Entre a quentura das lembranças e o brilho das malacachetas: as configurações neorregionais no romance Rastejo

Abstract

This paper consists in the critical reading of the novel Rastejo (2017), by the norterio-grandense writer Humberto Hermenegildo de Araújo. We anchor ourselves, methodologically, in the integrative sociological critique of Antonio Candido (2002; 2005; 2010), through which the understanding about how the work of the Potiguar artist is inscribed in the contemporary Brazilian cultural panorama, updating the regionalist tradition precedent from the perspective of Neoregionalism (BRITO, 2017). As a work plan, the mentioned theme was used, understood, genetically, as a universal human disposition (LEITE, 1978; CHIAPPINI, 1995; 1997), configured through a sentimental link between the subject and the native space. To support the discussion, mainly the studies of Candido (2002a; 2017a; 2017c; 2017d) are taken, from which the neo-regional nature of the novel by the potiguar writer is conceived, in the form of cultural elements from the past that resurface updated, such as residues (WILLIAMS, 1979; 2011) and traces (BENJAMIN, 2007). By this logic, the representation of the sertanejo man is analyzed as a remnant of a previous rural culture, when he begins to be impacted by the daily experience of the urban space, of an industrial and capitalist modernity. By this logic, the representation of the sertanejo man is analyzed as a remnant of a previous rural culture, when he begins to be impacted by the daily experience of the urban space, of an industrial and capitalist modernity, evaluating such tension, to the in the light of a critical historiography of the novel genre (BAKHTIN, 2003; 2014a), in the context of formatting contemporary fiction. Under these conditions, the analysis of the protagonist of Rastejo arises, who, as a narrator, transfigures the various psychological nuances of a hero who diverges from the classic format (LUKÁCS, 2009; LIMA, 2017; LEITE, 1978; ANDRADE, 2002; GINZBURG, 2012b; LAFETÁ, 1992), by problematizing the tensions of life in the big city in contrast to previous rural experiences, implying the emergence of a melancholic condition, as an emotional response to the contradictions of modernity. At the character's constitutive level, it results in the first-person narration technique, which places remembrance as a necessary device to access the past (HALBWACHS, 2003; BOSI, 2003; CANDAU, 2019), and the alterity relations produced throughout the life of the central character, especially when observing the male and female representation models, in the context of the sertaneja and urban cultures transfigured in the work. It is understood, therefore, that Pedro da Costa represents, in the neo-regional transfiguration, the remaining subject of the sertão, who experiences social and emotional tension, in the face of the new ways of life determined by urban modernity.