O Delfim: the prodigious agony of a myth

Abstract

O Delfim by José Cardoso Pires showcases the arduous task of writing under censorship. The strategies employed operate, at the level of enunciation, through what Maria Lucia Lepeki aptly defined in her masterful 1977 essay as the "clandestinisation of the narrated," wherein the narrative shifts focus to obscure the germ of the revolutionary process—namely, the takeover of the Lagoa by the people of Gafeira and the fall of the Palma Bravo regime—by means of an apparent detective novel structure that ultimately fails to fulfil its supposed objectives. However, beyond the agony of this myth of power, the novel also intuits the necessity of the agony of another myth, this time a structural one, now linked to the enunciative process itself. It is as if José Cardoso Pires, positioned at the crossroads between the neorealist tradition and the emergence of the nouveau roman, sensed the need to move against the myth of the writer as a guide for the reader, ensuring they do not lose their way so as to become, supposedly, an effective agent of revolution. O Delfim, on the contrary, challenges the reader, fragments the discourse, prevents the text from offering itself openly to interpretation, multiplies perspectives, and ultimately demands an “alert eye” in the face of the novel’s crisis. Without the slightest trace of pedagogy, yet without renouncing History.