The Handbook of the Inquisitors

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The manual of the inquisitors ( Portuguese O manual dos inquisidores ) is a novel by the Portuguese writer António Lobo Antunes , which was published in 1996 by the Dom Quixote publishing house in Lisbon .

The time of the reign of Salazar and his successor Caetano is pilloried in blatant caricature images .

overview

Antunes gives the floor to 19 first-person narrators in 29 chapters. The narrative sequence turns out to be non-chronological. The chapters, either insignificantly headed with a report or a commentary , pose a puzzle to the reader. The most important of these is being gradually resolved: Francisco, known as the doctor or the minister, was Salazar's right-hand man until 1968 and loved Isabel.

chapter page title teller annotation
7th First report
1 9 report Joaõ Son of Francisco
2 27 comment Odete Daughter of the caretaker on Francisco's estate
3 47 report Joaõ
4th 67 comment Sofia Joaõs wife and niece of Uncle Dagoberts
5 88 report Joaõ
6th 103 comment Uncle Scrooge
123 Second report
7th 125 report Albertina, also Titina Joaõs nanny , later housekeeper with Francisco
8th 135 comment cook at Francisco
9 148 report Albertina
10 164 comment Luis Veterinary
11 178 report Albertina
12 194 comment Lina Occupational therapist in the Mercy of Alverca
209 Third report
13 211 report Paula Daughter of the cook and Francisco's
14th 229 comment Alice Godmother Paulas
15th 244 report Paula
16 258 comment Romeu Son of Dona Olga
17th 277 report Paula
18th 294 comment César Husband from Adelaide
307 Fourth report
19th 309 report Milá young girl; reminds Francisco of Isabel
20th 325 comment Dona Dores Milá's mother
21st 340 report Milá
22nd 350 comment Leandro
23 362 report Milá
24 378 comment Tomás Sergeant, Francisco's driver in the Fourth Report
393 Fifth report
25th 395 report Francisco, also Herr Doktor, also the Minister
26th 408 comment Martins Cousin of the pharmacist
27 416 report Francisco
28 432 comment Isabel Francisco's wife
29 444 report Francisco

shape

The 19 narrators mentioned above are taken to prayer by an anonymous inquisitor - let's call him based on the title of the novel . Verbatim speeches by some of the narrators addressed to the Inquisitor are quoted in notes 4, 5 and 8 to 12 of this article (see below). Some spelling rules are overridden. For example, verbatim speech is interposed in a strange way. After a paragraph it is introduced with a dash and other apostrophes are omitted.

The text contains external peculiarities. Antunes did not take the trouble to somehow differentiate the stream of consciousness of all 19 narrators, who belong to the most varied of Portuguese educational backgrounds. All nineteen appear to have the same speech disorder. You talk like Antunes.

Nevertheless, all in all, great world literature has emerged. The reader, who has read the first few chapters, stays on the ball because he is always out for something new. More precisely - the reader asks: Will something be said about the character and his motives in the next chapter or the one after that?

Regarding the above-mentioned reading: the reader only suspects after a few chapters - it is a polyphonic, i.e. nineteen-part concerto. And on the constantly stoked reader expectation mentioned above: Already in the first chapter Antunes mixes motley banal plot with meaningful messages. The unsuspecting reader ignores all of the latter at first. For example, the first name Francisco is revealed by the protagonist. It will be titled Doctor and Minister later.

With all the sometimes dizzying height of the lecture of the innermost - colonial-politically motivated - novel fable buried under baroque externalities , the reader is torn between admiration and sharp rejection. For example, mantra-like repetitions, i.e. literal repetitions of entire parts of sentences, persisted throughout the entire text, arouse the reader's reluctance after all.

As outlined above, there is by no means a strict form. For example, towards the end of the 12th chapter, Lina lets Joaõ tell a little bit seamlessly.

content

First report

Joaõ, the son of Isabel, did not go after his father, the Minister at all.

