Figurations of despair in Joel Silveira’s fiction

Abstract

The aim is to present the aesthetic-political inscriptions of the novel Desespero (1936) by Joel Silveira (1918-2007). The scope of the article deals with Silveira's figurations when thinking about the countryman's place in the face of the threats of drought and misfortune, which fostered a journey of mortal despair. The author's literary affiliation is linked to the themes of the 1930 Social Romance. Hence, the Sergipe author's intellectual trajectory began in the literary construction of the rural worker Gaudêncio, owner of a rural tobacco plantation property in the interior of Sergipe. Thus, the young writer's intellectual concerns were to establish a broad domain of literary genres given his professional aspirations. Not by chance, the novel was republished in the magazine Vamos Ler! in 1937, bringing visibility in the literary and intellectual circles of Rio de Janeiro. Here, we explore the politics of Silveira's fiction, established in his first literary text, which suggests a concern with interpreting the human condition of the country's people.