"O Retratista de miragens" e sua escrita pela ficção: ensaios de miragens áridas nas paisagens e presenças do Sertão

Abstract

Through the relationship between History, literature and the sertões, this work investigates how the fictional writing of Ariano Suassuna, a writer from Paraíba, conceives an arid, sensitive and melancholic sertão, in the space of the caatinga in his masterpiece, the literary source O Romance da Pedra do Reino e o Príncipe do Sangue do Vai-e-Volta (1971). To do this, the author makes use of literary visuality, that is, he analyzes how the ways of seeing, of constructing landscapes and mirages, are converted into states of presence and structures that inhabit an experience of this region. An experience of pain, suffering and death, but also of resistance and combat, which refuses to forget eternity. Methodologically, at first, it articulates epistemological questions that support the use of sensitive subjectivity in the production of history writing. To this end, this study reflects on the “Text-Research”, proposed by Ivan Jablonka, with reflections made by professor Durval Muniz de Albuquerque Júnior. Next, the reader is situated and prepared to enter the universe – organized by pamphlets and elements of a musical piece – of A Pedra do Reino. Then, the reader moves on to a second moment through metaphors – of the window and the door. Both, respectively conceived and articulated by Jacques Rancière and Jean-Marc Besse, allow us to explore how fruitful it is to use the most diverse concepts of landscape to think about a sertão permeated by blood and revenge, without forgetting the subtlety of a sorrowful look and the wound-driven taste of that world. After that, finally, the reader moves on to the third moment: to think, based on a work, a literary source, about new paths regarding the feeling and experience of the sertão today. To this end, the reader will follow two paths proposed by Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht: that of the philosophy of “Production of Presence” and that of the concept of “Stimmung”. Furthermore, this research concludes, based on these moments of historical reasoning, that historical-literary fiction, having as a unifying element the arid sertão of Pedra do Reino, promotes sensitive openings of thought, not only aimed at for an aesthetic experience, but also an alternative way of making history in a way that captivates and makes life concrete.