Lima Barreto e os bastidores da criação literária de Diário do Hospício

Abstract

Lima Barreto, during his second hospitalization at the Hospital Nacional de Alienados, between December 25, 1919 and February 2, 1920, brought to light, in the Diário do Hospício, his perceptions about the asylum reality, later allocating most of his his records for the composition of his future novel O Cemitério dos Vivos. The diary, as it is a heterogeneous text, full of discursive fragments, reveals the rich method of work of the writer, which requires reading, research, selection of textual sources, collection of data about the asylum, insertion of biographical elements, fiction sketches and representations about the asylum space and community (nurses, guards, doctors and patients). Also noteworthy are the mismatch with the exact chronology, the imbrications between fact and fiction and the ambiguity in the narrative voice, factors that reveal the relevance of the aesthetic strategies chosen by the author and the unique composition of his diary, which differs from the molds advocated by literary tradition. In addition, the text contains aesthetic-narrative elements, reused from canonical references and from the writer's own collection, which were used to compose O Cemitério dos Vivos. In this way, Lima Barreto does not omit from the reader the way in which he builds his future work, leading him to perceive the stages of his writing and the developments of his literary project on the asylum and madness. Therefore, this work aims to analyze the literary creation process of Diário do Hospício, considering the different narrative procedures used. For this, the present research was supported by some points of approach of genetic criticism, without being configured as a work in that area, in order to deepen the analysis of the production process of the Work, through the survey of primary sources, such as the manuscripts, and the comparison established between the diary, O Cemitério dos Vivos and other texts by the author. Such aspects reveal the effective contributions of the diary in the construction of the unfinished novel, encouraging new readings of Lima's writing.