1

The name Joaõ listed in the above table under the first chapter in the narrator column is introduced later in the text. Let's use it now for the sake of readability. Joaõ's grown daughter has found a disgraceful divorce lawyer for her father. The engineer, as Joaõ is called at first, means silence in front of the judge in Lisbon. The mention of Joaõ's “adult daughter” and his reference to the long elapsed time of his father Francisco, a notorious hater of communists, give an idea right from the start: The anonymous inquisitor asks about events that date back decades. More precisely - Joaõ's father's time ended in 1968. That year Salazar had his stroke . A second significant time stamp is April 25, 1974 : The Estado Novo Salazars was replaced by the Third Portuguese Republic .

Returning to the plot of the first chapter, it must be said that Joaõ is not fighting at all for his inheritance, the estate of his mad, sick father in Palmela at the foot of the Arrábida Mountains, but grants the possessive relatives by marriage before the judgment seat a mortgage on the neglected Property in the Setúbal district . In this respect, the Portuguese communists do not turn out to be the father's mortal enemies, but rather the middle-class relatives.

2

Odete tells from the times before 1968: Sometimes Professor Salazar would visit the estate of her patron, as she calls Joaõ's father, look at the flowerbeds, take little care of his motorized escort from the Guarda Republicana , then disappear into the house and take advice therein with the patron of ministers, members of parliament and the African colonies .

Once, when Odete was looking after the cows in the stable, the patron, who was rich, who was a minister, who slept with the cook, followed her with an open belt, held her waist with his thighs, ordered her to stand still and deflowered her in the Stand. Then he let go of her. Odete shuddered and was relieved that the bleeding had stopped.

3

Joaõ visits his father in need of care - not before 1975 - in the clinic in Alvalade . The patient, in the midst of hundreds of old people, has a thrombosis and urination problems . The son, who is addressed as Mr. Engineer by the clinic staff, disrespectfully registers the obvious misery. The father had mutated "into an unusable puppet". After all, the human wreck asks the son to greet the sister who is also present in the room. Resistance stirs in the engineer. He sees himself as an only child. But then images emerge from Joaõ's memory: The father is chasing his wife Isabel to the devil. Joaõs birth mother leaves the estate with "fighting noises" packed with her suitcase. Joaõ stays behind with his nanny Titina in the estate.

Who is supposed to have been his sister's mother? One of the hairdressers, one of the beauticians, one of the tailors or any cleaning lady? Again a series of images from memory helps him. Without a word, the father orders the cook to come and grab her by the neck. Now the cook lies with her breast on the table and the father mates with the woman standing from behind.

4th

The narrator Sofia agrees with her former husband Joaõ when she describes the behavior of her former father-in-law Francisco after the revolution: he wanted to shoot every communist who entered his property.

Sofia thinks little of her former father-in-law, this newly rich farmer. Especially since he had scolded them a "rattle frame". And anyway - the marriage to Joaõ was a mistake. She agrees on this with her relatives, who must be counted among the wealthy Portuguese. After the outbreak of the revolution - in the heat of May - female members of Sofia's family dressed in multiple fur coats and fled with excessively ringed fingers. But Sofia's uncles and cousins ​​were temporarily deported to Caxias and Peniche by the communists . Joao, these rascals, these ragged communists, these Russians and Bolsheviks , hadn't cared.

In any case, Joaõ had wanted nothing from Sofia. So it wasn't love, it was just a mistake.

5

Joaõ repairs a boat on his inherited estate, although there is no “navigable” body of water nearby. He had imagined the Sofias brothers taking over the property something like this: These possessive lads are approaching. Joaõ is now supposed to open fire on the attackers on the orders of his father, who is in the clinic. But Joaõ doesn't value ownership. It turns out differently. Instead of the burly brothers, a wizened little man appears on the scene, who turns out to be an enforcement officer, sent to the court and asks Joaõ to sign.

Joaõ remembers his father. In these retrospectives the doctor coitus with one woman after the other - always in a similar way, as indicated above: he grabs the woman by the neck, presses her upper body on a table, spreads her knees with the tip of his shoe and so on. This time the youngest maid, the wife of a captain and of course the cook are mentioned as victims. Then the doctor deals with the pharmacist's widow.

