
of an identity, but by the negation of it, by the negation of Castela, and the negation of
Europe. Because Portugal decided against being affiliated, incorporated, and ultimately
assimilated by Castela, the Portuguese took to the sea to find a space where they could
find their home and establish their identity. That is to say that, for Portugal, travel into
uncharted territory was the only hope for survival, it was the only recourse to finding an
identity or self that it would choose to embody. This search led the Portuguese to
Africa, to India, to Brazil. In each of these spaces, the Portuguese legacy has remained
one of traveling and searching for a place in which to thrive, a search that in modern
times has become less about the nation and more about the individual. However, this
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occurs by varying degrees of historical and cultural attachment to pre-established
national and cultural identities. While in the work of Sousa Tavares the national
narrative of Portugal is still extremely important to self-narratives, it is less so for
Bernardo Carvalho, and in Agualusa both the self and national identity are in a constant
process of conscious construction.
In modern western society, globalization has become a major factor in the way
that individual identity is constructed. This globalized consciousness is present in
innumerable works of fiction throughout the world, and Lusophone literature is
definitely one of its largest proponents. In this sense, the process of travel in narratives
of the Portuguese-speaking world is no longer tied, as it once was, to nationalism or
nationalistic identity for writers of post-colonial nations such as Bernardo Carvalho and
José Eduardo Agualusa in the way that it is in the work of Miguel Sousa Tavares. On the
contrary, national identity is more internalized in Agualusa and Bernardo Carvalho, as is
the concept of identity construction. Therefore, in the works of these two authors, as
an individual travels in a world where borders are losing their rigidity, where
informational and cultural exchange is accessible at any internet café, where global
communication has been facilitated to the touch of a button, nationalism has given way
to a broader global perspective. This is singularly demonstrated in the works of José
Eduardo Agualusa, as Professor Renata Flávia da Silva states in her article "Fronteiras
Perdidas: uma literatura em viagem": "Os contos para viajar de Fronteiras perdidas são
histórias espaciais de deslocamento, num universo ficcional globalizado e globalizante,
ultrapassando fronteiras geográficas e discursivas." (4)
182
In Goa, Plácido Domingo states that he is no longer interested in Angola, that
Angola to him is like Alice's Wonderland, but that he also does not feel Portuguese.
When asked by Agualusa if he feels Indian he responds that he does not, but some days
he feels Goan. The immediacy of the identity that Plácido Domingo constructs for
himself is based on where he is at the moment, what surrounds him and how he ties the
narrative threads that he chooses together. He does this by accepting the character
traits and stories about himself that he wants and by negating the rest. However,
sometimes the negations are what matter most in the identity that others ascribe to
him, if they suit his interests.
Plácido Domingo is a character that is well aware of this, as is his creator José
Eduardo Agualusa: what is said is always and only relevant in relation to what remains
unsaid. And all the negated statements point to there being a very old, almost ancient,
poise that underlies the character of Plácido Domingo, a poise that is rooted in his
awareness and comfort with the darkness that exists in mankind. This is why, upon
completion of the book, the reader is left with the eerie feeling that perhaps Plácido
Domingo was, all along, that suave Devil who was once cast out of his home and
condemned to wander the Earth among men, until the end of days.
Goa through the eyes of José Eduardo Agualusa
Goa through the eyes of the narrator, implicitly José Eduardo Agualusa, is a place
where many people and many cultures come together. As the reader follows the
183
narrative line of the relationship between Plácido Domingo and Agualusa, she is
exposed to a wide variety of character types, of travelers, of cultural spaces and
practices that were presumably based upon things that Agualusa himself observed
during his three months in Goa. Through these observations emerge multiple
commentaries on the nature of travel, on types of travelers, as well as reflections of
Agualusa himself.
In Travelers, Immigrants, Inmates, Frances Bartowski analyzes the nature of
travel in literature through the perspective that travel is not always a pleasurable or
leisurely endeavor. Bartowski points out that often people who travel do so out of
necessity, or because they are forced to do so. She differentiates these two processes
as travel and displacement. To elucidate further, Bartowski states
Travel is movement, movement through territorialized spaces, movement by those
who choose to move and those who are moved by forces not under their control.
Travel then could suggest crossing cultural boundaries, trespassing, visiting,
capture. It could open up the possibility of removing the term from its class-bound
associations with exploitation and pleasure-seeking, and remind us that those
exploited are often forced into movement as an integral part of their exploitation.
