Hermilo Borba Filho: escrita do corpo, performance da escrita e resistência em um cavalheiro da segunda decadência

Abstract

The study object of this paper is the tetralogy entitled Um Cavalheiro da Segunda Decadência, by Hermilo Borba Filho, the writer from Pernambuco, Brazil. The main purpose of this study is to expose this project focusing on this writer’s literary creation features. This project includes four volumes of a first-person narrative written by someone who craves a big and urgent assignment, which is to register his life testimony. However, the narrator does not just register past events, but permeates fiction and reality by elaborating a plot that intertwines several voices. Therefore, considering such a need to turn these lived experiences into narrated events, the main concern here is to understand the ways chosen by this writer in order to handle his project. First, this paper approaches a possible ‘writing performance’ suggested by the author at the end of his tetralogy, when readers realize that the narrator’s big project is already in their hands, making them believe that the author shared the writing process with them. This study also approaches the way the narrator experiments the events, that is, more than a narrative voice, Borba puts his own body in the center of the event and he explores pains and pleasures as a way to attest the lived experiences, putting his body in evidence throughout the tetralogy, what makes it possible to think that the narrated events were already registered in his flesh. However, the body protagonism shares space with the narrator’s main concern, which is to make his writings be understood by readers. In other words, Borba Filho defends art popularization and the idea that a text means nothing if its language is not accessible to readers, and he clearly manifests his intention to renew the Brazilian novel. Finally, it is possible to claim that Borba Filho’s big project is a literary work committed to ethics and human beings, and it goes beyond the literary theory expectations. Hence, considering this tetralogy, it is necessary to think of the interplay among literature, ethics and politics in Borba Filho’s literary project.