6th

Sofia's 77-year-old uncle Dagobert and the male members of his clan had to endure a lot in the prisons mentioned above after the revolution. The Swiss numbered accounts have retained Scrooge and his during interrogation in prison, of course for themselves. Dagobert doesn't understand the winner. He never exploited the working class . On the contrary - he always showed a heart for the poor.

This simple-minded Joaõ, the son of this petty bourgeois, he used as a straw man with his windy financial manipulations with success and stole his huge land from him. Dagobert sees himself as the sole owner of the crooked land.

Second report

Albertina sacrificed itself for years for the doctor and is ultimately driven out by him in gratitude.

7th

Joaõs nanny Albertina reports from the time when her pupil was still a toddler. At that time she watched as the madam crossed the property, right behind the gate into a car, the driver of which was waiting there under the elms, got in and later returned home happy. The description of the process should suggest that while the doctor is working in the ministry, his wife Isabel is cheating.

The former maid, Albertina, is in love with the Minister, but he doesn't pay any attention to her.

8th

The cook says with undisguised pride that the doctor loved her and not the lady, nor the pharmacist's widow, nor the caretaker's daughter, and certainly not Dona Titina. The cook substantiates the claim with a description of a sexual act that little Joaõ watched. The patron had previously looked at the sewing woman until she went out into the corridor. The cook asked her patron, who grabbed her hair briskly, for gentle treatment. Afterwards the doctor shook himself. Then Professor Salazar came. The governance of Portugal had been discussed. During a break in conversation the doctor repeated the sexual intercourse with the cook in the manner described.

The doctor's cook has two daughters. She got the first when she was fifteen and had to bury the child, who died much too early, by hand. Only the doctor and Dona Titina knew of the second child.

When the second birth had come, the doctor called the vet. The latter had not understood the doctor's haste: not a single cow wanted to calve. At the behest of the doctor, the cook had to lay it in the straw in the stable. The doctor had helped; with the toe of the cook's forehead pressed into the straw ...

9

Long time ago. Dona Albertina - now eighty years old - tells that Inquisitor the story of the waiting car there under the elms. The doctor did not love all those many women. He really loved only my lady. When the doctor thought he knew who was waiting for his wife Isabel downstairs - in his opinion the rival should have been Sofia's uncle Pedro - he had asked the major (see note 1) in vain to punish the rival. The major had regretted, but such pillars of the government from the front ranks of the economy, who were people like Pedro, had to be spared. The doctor had to take the punishment of the Dagobert clan into his own hands. And Joaõ had to marry the unloved Sofia.

10

The 56-year-old veterinarian Luis, a professor in Lisbon, no longer understands the world. He regrets that the weakling Professor Caetano was unable to prevent the revolution. And then this Minister, who could have almost any woman in Lisbon and who got involved in the countryside with “vulgar creatures” like this cook. Actually, as indicated above, the veterinarian hadn't wanted to come. But anyone who contravened the minister, a protégé of Salazar, was usually quickly exposed to a headlight and received a few directional slaps in the face from a police brigade chief.

11

After Joaõ left, Albertina had made herself indispensable as a housemaid with the doctor. She had always taken the madam for a whore who ran under the elms like a bitch in heat. Albertina had enjoyed a few trifles: when the doctor, a man who drove with Salazar Portugal, opened the car door for her before he drove her for a walk through Palmela. It was all gone. Now she was humiliated by the captain's wife, a whore of the doctor.

Professor Salazar was no more. The government troops had defected to the communists. The doctor had scolded Albertina a communist, pushed the butt of the rifle out the front door and she had fled to the occupational therapist in the Alverca Misericórdia with an almost empty suitcase.

