O eu e o mundo : a prosa introspectiva e o fator social em O amanuense Belmiro

Abstract

This work analyses how the writer Cyro dos Anjos, in his novel O amanuense Belmiro, reconcile, through its narrative strategies, the construction of the protagonist and narrator of the plot – his introspectives and psychological aspects – with the social issues. The novel, published in 1937, brings forward the intimate confessions on a diary belonging to a lyrical bureaucrat named Belmiro Borba. During this course it is possible to aprehend the fundamental psychological aspects to the character construction, as well as the way how social factors are broached through the novel’s structural elements. To conduct to the analysis, at first, the critical position concerning to the writer figure is approached as stated by Candido (1989), Bosi (2006), Coutinho (2004), Lafetá (2000) and Bueno (2015), who place Cyro dos Anjos’ piece of work on an equidistant and ambivalent position in 1930’s context, amongst intimist and social novels. Hereupon, the narrative strategies which enable this comprehension are inquired via an analysis of space and time in the narrative. To investigate the space notion, contributions from DaMatta (1997), Freyre (2004), Holanda (2014), Candido (2006), Bachelard (1978) and Lins (1976) were valuable to illustrate how the arrangement of spaces, in particular the house, the street and the city presents a social meaning, in addition to fuse with the main character introspective personality. Concerning to the approach to time, theoretical studies by Pouillon (1974), Mendilow (1972), Ricoeur (2012), Auerbach (2002), Moisés (2006), Bergson (1999) and Bosi (2016) were granted in order to demonstrate how the plot configuration, the conflicts between past and present, everyday life and memory, chronological time and psychological time are consonant to both the character Belmiro Borba’s social experience in the 1930 decade – his bureaucratic carrer, his witness to the political crises – and the protagonist’s intimate aspects, such as loneliness, timidity, evasiviness and his perception of time as a disjunctive force. Throughout this trajectory it will be possible to elucidate in the novel construction the necessary relation between the man’s intimate conflicts and the social aspects.