O Cheiro de Deus e o chiste de Roberto Drummond: fórmulas tradicionais de um romance contemporâneo e brasileiro

Abstract

The novel O cheiro de Deus represents the culmination of Roberto Drummond s aesthetic project. The author creates an epic that simulates, in a modern perspective, the classic genre of narrative, but preserving the popular and contemporary origins of the Brazilian writer. The approach of this novel is divided into two axis: one is dedicated to the classic and mythological sources; the other regards the interventions of the popular tradition with which the erudite paradigm reconfigures. The first chapter leads with the images present in the novel, establishing ground on the various trends of the myth studies, as well on the mediation of the epic paradigm, systematically described by Emil Staiger. The axis dedicated to the canon ends with a philosophical and aesthetic reflection about literary forms and genres, based on the considerations of Friedrich Nietzsche and Mikhail Bakhtin. The second chapter proceeds with the investigation of the popular vein, introduced in the fictional system by three different strategies: the reference to other forms of art, the laughter and the olfactory metaphor present in the title. Seen separately, 1- the aesthetic references from other forms of art allow to comprehend the link between the naivety of Roberto Drummond s representations and naïf painting; the overwhelming tendency to sentimentalism to emotional gesture, and melodrama; the concept of emotional formulae or Pathosformeln (Aby Warburg) and the power of popular imaginary in the novel. 2- The categories of laughter, with emphasis on the freudian theory of the joke, reveal the strategies of the discourse engaged in sabotaging its interdictions. 3- Smell of God as metaphor synthesizes all the lines of thought developed earlier, whereas it configures itself as the cosmological factor of the story. In this manner, the classic and epic inspiration, under the influence of the laughter and popular art expressions, generates more then an exotic, irreverent and naïf literary piece, like the ones that usually identifies the peculiar style of the author: it turns this novel into a project of fictional creation that has no naivety at all, commanded by the olfactory metaphor. This dissertation, therefore, investigates how these two antithetical and complementary axis activate traditional and present formulas of representation, supporting the evanescent, divine and literary high spheres, as well the habitus of contemporary casualness and superficiality in Drummond s novel. The simple and powerful methaphor of the smell of God translates such convergence