Anguish and nostalgia docks: Brazil in Miguel Torga’s autobiographical writing

Abstract

Miguel Torga (1907 – 1995) published six volumes of memories and sixteen diaries. Among his remembrances, it is highlighted the period he lived in Brazil (1919 – 1923), on his uncle’s farm, in the countryside of Minas Gerais. The forced exile in Brazilian lands left permanent marks in his life and it is recovered in three books: A criação do mundo: os dois primeiros dias (1937), Diário VII (1956) and A Criação do mundo: o sexto dia (1981). In face of singularities and confrontations noticed in these two first narratives, we initially investigate the singular modes of the past recovery in different textualities: memories and diary. Starting from this modulation, the reunion of past self with present self allow series of reflections that point, to the different perceptions and writings of the same situation and to human- -nature relationships. In the analyses, we can notice a clear intention of a self-witnesses that search in rationalization of the experience the only way to recover and express it. However, in many fragments, specifically of diary writings, the self weakens and allow the insertion of a certain emotionality, that find in the temporary fear of living the possibility to come out. Thus, to subsidize the investigative path of this article, it was necessary support of theoretical contributions about autobiographical writings, specially from George Gusdorf, Paul Ricoeur, Clara Rocha and Eugénia Vilela; and ‘existentialist’ analysis of nature through Humanist Geography proposed by Yi-Fu Tuan, among other researches.