AMADEO NA MIRA DE UM NARRADOR DESAPAIXONADO

Abstract

This article aims to tackle the tension between the author, initially supposed to develop an historical biography and the biographed character, and the way it turns into a brilliant, multi-voiced act of creation. Among these voices, one can hear the murmurs of a disheartened, even resented narrator towards the historical character in his hands.

This explains that Mário Cláudio projects almost involuntarily Amadeo de Souza Cardoso towards a fictional panorama, one where mistrust and subjectivity are refi ned into a disgruntled, anger ridden view, that goes beyond the silent pact of one who merely puts together facts and aligns dates.

In this sense, one proposes to look into the various aspects of the narrator, which either observes Amadeo or hides behind the masks of Álvaro and Frederico. One will conclude that there is a multimode insight in Trilogia da Mão – one of contempt, tenderness and admiration – that hits the Manhufe painter with no mercy, whispering into his ear accusations of hubris and arrogance. How, then, does the character’s manifestation in the strained relationship with its narrators? One believes to be possible to answer this question starting with the biography’s scorn and by reconfigurating the biographer/biographee relational status, as well as by rethinking the narrator’s place in Amadeo.