12

The narrator - 33-year-old divorced occupational therapist Lina - looks after her 19-year-old daughter Tânia. Joaõ visits his mother Dona Isabel in the Misericórdia of Alverca. Lina thinks the visitor is neither young nor rich, but she gets along well with him in conversation. Dona Albertina, who is known to have found shelter in the Misericórdia, hangs like a burdock on her former foster child Joaõ. So many years have passed. Joaõ does not recognize this old woman. The extremely annoying Albertina has to be tied to her bed.

Third report

The third report is about Paula, the cook's daughter and Francisco's.

13

When the narrator Paula was ten years old, she lived with her godmother Alice in Alcácer , where her father visited her once only. The Minister had kept his hat on. The child had stabbed his father with a drawing pen. Police officers had protected the visit; had scared away curious neighbors. Any interferer - that is, communist - would be sent to Tarrafal and rot there.

After the visit, Paula's immediate surroundings appear transformed. Suddenly she is called a gracious lady and the shopkeepers no longer take their money when they go shopping. A certain cousin César, who drives a rental taxi, approaches Paula. Then he loses his taxi license. His face is disfigured by two police officers. César limps for a while. For the mayor of Alcácer, Paula is now even considered the representative of the Portuguese government. One fine Sunday, Paula is brought to Palmela by the police. There she should greet her brother Joaõ. She blocks herself because Joaõ has a different nose on her face. Paula has the cook's nose. In general, Paula talks badly about Joaõ. He later admitted his father to the clinic because he supposedly wanted to keep Paula's share of the estate for himself.

14th

In the Angolan bush Alice has lost her husband. The widow returns home after 26 years in Africa. In Alcácer, where she lives, Albertina chooses her to be Paula's nanny. In Palmela, the minister gives his child to this “godmother”. The cook hates the stranger. Alice goes back to the slums in Alcácer with Paula and loves the child.

15th

Paula, now 39 years old, works for a legal advisor and is fed up with life in poverty. Unfortunately, the minister has not notarized his paternity for her. Annoying - the brother Joaõ lives in Odivelas like in a palace. Paula desperately needs money. She visits her father in Alvalade. He does not sign the paper prepared by Paula's boss.

16

After Alice - drawn by the 26 years of Angola - hanged herself, Miss Paula lives alone. The glasses wearer has no one and clings to an "abnormal" - the 25-year-old Romeu. The bachelor is pushed through life by his mother Dona Olga. It seems Romeu is seduced by Paula.

17th

The event is not without consequence. A quarter of a year after the death of her father, Paula gives birth to a boy. Romeu stays with Paula. At last she realizes that the deceased minister left nothing for her or her brother. No newspaper mentioned his demise.

18th

It could also be possible that César - a married man - is the father of Paula's son. At least employees of the major (note 1) beat César's face to a pulp after various police observations. The defaced prays: Paula may never notice him again in life.

Fourth report

Francisco woos Milá in the fourth report because she reminds him of Isabel.

19th

Milá's mother Dona Dores runs a dry goods store on Praça do Chile . Carlos, the lover of 23-year-old Milá, is a convicted, unemployed man who hates his mother. The crafty crook managed to escape from a penal camp in Porto . Milá, "neither beautiful nor pretty ... a little chubby, a little waddling, a little sluggish", met Francisco near a bus stop. Sergeant Tomás, the minister's driver, showered the young lady with flowers and valuable gifts. When Francesco and Sergeant Milá go to their "poor people's apartment", the mother first has to be told who she is looking at. She had slipped out: “A poor old man who is more senile than your father, it had to be an invalid Milá”. The young lady locks herself in her room with the old man and pretends he is Carlos.

20th

When the right hand of Professor Salazar and the Admiral later enters the haberdashery store, the mother makes another disrespectful remark on the subject of old people. A customer present was shocked that Milá's mother could be sent to Cabo Verde immediately and die of a sunstroke on the beach behind barbed wire.

21st

The Minister knows that Milá is not in love with him when he treats her energetically like Carlos when he keeps calling her Isabel instead of her real name.

