novel story - Evil in the night - a novel by Erico Verissimo

Addition, the rotten world! (The outer city) John Updike, Endpoint and Other Poems, 2009
Erico Verissimo, who died in 1975 at the age of sixty-nine wrote a novel curiosity very original in the fifties and the history of the commands some attention, if only, because it is so different from other critical writing of the period. The novel is published in issue Noite (Night), a fascinating side of Turner in 1954. In 1956, history has translated into English by LL Barrett and published by Macmillan in New York.
Much of the Brazilian literature in the three decades 1930-1960 happened, but we can assume that the contemporary Verissimo then mainly on rural issues. Of course, Verissimo always a bit of them in the climate and the character of his novels. This is because works Verissimo since the beginning of his career to explore a different way: the story Urban. In parallel, we must understand that his fiction is not stagnant. Verissimo, we should keep in mind was a developer - a writer in progress, testing to the end. Furthermore, most cosmopolitan than their contemporary Verissimo has used his personal experience of life to leave novels fascinating phase of his literary past.
While resting after the publication of the second part of his saga O Tempo eo Vento (Time and wind) in 1951, Erico Verissimo has completed the draft of his novel Noite. The interesting thing about this novel is the extent to which some readers and critics it wrong, "like a fairy tale told simply tugs and whores. The story is deeper. Part of the problem is that night, a story about the crazy life in modern cities, scenes and characters of audacity was unusual, open also scenes of sexuality and cynicism, which was unusual for the reader Verissimo time and place. The night will speak of an unspeakable tragedy of the people, in which ordinary people unwittingly into solitude their lives are caught - characters that are as tragic as comic figures to be true. In a sense, is the theme of dehumanization: This is not to see or hear how each of us human. Although it is a story about solitude, there are a lot of humor in the night.
Sure, many people wrote for Erico Verissimo, as it were, a grotesque romance. We often hear that the night is a strange interregnum in the work of Verissimo. But today's debate, this simplistic view has rejected. To be sure, this portrait has ignored at least three things. First, these allegorical tale of the dark night of the soul, not in relation to the other works of Verissimo inappropriate. This is especially true when you consider that his novels Caminhos Cruzados (Crossroads, Macmillan, 1943) and Musica ao Longe, for example, express the same feeling of "lost world". Second, how Bordini (2006) notes, there Fantoche (dolls) (1932), Verissimo first collection of short stories, the macabre side of life fascinates him. Certainly, in the night, Verissimo puts aside the romantic language of his earlier novels. For the night is not primarily addressed to his large audience. Thirdly, with the night-cycle of six novels of Porto Alegre has been completed. According to Loureiro Chaves night of the best Roman Verissimo realistic critic is also refers to the night "socialist realism" of the fiction Verissimo, written between 1933 and 1943.
With two metaphors eloquently and effectively, is the night of the loneliness of modern man. It is the city as a kind of infernal machine that the anti-hero, just as producing "A known unknown", to feel like prey. The city is alive and life is meaningless unindividuated man. The unknown should work to find stable ground, but the city and its emissaries not ("The city resembles a living being."). Granted, in the face of modern man, the man without qualities (Musil) misses the psychological unity, as occur with the characters of Kafka, Woolf and Joyce. The other device is used by symbolic Verissimo that is in the night time, without hope ("My God - he has - this night will end not ..."). The images of the textual representation illustrates the desperate search for his endless anti-hero of authenticity.
In this context it is important to see that everything Stegagno Picchio law firm, the article by Thomas Mann Verissimo fiction, it argues that: "(...) la sua Problematic al di Resta qua ogni Tues che alla sua Invenzione Originally abbia triangolo Joyce Kafka, Proust. "To Picchio, remains problematic Verissimo is on the inventions of the triad Joyce Kafka, Proust." Despite the fact that their innovations expressive monopolize our opinion, we must go beyond the use of language and style. We must know that their problems are similar. No doubt different from the reading of the Verissimo Chaves and others who find Verissimo make a company that belongs to the tradition of bourgeois literature represent novel by Kafka, Mann and Musil.
Let us now turn briefly to the differences between our author and his colleagues. It is indeed true that Verissimo with the economic and class conflict on the remnants of capitalism around sharp increase preferred. But while it is safe, we must not forget that the night was the focus shifted to the psychological analysis. Similarly, Verissimo wrote a novel, is available exclusively in the symbolic psychological analysis. But even if the material of history with those of his colleagues, the tone and the treatment is intertwined are slightly different.
We need to understand what Erico Verissimo react against in the years after World War II. multiplied for the post-war stories of confusion and conflict in Europe. Now press the stories of fear and the fragile hope of a generation. City Administration has been a new flexibility of the structure, and soon the authors have begun to address the barriers between author and characters. In addition, intensify the spontaneity of the personal reaction, the relationship between feeling and expression. In fact, Verissimo lamented the emptiness of life after the war and night exactly that change in time. to suffer in a world of ideological divisions and hostilities have, the literature is to report changes, and the reader must understand the importance of these signals.
The most interesting stories are those in which we can identify with the main character in the story - the hero or anti-hero. Of course, it is not difficult to put ourselves in the place of the unknown, the anti-hero of the night. But it should be noted that his Verissimo is not anti-hero, a rebel, like modern man Camus. Certainly, it seems closer to the characters of Sartre's existentialism trilogy The Roads to Freedom (1945-1949). In fact, we can observe that the characters suffer as Verissimo Amaro, Vasco, Eugenio and so similar from unknown indecision Mathieu Delarue, among other characters in Sartre.
Following the idea that philosophical problems in the work of Verissimo night could be solved his first explicit homage to the French existentialist ideas. It is indeed a point that deserves further investigation. In any case, we can in the night some of the characteristics of the existentialist literature, such as finding evidence of a culture in crisis, the hero or anti-hero in a situation, "limit", the search for an authentic life and the consciousness of freedom . In other respects, however, the novel seems, in terms of mood and atmosphere in the popular tradition of the detective novel. Without doubt, it reminds us a novel of the postwar era, when George Burns Night always done so (1948). Both are difficult, disturbing, and the alienation of value as a central element of their characters. It is the gradual accumulation of the danger that the shadow of the inability of these stories is getting closer.
Night takes the reader into a world in which the main character oppressive amnesia, the unknown, searching for his identity. Because it is the story of the unknown's, the desperate dirty researcher's own identity and how the terrible night of dangerous people he had met in a pub near the dock: the teacher with his cynical and nihilistic view of life, and the dwarf, a psychopathic artist who strangely drawn towards the Master, the pimp cynical. His companions managed the unknown, that is a killer to convince them. Zilberman sees the main character as a kind of "Pinocchio" from the man because he was obviously in the hands of his companion, as the character of the famous Collodi was lost. The unknown escapes by the creatures caught so close to dawn, he knows the redhead, the red-haired prostitute. In addition to the anti-hero, the only authentic image of man seems in history. After she falls, he finally begins to remember the events of the day: his wife was leaving ("When she came back, oh my God, if she came back, I promise that everything will change now.").
Erico Verissimo characters in the night in our memories stay forever: they remain to haunt us today.
References
Bordini Maria da Gloria .. 2006th Por Trás do incident. In: Veríssimo, Erico. Incidente em Antares. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras. Chaves, Flavio Loureiro. A Narrativa da Solidão. In: Verissimo, Erico. 1987th Noite. Rio de Janeiro, Globo. Picchio, Luciana Stegagno. Storia della Letteratura Brasiliana. Torino, Einaudi, 1997. Zilberman, Regina. 1985th Gaucha Literatura. Porto Alegre, L & PM.