A sede do deserto: Lavoura arcaica e a parábola do pródigo

Abstract

Since it was published in 1975, Lavoura arcaica keeps puzzling readers with its dissimilitude. Amongst books that absorbed the violence of Brazilian military dictatorship, Raduan Nassar came out with a strange work full of distinctive elements: a deeply resounding poetic language, thoughts inspired by Mediterranean monotheism, Arab cultural inheritance, subversive sexuality. Time has passed, the writer has abandoned literature and many interesting things have been said about the novel, but its enigmas still are seeds sown on good soil. Lavoura arcaica is another reinterpretation of the prolific parable of the prodigal son, found only in the Gospel of Luke and many times retold. The story of the rebellious young man who decides to break bonds with family to throw himself into the world has been generous to the imagination of many authors, who have rewritten it using their own particular lenses. Some of them are here: Gide, Kipling, Kafka, Rilke, Dalton Trevisan, Lúcio Cardoso e also the catholic theologian Henri Nouwen. Despite variations, the homecoming occupies a privileged spot in their narratives. After all, this is a story about the motives that causes somebody to leave and, more than that, about the reasons why he or she returns. Repentance, a new beginning, weakness, defeat, love? In spite of the many antitheses that can be found in Raduan s text, we are not required to make a choice between the archaic and the modern, between staying or leaving, between the individual and the collective, between restraint and fulfilled desire. That is the point: Lavoura arcaica is not a book about the conflict between good and evil, freedom and oppression, but an overview that shows us how all those things are mixed together or, paraphrasing the character André, how things connect themselves only by disconnecting themselves