22nd

Leandro is happy that during these times he found a job as a porter in the elegant house on Rua Castilho. Disgruntled, he pulls over the two new residents - Milá and Dona Dores. Leandro's mood deteriorates further when Professor Salazar, the Herr Admiral and the Major von der Pide visit the ladies.

23

It comes as Dona Dores prophesied for her daughter. Both are thrown out of their comfortable apartment by this "rascal from a minister". Incredible, Professor Salazar had been so gracious in Estoril . Milá does not want it in his head at all - such a fine man lets people torture and bite to death with poisonous snakes in Africa. Professor Salazar had discussed with the Minister how to proceed with the general .

The major speaks clearly to Milá, calling her a whore whom he can send to Caxias at any time.

24

Tomás started out as a corporal, made it to captain at the age of fifty, and lives - now an old man - as a lieutenant colonel in the reserve in Madre de Deus . Tomás had not only been the minister's driver, he had also belonged to the command that had arrested the general on behalf of the major (note 1) and sidelined the general.

Fifth report

In the last report, the protagonist Francisco finally has his say.

25th

Francisco is washed and freshly dressed in the clinic - so he is prepared for the visit of his son Joaõ. After the stroke, a lot gets mixed up in the patient's brain. The old man thinks back to a tour of Moçâmedes . He had made the prisoners kneel on a wooden pole during interrogation. On the other hand, he did everything wrong with Isabel. When she had stopped being touched and had pretended to have a headache, the next ship to Moçâmedes would have been the right treatment for this woman. Francisco imagines the formerly beloved wife kneeling on a pole in the cargo hold with his fingers underneath.

26th

Martins reflects popular belief about his cousin. She slowly poisoned her husband, the pharmacist, and then threw herself on the Minister's neck as a widow. But that was a long time ago. Today the English play golf in a holiday complex on the former estate. After it had come to an end with Salazar, the admiral had not asked the Minister to come and that was the end. From then on, the Minister was not allowed to inspect the prisons, interrogate prisoners or watch over the fate of the colony residents.

27

Francisco, ailing in the clinic, confesses to the two subjects of torture and surveillance of all Portuguese during Salazar's time.

28

Isabel tells the story of her marriage to Francisco. This man - at that time the Undersecretary of State - had acted as her savior when her father - removed from the Portuguese army - was harassed by the police as a civilian. A little while after the birth of Joaõ, she had given herself to Pedro under the elms. That wasn't love either. So she had taken an apartment in Lisbon. The peace they now longed for had been disturbed by a few visits from Pedro and Francisco.

29

When Isabel left him, Francisco had been around thirty. The atrocities of war - instigated and endured in Luanda in 1961 together with the major (note 1) , do not let go of him. Perhaps, as Francisco concludes his life confession to the Inquisitor, he has failed. He does not confess such things to his dear son Joaõ, whom he scolds an idiot.

Adaptation

reception

  • August 16, 1997, Christoph Bartmann in the FAZ : Nineteen mouths. The interrogations of António Lobo Antunes : The confusion is not because the next voice in the polyphonic choir successfully combats the confusion. The “surrealistic farce about Portugal's old and new elites, a psychoanalytic tribunal about the bourgeois family” is about the “impossibility of love”. The reader can hardly grasp the images and realities presented in their dismaying elemental force. Antunes may have borrowed from Nicolas Eymerich's “Manual de Inquisidores” (anno 1376).
  • September 29, 1997, Volker Hage in the Spiegel : Nobel Prize or Malaria : There is a mosaic of “complementary and conflicting voices”. The times would be jumbled up, a “shimmering, confusing choir” would sing and it would be sung mixed up, but in the end the consumer of Antunes would get a perfect mosaic. The big topic - smoldering in the background - is the Angola War in Portugal.
  • December 6, 1997, Jens Jessen in the Berliner Zeitung : The magician pushes his way : Antunes was inspired by Faulkner , for example with regard to the inner monologues . It is difficult to read, but the craftsmanship has to be admired. Actually, Antunes doesn't need his omnipresence between the lines. Jessen hardly speaks a truth without relativizing it in the same breath - perhaps the appropriate attitude of a serious literary critic when sifting through the available text vendors.
  • 1998, Roberto Simanowski : Survey on an estate : the reader slips into the role of a commissioner who ultimately knows more about the speakers than they wanted to reveal.

