Beyond Rhetoric in Vanitas, 51 Avenue D’Iéna by Almeida Faria

Abstract

The short story Vanitas, 51 avenue d’ Iéna, published in 2007 by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, inspired Paula Rego’s masterful triptych “Vanitas”. Reproducing the voice of Edgar Poe through the painter Mário Botas, Almeida Faria creates an encounter with the ghost of the opulent collector, whose aesthetic memories fill in the conversation between the two interlocutors. Is this a rhetorical game denouncing the illusion linked to any literary composition, starting with the text itself, or, on the contrary, a profession of faith in the eternity of the works of art, even the literary ones? This relationship between literature and painting is one of the keys to understanding Almeida Faria’s work, but it is always a strained and ambiguous relationship, marked by a certain – ironic? – subordination of the former to the latter. Literature, the art of words, cannot, in its necessary discursivity, rival the intuitive instantaneity of the aesthetic enjoyment that the paintings offer. But doesn’t the writer ultimately remain the master of the game?