A aventura do estranhamento em Palomar, de Ítalo Calvino

Abstract

This study aims to analyze the relations between man and space in the city present in the novel Palomar (1983), the last fictional work by the Italian writer Italo Calvino (1923-1985), from the perspective of the effect of making strange, trying to investigate, as well, how the author uses concepts and aspects of the adventure novel in a modern novel. Through Mr. Palomar's explorations, we have the confrontation between the individual and the metropolis, which, in the apparent banality of their daily life, provides exotic images that depend on different interpretations of what seems already established. In addition, we have the impetus for the clearing, which leads us to think of the work as an adventurous elaboration. In this sense, from an immanentist analysis, we will observe how the particular perception of the character Mr. Palomar walks toward a universal sense from the strangeness, with the creation of a second look on what is already known; he deautomates the banal meaning of objects, beings and spaces, redefining them. For this, observation and description are key points of the narrative, in the Calvinian work of discussing language through the creation of a singular poetics. The theoretical perspectives that permeate our study are, mainly, the essay work of Calvino (1990, 2007, 2009, 2010, 2015) - published in newspapers and conference results - especially with regard to language, the concept of adventure discussed by the author, the displacement and the perception of the foreigner; the approaches of estrangement made by Chklovsky (1917) and Friedrich (1978); and thinking about the city from the conceptions of Baudelaire (2006) and Certeau (1998). As a result, we come to the conclusion that Palomar is a significant work for Calvin's fictionist and essayist. Both the thought about the adventure novel and the city as the fundamental proposal of his work are present in his essays and become material for form and content of his literary writing. Thus, Palomar ends the production of the author by bringing together in a modern character, in the most forceful and expressive way, themes such as the foreigner, the displacement, the city and the sensation of of making strange (of reader and characters), always thought and discussed by Calvino.