German-language editions

Used edition

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ port. Publicações Dom Quixote
  2. ↑ Edition used, p. 205, 10. Zvo ff.
  3. ↑ Port. Serra da Arrábida
  4. ↑ Edition used, p. 51, 6th Zvu
  5. ↑ Edition used, p. 43, 2nd Zvu
  6. ↑ Edition used, p. 51, 7th Zvu
  7. ↑ Edition used, p. 50, 11. Zvu
  8. ↑ Edition used, p. 61, 7th Zvu
  9. ↑ Edition used, pp. 60–61
  10. ↑ Edition used, p. 81, 4th Zvu
  11. ↑ Edition used, p. 110, 15. Zvu
  12. ↑ Edition used, p. 276
  13. ↑ Edition used, p. 383, 6. Zvo
  14. ↑ Edition used, p. 322, 7th Zvu
  15. ↑ Edition used, p. 333 below
  16. ↑ Edition used, p. 369, 6th Zvu
  17. ↑ Schaeffer radio play ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.hsverlag.com
  18. ↑ Radio play 1 at deutschlandradio.de
  19. ↑ Radio play 2 at deutschlandradio.de
  20. ↑ eng. Nicholas Eymerich
  21. ↑ eng. Directorium Inquisitorum

Remarks

  1. ↑ An example of the barely unraveling mix of time levels from this agrammatic novel of disordered memories: In the third chapter, which takes place after 1975, probably two to several years after the revolution , the sentence according to which the major is said to have died is mentioned (edition used P. 52, 14th Zvu). The reader asks: who is now the major again? The translator Maralde Meyer-Minnemann knows the answer on page 459 of the edition used: The major is Silva Pais , the last director of the political police PIDE . Francisco, the protagonist in the novel, who does not speak as a first-person narrator until chapter 25, tells in the last chapter how he was ordered to Angola by Salazar together with the major in 1961 (edition used, p. 454, 1 . Zvo).
  2. ↑ To the above table: In order to make this novel easier to describe, chapter numbers 1 to 29 were introduced - only here in this article. As a reference, the page in the edition used was given in the second column of the table.
  3. ↑ Antunes is a communist .
  4. ↑ Albertina says to the inquisitor: "... that you only know ..." (Edition used, p. 160, 9th Zvu)
  5. ↑ The Inquisitor uses his interviews for a book, because Lina says to him: "... when you have finished this book ..." (Edition used, p. 199, 17. Zvo).
  6. ↑ Here the reader comes across one of the novel global identifiers. The Minister always keeps his hat on. Everyone then knows who is in charge of the room.
  7. ↑ In this grotesque novel, Antunes prepares his plot as he sees fit. Here he lets Alice's husband stumble over a root in Angola. A crocodile devours the falling man before Alice's eyes (Edition used, p. 233, 3rd Zvu).
  8. ↑ The narrator Paula says to the inquisitor: “… wait, I was wrong, I didn't mean to say that at all, don't write that down” (Edition used, p. 279, 16. Zvo).
  9. ↑ The narrator Milá says to the inquisitor: "... what I actually wanted to tell you ..." (Edition used, p. 315, 11. Zvo).
  10. ↑ Leandro, the narrator, says to the inquisitor: “… You can confidently write Grobsack, I'm not afraid” (Edition used, p. 358, 13th issue).
  11. ↑ The narrator Tomás says to the inquisitor: "... in this house ... the devil knows how you found it ..." (Edition used, p. 379, 16. Zvo).
  12. ↑ The narrator Francisco says to the inquisitor: "... you can write it exactly like that, I am not ashamed ..." (Edition used, p. 422, 9th issue) and "... write it in your exercise book in large capital letters and point it out es me ... “(Edition used, p. 453, 3rd Zvo).