Writing, memory and death in the novel sôbolos rios

Abstract

The novel Sôbolos rios que vão (Over the rivers that flow), by António Lobo Antunes, seems to be a memorialistic text built like a diary. Nevertheless, the writing is so fragmented, disperse and hesitating that the images, the facts, the characters and the voices intermingle, as if they were seeking something they never find, configuring thus a textual passage from the di­ary to the novelistic dispersion. Lobo Antunes’ writing, therefore, turns out to be true poetic language, presided over by two great images: death and water. These two prevailing images are the subject of this paper, which discusses its relations with the indeterminacy of the portuguese novelist’s writing. So we have Sôbolos rios que vão, a diary that is not a diary, a vacil­lating and irresolute text like the anonimous narrative voice that seems to lead it, mixed to other voices and persons, like the waters that flow, bathing the paper in which it is written.