(xxiii)
Indeed, though Agualusa himself is of the privileged social strata, he presents the reader
with a multiplicity of characters that would fall under the category that Bartowski refers
to as "displaced." Throughout the book, Agualusa repeatedly comments on the sense of
displacement experienced by the "descendentes", a group of individuals descended
from the first Portuguese-Goan marriages, who still hold on to their Portuguese heritage
184
and demand the acknowledgement of their European heritage. These people feel
estranged within their own land, being neither fully Portuguese nor fully Indian. At the
same time, they feel further displaced by the rapid nature of the linguistic and
regimental changes that Goa underwent, seemingly from night to day.99
Goa is also presented as a place where racial and religious tensions run high
between the Goan families of Portuguese lineage and the influx of migrant workers
from other parts of India. In this sense, and perhaps to the detriment of the narrative,
Agualusa focuses on the perspectives of the individuals who have the claim to
Lusophone identity that he also shares. He sees the people that have emigrated to Goa
from other parts of India, but his observations of them are always from the outside.
This can be attributed to the linguistic barrier between himself and them. At the same
time, it is indicative of the importance of language and common heritage or condition in
finding the tie that binds himself to the people of this foreign land. Again, like the
Paraguay River in Corumbá, this is important because it provides a type of reference
point for the identity consolidation process that Bartowski refers to in Travelers,
Immigrants, Inmates.
99
" – Nós fomos integrados à força nesta grande desordem – diz, revelando uma surpreendente energia. –
Em apenas vinte e quatro horas mudou-se a língua. A língua era de uma potência colonial e passou-se para
a língua de outra potência colonial, a língua inglesa. Imagine o trauma que tudo isto provocou. O que é
Goa hoje? Um pequenino estado dentro de um país enorme como é a Índia. Nós não tínhamos corrupção.
Hoje a corrupção está generalizada. Antigamente, todos os cargos na administração pública eram ocupados
por goeses. Hoje, nem com o auxílio de uma lanterna, e em plano dia, você encontra um goês numa
secretaria. Cada dia nos sentimos mais estrangeiros dentro da nossa própria terra." This statement is made
by Percival de Noronha, an elderly man with whom Agualusa converses about the sense of cultural identity
in Goa. Percival was also a defender of the Portuguese identity, who claims that the country fell apart after
its independence from Portugal. p. 115- 116
185
Um estranho em Goa is also a collection of vividly depicted images of the places
and people that Agualusa meets throughout the book. This element of the book is
strongly reminiscent of the types of travel literature that pervade the Portuguese
speaking world, dating back to the sixteenth century. His fascination with the types of
people he encounters, the cultural phenomena he observes, and the impressions that
these make upon him demonstrate a perspective that appreciates the subtle intricacies
of the culture he is experiencing. His observations go from the diminutive details, such
as the way the light falls on the dirt roads as he travels through fields of rice, 100 or the
melancholy rhythm of a cobra that is being "charmed" in a touristy bar by a swaying
snakecharmer.101
As she progresses through the text, the reader is led through different
monuments that depict both Eastern and Western religious figures, such as the
following in the Christian Seminário de Rachol
O Seminário pareceu-me imenso. Percorri com vagar os longos corredores, os
sonoros claustros, vi os retratos de todos os bispos de Goa, vi as cozinhas, com
tachos enormes sobre fogueiras no chão, e os porcos e os búfalos pastando no
quintal. O padre mostrou-me, na entrada do Seminário, um fresco que representa
100
"A luz declinava, morria, quando uma chuva brusca caiu sobre a estrada. Assim que desapareceu, tão
depressa como havia chegado, vi que emergíamos no meio de um horizonte liso e dourado de campos de
arroz. Havia coqueiros ao fundo. Arroz e cocos: foi disto que Goa viveu durante séculos, para além da fé,
é óbvio." p. 22- 23
101
"Atrás de mim, separado por uma rede de arame, aninha-se na poeira vermelha um encantador de
serpentes. Acho-o triste. Acho-o um desencantador de serpentes. As infelizes parecem mortas de sono, ou
de tédio. Ou ainda, e é o mais provável, de fome." p. 25
186
o Inferno. Depois levou-me à Biblioteca. Não cheguei a olhar os livros, o que
lamento, pois o Seminário de Rachol é conhecido pela sua colecção de obras raras,
muitas das quais impressas ali mesmo, naquela que foi a primeira tipografia da
Índia. (123)
as well as depictions of Hindu temples such as the Temple of Shri Manguesh
No friso superior reconheci as dez encarnações de Vishnu – um peixe, uma
tartaruga, um javali, o homem com cabeça de leão chamado Narasinha; o anão
Vamana, o sacerdote guerreiro Parashurama e o seu machado; o Príncipe Rama,
Rei de Ayodhya, cuja saga é contada no épico Ramayana; Krishna, Buda e
finalmente o homem cavalo Kalki – que ainda não chegou, há-de chegar, e quando
isso acontecer termina o mundo. É curiosa a progressão, do peixe a Buda, quase
seguindo o modelo da evolução da vida, da água à terra, dos seres mais simples
aos mais complexos. (152)
These observations are made with the keen eye of an anthropologist or ethnographer,
again bringing together elements of multiple disciplines to create this travel narrative.
