The dust and the oyster: Augustina Luis biographer / O cisco e a ostra : Augustina Bessa-Luis biogrofa

AUTOR(ES)
DATA DE PUBLICAÇÃO

2000

RESUMO

The present work analyzes the five biographies written by the Portuguese novelist Agustina Bessa-Luís, namely: Santo António (1973), Florbela Espanca - a vida e a obra (1979), Sebastião José (1981), Longos dias têm cem anos - presença de Vieira da Silva (1982) and Martha Telles - o castelo que irás e não voltarás (1986). The interest in the biographical trace manifested in O Susto (1958), an à ele! novel whose characters are inspired on the poets Teixeira Soares and Fernando Pessoa, becomes more evident after the publication of Santo António. This book stands as the landmark of a new phase in the Author s life characterized by the dominance of historical research in order to account for a more distant past, not reached by memory, either in novels - à elef or not - or in essays. The presence of the biographical trace in this production, apart from the biographies themselves, justifies the present research as a step toward the identification of the characterizing marks of this non-fictional discourse. The present work is organized in three parts. The first consists of a comprehensive study of the Author s work, including her essays, followed by a state of the art research focusing on the biographical discourse aiming at establishing a reading protocol for those biographies. The second part deals with the five above-mentioned texts in chronological order according to their date of publication, analyzing the creative process of biographies, which present themselves in different formats and approaches, nonetheless sharing some marks among which we can point out: a) dissatisfaction with the available production about the biographee, thus evidencing a gap that will be filled in by the writing of the biography in case; b) disregard for a linear chronological order of the narrative, in which the same fact is evoked in different moments of the narrated life and of the narration, leaving the text open to different interpretations of actions or facts that happened in the biographee s life; c) preference for documents written by the biographee such as letters, notes, poems, sermons, speeches, that present themselves as genuine ways of expressing the being. More important, however, is that the citation of this discourse of the Other allows for the creation of the Agustinian text, so much so that that production becomes an indiscerptible part of the Author s discourse. The result offered for reading reveals the interest raised by the biographee, whose life presents itself as an enigma to be solved, or as a riddle to be demonstrated by the biographer who performs the role of a detective, looking for clues that lead to the completion of a jigsaw puzz1e. The picture formed by the reunited pieces, however, is changeable, not prevailing any closed conclusion, in such a way that the biographee is not presented to the reader as mythicized with complacency or radicalism: it is their complex human condition that is made known. Thus, weaknesses, vices, flaws are not left out and are presented side by side with the achievements that turned the person into a biographee. In this sense, certain events - or the lack of them - are identified by the Author as the proof of existence of these individuaIs or as the moment in which their plastic force is publicly recognized. The third part is the conclusion. The creative process of biography writing is reaffirmed as different from the fictional creation and we conclude that, if the fictional work of Agustina Bessa-Luís is recognized by the critics as fictionist, the same does not happen with her essay-type works in general and her biographic-type works in particular. Nevertheless, this does not invalidate the recognition of her work as a biographer for, out ofthe five biographies, the one of Santo António is a product of her own wish, whereas the others had alI been ordered

ASSUNTO(S)

portuguese literature augustina biography (as literary form) biografia (como forma literaria) 1922 literatura portuguesa bessa-luis

ACESSO AO ARTIGO

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