IMBRICATIONS BETWEEN MEMORY AND IDENTITY IN LATIN AMERICAN LITERATURE: THE CASE OF PEDRO NAVA AND HIS CHEST OF BONES

Resumo

This paper briefly analyzes Baú de Ossos [Chest of Bones[1]], by Pedro Nava, to discuss the construction of the Brazilian imaginary, emphasizing the concepts of memory and identity. Preliminary findings indicate that the novel goes much beyond the modernist features commonly assigned to it, allowing us to explore fluidity and mobility contexts, loss, absence, melancholy, and uncertainty. Resorting to a cathartic journey through the continuum of space and time, Nava seems to reduce the incompleteness and poverty of humankind. On the one hand, his writing, following patterns of an autobiographic pact, makes him a protagonist in his own narrative and promotes an acute consciousness of himself, his fragmented and held-responsible being. On the other hand, his occupation as an anatomist makes him see himself as a result of a much bigger collectivity, which, in a certain way, explains him, involves him, and provides him with reasons to be and exist.

Keywords: Autobiography. Brazilian literature. Identity. Latin American literature. Memory.

[1] Our translation.