Fear (Graciliano Ramos)

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Fear (Portuguese: Angústia ) is the title of a novel by Graciliano Ramos , published in Rio de Janeiro in 1936 , the plot of which is set in a coastal city in the poor, backward north-east of Brazil . The novel can be attributed to Brazilian neorealism , but it also bears traits of late symbolism and naturalism .

Emergence

Ramos, who came from a cattle herding family in the Sertão that was ruined by the drought around 1895/96, lived temporarily and again since 1930 in the state of Alagoas on the coast. The rather depressing memories of the grandfather and the early deceased father, of the cattle herders and released slaves, of the father, the policeman, the teacher and the blind ticket seller also shape this work. But he feels the misery in the cities on the coast, to which many seekers of fortune fled, which was exacerbated by the global economic crisis around 1930, is no less than in the country. In view of rising social tensions, his activities as mayor and in the school inspectorate seem pointless to him. The creation of the novel can be interpreted as a withdrawal reaction in the face of the misery. He was imprisoned for alleged communist activities on the day the manuscript was completed in 1936 under the government of President Getúlio Vargas . During this time, his third novel Angústia was published , which bears autobiographical traits mainly due to the numerous flashbacks to his own childhood. In a laconic biographical note, he attributed the spread of the work not to its quality, but to the fame of his person as a result of his imprisonment. In fact, it wasn't until 1945 that Ramos became a member of the Brazilian Communist Party.

action

The novel consists largely of the inner monologue of a lonely office worker named Luis da Silva, who looks back on his life in his room in Maceió and is tormented by his conscience. The plot takes place predominantly inside the first-person narrator; it is not clearly arranged in chronological order and is interrupted by numerous flashbacks and premonitions. Towards the end the monologue becomes more and more confused and becomes delirious : fantasy and reality can hardly be distinguished.

First, the memories of childhood and youth in the patriarchal and violent Sertão take up a large space in the monologue, then of the humiliating time as a young hiking teacher and alms-recipient with an immature novel project in mind (“A son of the Northeast persecuted by misfortune appeals to your generosity Highly Born "). But the monotony of office work is also deadly. The introverted Luis cannot realize his literary ambitions. The only diversions are conversations with his friend Moisés, a Jewish critic of capitalism and government who occasionally lends him money, and the hustle and bustle of a handful of dubious neighbors in the backyard of the apartment block he watches. But even here the ritualized actions are repeated almost every day. The girl Marina - she represents the penniless and fragile girl who becomes easy prey for the rich - attracts him sexually. He tries to find her a job, but she makes no move to work. Doubts grow quickly about her promise to marry him, which he only achieved with high financial expenditures and borrowing for Marina's clothing and modest luxury items.

A rich and arrogant rival and "lazy phrase-thief" of hollow patriotic slogans, Julião Tavares, whose social relationships are completely determined by money and opportunism, ties Marina more and more to himself and far outbids Luis' gifts. Julio's silk suits and handkerchiefs humiliate and irritate Luis to the point of white heat. His lack of money, his poor education, his unsatisfied sexuality, his professional failure and his milieu-related inferiority complex due to a lack of social recognition increase his well-founded jealousy. When Marina is expecting a child from Tavares and he abruptly abandons her, Luis' jealousy turns into fear and hatred. His feelings for Marina fluctuate hectically between pity, thirst for revenge and torment of conscience; trying to talk to the externally shabby girl only worsens his panic. He can only distract himself from time to time while on duty. He slowly develops the fantasy of killing the rival in a cruel way in order to free himself from the fear that suffocates him. He imagines the murder again and again and in increasingly concrete terms: every rope, every noose he sees, every memory of the rattlesnakes in his grandfather's yard stimulates this paranoid fantasy. Aware of his own weakness and the fact that he could never achieve what he dreamed of, he finally strangles Tavares. Only with great effort does he cover up the traces of the crime. Obviously it remains unpunished, but fear and delusions and his conscience torment Luis, whose fantasies ultimately return to his childhood and youth.

style

The novel is written in a sober, harsh, and paratactic style that matches both the associative stream of consciousness of the first-person narrator he's trapped in and the implicit social charge. The narrative rhythm increases towards the end of the book, so that the panic of the first-person narrator is communicated to the reader.

Interpretation and reception

The torment of conscience of the first-person narrator led to the novel being compared to Dostoyevsky's guilt and atonement . But Angústia is not just a psychological novel about auto-destructive behavior, but at the same time a realistic and socially critical milieu study about the hapless and frustrated immigrants from the interior of the country. However, this aspect was emphasized less often in the German reception than in relation to Ramos' other novels. A comparison with existentialism also suggests itself, for example with Albert Camus Der Fremde . The feeling of alienation and the fear of one's own insignificance and mediocrity become the indirect motive for action. At the end there is the insight into the futility of one's own existence.

By 1986, 32 editions of the novel had already appeared in Brazil, and by 2019 over 70 editions.

Edition history

The Brazilian first edition was published by José Olympio in Rio de Janeiro in 1936 . The German-language first edition appeared in 1978 as volume 570 in the Suhrkamp library , Frankfurt am Main, ISBN 3-518-01570-2 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Graciliano Ramos: Fear. Translated from the Brazilian by Willy Keller . Frankfurt 1978, p. 291.
  2. ↑ Ramos: Angst , p. 31.
  3. ↑ Ramos: Angst , p. 111.
  4. ↑ [GvY-KLL:] Graciliano Ramos: angústia. In: Kindlers new literature lexicon, ed. by Walter Jens. Vol. 13, Munich 1996, p. 929.
  5. ↑ So already on the occasion of the German first edition Günter W. Lorenz: Passion story of a failure: Graciliano Ramos - a Dostoevsky from the Amazon. In: Die Welt, March 25, 1978.
  6. ↑ Luiza Bandino: Angústia: romance de Graciliano Ramos [1] in Brasil Escola , accessed August 6, 2020.
  7. ^ Salvelina da Silva: Os modos do ser em Sartre, Camus e Graciliano Ramos ea alteridade readical. Dissertation, Universidade Federal de Santa Catalina, Florianópolis 2003, p. 98 Online , accessed August 6, 2020.