Dyonélio Machado : perspectivas para o estudo de sua vida e obra

Abstract

The present Master’s thesis seeks to develop a reflection on the figure of Brazilian writer Dyonélio Machado, through an approach with thinkers from the most diverse fields of human sciences. The horizon of interpretation is provided by Paul Ricoeur, who in his Memory, History, Forgetting establishes the distinction between the fields of individual memory, collective memory and historiography, arbitrated by a hermeneutics of the human condition. It is within this framework that the conception of the archive as a trail emerges, which first presents itself as a connector between the private time of self-creation and the public time of everyday life. The concept of a trail also serves as recognition not only of the evidence, but also of the fragmentation, the voids and the unsaid in the archive. With this perspective in mind, we proceed to a reconstruction of Dyonélio Machado’s trajectory. His connection with the literary institution, with the politics of his time, and with the medical community is established. In the search for an expansion of what is the collective memory about him, we also indicate new documentary discoveries, coming from the magazine archive of the National Library in Rio de Janeiro. We then proceed to the identification of what underlies our historiographic analysis, presenting ironic aspects in interviews, essays and literature. Then, we indicate the space where we consider it appropriate to recognize the secret side of his work, in the private sphere. It is there that the writer is concerned with enhancing and expanding the set of his production, addressing it to posterity. In this way, we rescued its still open horizon, from a project that was possibly built for the future. Once this horizon is established, it is possible to make certain criticisms of interpretations that exaggerate what can be objectified by the tracks. The main one, which emerges from a very early stage in criticism, is biographism. In this approach, we have an interpretive remnant of certain figures from the social space who were antagonistic to his project, who perpetuated in the collective memory the analogy between life and work. This creates possible reflexes, like another kind of interpretive exaggeration, one that imagines an intricate psychoanalysis of the author. From this set of analyses from his archive, we began to define three representations about Dyonélio Machado, which could foster a more adequate and faithful remembrance of his tracks. It is in a democratic horizon, then, that we realize how his work leaves an immense legacy of reflection on the forgetfulness of history, and a testimony about his own context.