Some of the observations made by Agualusa are in fact reminiscent of such fundamental
anthropological texts as Clifford Geertz' The Interpretation of Cultures. An example of
this is the entire description of the Temple of Shri Manguesh, where Agualusa goes into
detail depicting the different deities and behaviors of the people visiting the temple, as
well as the vestments and actions of the priests that reside there.
The work of José Eduardo Agualusa is exceptional because of the ways that
Agualusa transcends convention. In his books, the reader is given the opportunity to
experience cultural exchanges on multiple levels, which are strengthened by association
between the reader and the elements of global culture that Agualusa includes, as well
as providing an amplified vision of the world for the reader by describing the experience
187
of traveling through completely foreign spaces, which are all full of their own nuances,
significances, and cultural differences. In a sense, there is a big anthropological
undercurrent in the work of Agualusa, but it is presented in a way that expands
rhizomatically, including many disciplines, cultural references, and stylistics. Reading a
book such as Um estranho em Goa, or a short story such as "Plácido Domingo
contempla o rio em Corumbá, Brasil", gives the reader the opportunity to feel
connected to these faraway spaces while at the same time maintaining a foundation in
the social and cultural systems and references that the reader can recognize,
understand, and feel connected to. There is no differentiation of one discipline from the
next, as the narrative easily and accessibly flows from one type of discourse to another,
following the narrative line that breathes life into the observations of self and other that
abound in travel narratives. Agualusa masterfully walks the reader through these
spaces and shares his interpretations of them, at once bringing himself closer to the
reader and bringing the reader closer to an understanding of the expansive existential
possibilities that the world holds. His works are truly uma viagem.
188
EPILOGUE
Traveling teaches us a few things. That life is a path and not a fixed point in space.
That we are like the passage of the days and the months and the years, as the
Japanese poet Matsuo Basho wrote in a travel diary, and that the one thing we do
indeed possess, our only asset, is our capacity of locomotion. It is our talent for
traveling. (142)
The above quote, taken from the English translation of Brazilian author Adriana Lisboa's
2007 novel, Hut of Fallen Persimmons (Rakushisha in the original Portuguese), adeptly
unites the nuances of the travel experience as it applies not only to the narrators,
characters, and authors of the preceding works, but also as it applies to each of our own
individual experiences as we venture through life, collecting the acquaintances,
circumstances, and events that ultimately come together through the narratives of who
we choose to be. In each of the three authors discussed in this work, Miguel Sousa
Tavares, Bernardo Carvalho, and José Eduardo Agualusa, we find a multiplicity of
historical and cultural perspectives that are bound together in the act of creating
individual characters and personas. However, though they are bound by a common
language and a common colonial ancestry, as either perpetrators of that colonialism or
products of it, they also point to the different alternatives that stem from the inclusion
of the traveled past as a tool for transformation or a resignation to stagnation and
despair.
Throughout the works of these authors we find the different levels of
involvement with the character and narrators' conscious self-construction through
189
narrative as elucidated by Paul Ricoeur. As they travel from one space to another, their
character traits change with their perceptions of themselves and their place in the
world. However, the way these changes take place and each individual character's
degree of involvement in the manifestation of these changes determines the character's
adaptability to situations that are outside of their customary norm. This is expressed in
the first-person narratives that demonstrate each of the characters' internal frames of
mind, and their capacity to incorporate the new experiences, attitudes, and stimuli that
come into their repertoire through engaging with the Other. While the two characters
Luís Bernardo and Buell Quain adhere, seemingly unconsciously, to the cultural norms
which make up the foundations for their identity and ultimately drive them beyond
despair to suicide, other characters such as Plácido Domingo, and the unnamed
narrators of "Plácido Domingo contempla o rio em Corumbá," and Nove noites, utilize
their travel experiences and the stories they encounter as a means to see beyond the
scripted roles they are given in their nations and cultures of origin. With this capacity to
observe and integrate alternate ways of being that are evidenced in the experiencing of
other cultures, they overcome obstacles of self-identification that relate to rigidly
defined conceptions of nationality, gender, paternalism, and destiny.
