Pedro Eiras’s Cartas reencontradas in the contemporary portuguese (historical?) Novel

Abstract

The paper aims to read and insert Pedro Eiras’s Cartas reencontradas de Fernando Pessoa a Mário de Sá-Carneiro within the actual Portuguese novel scene. The book shows some conection to the expanding interest in the country on historical retrospect, in this case, the second decade of the twentieth century, time of intense epistolary dialog between Pessoa and Sá-Carneiro, through literature. To some extent, that’s a post-modern artistic tendency. On the other hand, though, we also notice conflicts with such scene, which shall be adressed. The novel purposes to create Pessoa’s lost letters to his friend, Mário de Sá-Carneiro, after a brief story narrating how a character named Pedro Eiras found them. First, we’ll discuss such narrative and it’s discursive aesthetics, based on Fiorin’s (2006) concept of “interdiscurso” and theoretical positions on the novel gender, from various authors. Following, after revisiting the historical period at stake (the beginnings of the twentieth century in Portugal), we’ll discuss some of the strategies used by the author to recreate Pessoa’s letter writing.