Sob o signo da tradição e da modernidade: O Desterro de Humberto Saraiva e Macau e o multifacetado mundo das letras de Aurélio Pinheiro

Abstract

This research presents a study about the literary production of the writer Aurélio Pinheiro, situated in the context of the 1930s, of the twentieth century, having as object of literary investigation the novels O Desterro de Humberto Saraiva (1926) and Macau (1934). The main objective of the work was to analyze, considering the tensions between tradition and modernity that integrate the author's fiction, the representation of melancholy and its consequences in the constitution of the protagonists in the face of the experiences of loss, observing, even, the relations of approximations and singularity established. To this end, the examination of the protagonist characters took place in the light of the concept of problematic hero, in Lukács (2009), and of failed subject, in Mário de Andrade (2002) and Luís Bueno (2006), understanding, therefore, the relationship of conflict between the "I" and life in society, in addition to the analysis of melancholy in these same characters. We take as main references: Walter Benjamin (1985; 1989), Kampff Lages (2007), Costa Lima (2017) and Sigmund Freud (1978; 2010). The methodological choices were based on the guidelines of Antonio Candido (1976, 1987, 2012), regarding the study between text and context and literature and society, in order to establish possible connections in the face of the sociological and psychological elements present in the analyzed narratives. This means that the dialectical method of the work, in addition to being bibliographical (due to the need to offer an overview of the intellectual production of Aurélio Pinheiro), was also of an investigative-reflective and interpretive nature, considering the sociopolitical configuration of Brazil in the first decades of the twentieth century, since we consider the categories of analysis focused on the social and the interiority of the subject (melancholy). Thus, we carried out an investigation into the intellectual production of Aurélio Pinheiro, which contemplates several themes, offering a panoramic view of the most varied genres worked by the author. Initially, we brought a contextualization regarding Modernism and Regionalism in Brazilian literature, as well as a study regarding the fictional production that comprises the state of Rio Grande do Norte, referring to the first decades of the twentieth century. Then, we exposed the trajectory of the intellectual activity of Aurelio Pinheiro, through biographical and bibliographical researches, highlighting his relationship with the Amazonian scenario, in addition to the presence of scientific knowledge in his fiction. The analysis of the novels allowed us to verify that the various thematic strands that emerge in the writing of Aurélio Pinheiro reinforce the humanist writer who was constantly integrated into the space and the problems inscribed throughout his work. His protagonists live conflicting experiences and become subjects of decadent and melancholic interiority as a result of trajectories marked by the losses they face throughout their journeys. In O Desterro de Humberto Saraiva, the protagonist Humberto Saraiva is unable to react to a conservative context and decides to distance himself from social life. In Macau, Aluísio Rodrigues faces family failure as a result of the processes of modernization, but somehow manages to adapt to the context of transformations. The analyses lead us to reflect on themes of human existence, power, passions, vileness, among others that Aurélio Pinheiro's writing contemplates.