Within the novels themselves, the characters that find their tragic ends in suicide
are also the characters that are representative of an antiquated understanding of self
and Other. In Miguel Sousa Tavares's Luís Bernardo the adherence to a scripted notion
of the conquering urbanite dandy is called into question in a manner that he cannot
escape. The character traits upon which he is constructed prove to be insufficient in his
190
experiences with the workers and landowners of São Tomé e Príncipe. Moreover, his
incapacity to maintain and dominate his relationship with Anne causes a further
breakdown in his stylized conception of self, which becomes inviable and leads to the
despair that ends in his impulsive suicide.
Bernardo Carvalho's Buell Quain meets a similar end, albeit for slightly different
reasons. He scoures the world in search of a place where he can be a viable character,
one that is freed of the stigmas of wealth and privilege that bind him to his identification
with a specific social class, behavior, and sexual orientation. However, his search proves
to be in vain because the identity he is attempting to flee is embedded within him. Buell
Quain ultimately commits suicide because he cannot escape who he is and he cannot
reconcile his identity with who he believes he is expected to be.
Again, both Buell Quain and Luís Bernardo are perceived from the outside, they
are Others in that they do not find ways to adapt to the circumstances and places into
which they travel. At the same time, they are counterpoints to the unnamed narrators
of José Eduardo Agualusa and of Bernardo Carvalho because they are points of
departure for the self-analysis and understanding of these narrators. In comparing the
stories of Buell Quain and Luís Bernardo Valença with these other, deeply introspective,
narrators it is possible to see how a conscious awareness of self and otherhood creates
the opportunity for adaptation and transformation. The narrator of Nove Noites and
Um Estranho em Goa's Plácido Domingo understand themselves and those they engage
with through the use of the narrative itself, which provides them with the creative
191
capacity to adapt their own narrated identities in ways that empower them and assist in
their conscious engagement with exotic and foreign spaces.
Consequently, it is important to acknowledge that the narratives for each of the
authors develop in a manner that reflects their own national and cultural heritage, from
Sousa Tavares's attachment to literary tradition of the nineteenth century, to Bernardo
Carvalho's narrative reappropriation of the historical life of Buell Quain, to the
autonomy with which Agualusa's characters reinvent themselves in different parts of
the world. While these three authors are not expected to represent the sum total of
literary production in their respective countries, they do demonstrate characteristics
that underlie both literary and cultural production in Angola, Brazil, and Portugal. While
their journalistic travel narratives are for the most part, except perhaps in the case of
Agualusa, focused primarily on the observations of the places to which they travel, we
find that their perspectives reflect the cultural preoccupations and modes of storytelling
of their native countries. In this sense, we find the work of Miguel Sousa Tavares
demonstrating a strong emphasis on the historical image of Portugal and its
involvement in the African ex-colonies. In Bernardo Carvalho we find a narrator and
characters who are more concerned with finding the meaning of the self and selfidentity through the inward journeys that attempt to incorporate elements of external
influence with indigenous heritage. With Agualusa, we find a greater degree of
subjective freedom which employs all elements of narrative in order to tie together a
cohesive story, without regard to intellectual or cultural boundaries and with a liquid
192
fluidity that mirrors a cultural identity that is perpetually moving in the modern
globalized world.
These authors and the travelers through which they tell their stories
demonstrate ways of engaging the self and the Other and, furthermore, the self as
Other, in order to gain greater understanding of one's place in the world, but, more
importantly, one's place within the self in a process that echoes the theories of Paul
Ricoeur. Through the conceptual laboratory of their literature they provide points of
comparison through which we may become aware of the antiquated frameworks of
thinking that lead to stagnation, despair, and self-destruction; while at the same time
providing examples of the capacity for the self to evolve, transform, and perservere
beyond the self-limiting horizon.
As their stories come to a close the reader is reminded of those two elements
that are such an important aspect of Lusophone travel narratives, saudade as the
character looks back to a mythified past in hopes of regaining a home that was once
lost, and the restlessness of desassossego that propels the impulse to travel to new
horizons. Furthermore, these narratives not only demonstrate the way that the past is
woven into the present self-narrative, but also how that past carries within it the
potential to be seen through various prisms, ultimatlely existing at the disgression of the
teller of the story, and in this sense can serve as a form of grounding one's identity while
at the same time functioning as a catalyst for transformation beyond the scripted
landscapes of memory and social and cultural past.
193
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