O Palimpsesto Narrativo em Os sinos da Agonia, de Autran Dourado

Abstract

From the perspective of Gérard Genette, the palimpsest is a parchment whose original inscription has been scraped away to allow for a new text to be written. Rather than concealing the traces of the first layer, however, this process reveals them—so that the old can be read through the transparency of the new. It is precisely in this overlapping of narratives that we locate our object of study: a narrative parchment in perpetual transformation, deformed, mutilated, and constantly reinvented through writings that intertwine within the porous universe of literary art. Palimpsestic reading is grounded in the premise that no text emerges by chance. Every text is a hypertext, maintaining a secret and subterranean relationship with other texts (hypotexts), which may be read in their verticality and opacity within a single work. This type of reading demands from the reader a fertile memory, activating a powerful theory—that of intertextuality. Intertextuality operates through numerous mechanisms: emulation, parody, pastiche, imitation, epigraph, quotation, among others, all meticulously conceptualized by Genette. In this light, the present study aims to investigate the novel Os Sinos da Agonia (1974), by Autran Dourado, through the lens of the palimpsest, exploring three structuring layers: the formal, the mythological, and the historical-discursive. The analysis departs from the hypothesis that these narratives are constructed as superimposed layers of memory, time and language, articulating baroque strategies, archetypes and historical figures. The research highlights how Dourado mobilizes intertextual references—such as the Greek tragedy of Euripides and the colonial text of Simão Ferreira Machado—in order to craft a literature marked by fragmentation, duplicity, and the tension between overlapping temporalities within the fabric of the novel. The figure of the Homo sacer, the ritual of death in effigy, and the presence of tragic characters born from catastrophe reveal an aesthetic-philosophical project that interrogates the human condition and the instability of historical discourse. Thus, Dourado’s works become spaces of symbolic resistance, where the reader, activating their own memory, is called upon to excavate hidden meanings beneath the textual surface. To carry out such reflections, we draw upon the works of scholars such as Genette, Bakhtin, Samoyault, Hutcheon, Aristotle, Jung, Walter Benjamin, Vernant, Agamben, among others. Based on these theoretical foundations, this study proposes an archaeological reading of Os Sinos da Agonia, understanding the novel as a field of textual and symbolic forces. The analysis seeks to reveal how the past resurfaces within the narrative not as a static trace, but as a living presence, constantly in tension between baroque aesthetics, myth, and history.