Narrativa e memória na Amazônia de Dalcídio Jurandir

Abstract

Based on the cultural and linguistic concept of lusography, by Jean-Michel Massa, who reiterates the diversity of statements in a single - though diversified - Portuguese language, and of the ideas of personal memory and historical memory of the Amazon region, this study intends to unveil , through the analysis of the novels Belém do Grão-Pará (1960) and Passage of the Innocents (1936), both by Dalcídio Jurandir, Pará society of the first half of the twentieth century, since the author has witnessed this world and built in his novels an interpretation of his testimonial experience, seen from the banks, the peripheries, with his feet firmly on the ground. In order to demonstrate this concern of the author in portraying minorities, we focus on the analysis of the character "Mother Ciana" of "Belém do Grão-Pará", which, although apparently secondary to the plot, constitutes a perfect ethno-cultural allegory of the Amazon - among native Amerindians and black sons of the African diaspora in northern Brazil. Dalcidio, an ethnographer, has as main perspective that of novelist, although it also calls attention to his journalistic practice, which brilliantly makes pair with the other, the creator of novels. In this study, we emphasize that the author uses, in addition to his personal memory, the historical memory of the Amazon region based on research and testimonies of friends and relatives, facts and people who lived in Belém in the first half of the twentieth century, transforming their novels in real "places of memory," entangled in the collective memory of Amazonian subjects, prioritizing the poorest, who win the reader in the same form of identification and meanings. Dalcidius perceived history as a field of struggle and his committed narrative with the exploited majority demonstrates this by writing a political novel capable of contributing to the transformation of the world.