The disappearance of St. Barbara

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The Disappearance of Saint Barbara ( Portuguese : O Sumiço da Santa ) is the penultimate novel by the Brazilian writer Jorge Amado , which was published in Rio de Janeiro in 1988 . The translation into German by Kristina Hering came out in Berlin in 1990.

Everything will be fine in this "story of sorcery". The beautiful, talented hatter Dona Adalgisa - called Dadá - loses her migraines and her niece Manela finds her happiness. Both Bahia nerinnen are descendants of Spaniard Perez y Perez, called Paco and the Negress Andreza of Yansa .

The story takes place around 1970 in the city of Bahia: The goddess Oyá Yansã, dressed in the cloak of St. Barbara , visits Bahia. By magic, this woman of the god of thunder Xangô saves the life of the young Father Abelardo Galvão from the Sertão and forges the marriage of the young, light-skinned mulatto Manela Perez Belini - a high school student - with the dark-skinned mulatto Miro, a taxi driver. Thirdly, Oyá Yansã puts the nineteen-year-old marriage of the former football-playing dribble artist Danilo Correia, a mulatto, in order; Danilo's childless wife Adalgisa takes the frigidity and, fourth, literally solves a supposed criminal case at the last minute: The German-born monk Dom Maximiliano von Gruden, director of the Museum of Sacred Art on the first floor of the old Santa Tereza monastery, can breathe easy. The picture of Saint Barbara - this "treasure of Brazilian art" from the 18th century - is in its designated place in Bahia just in time for the vernissage on Holy Saturday .

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The ship from Santo Amaro da Purificação is supposed to bring the picture of St. Barbara, on loan from the local Vicar Father Teófilo Lopes de Santana, known as Father Téo, to the exhibition of religious art in Bahia. In the port of destination at the Rampa do Mercado on Maundy Thursday , only the empty picture frame is found. The monk Maximiliano has no other advice; he asks Dr. Calixto, Secretary of Public Security for Bahia State , for assistance. The next path leads the monk in a panic to his supreme superior, the auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Bahia, Rudolph Kluck. Maximiliano reports the supposed robbery. The auxiliary bishop knows more. Two passengers on the aforementioned ship are suspected of stealing pictures. These are Father Abelardo Galvão, Vicar of Piaçava in the Sertão and Sr. Maria Eunice from the Convent of the Penitents. There in the Sertão the ochlokrat Galvão - a " Rasputin of the poor" - put himself at the head of the dispossessed against Joâozinho Costa, landowner of the Fazenda Santa Eliodora . So the vicar was summoned. Its wings should be trimmed , but the neck should not be cut off. Galvão and Maximiliano retreat to the São Bento Abbey. Meanwhile, the Bahia civilian police are searching in vain for the picture thieves.

The reader knows much better than the above mentioned gentlemen who grope in the dark. The goddess Oyá Yansã - Jorge Amado sometimes called the “black one” because of her skin color - has stepped out of the picture of St. Barbara in the harbor, leaves an empty picture frame, walks through Bahia and works her miracles in this city. So she steps into the auxiliary bishop's palace and sticks her tongue out at the dignitary, makes the sky above Bahia shine, even flashes and finally dissolves into darkness. The goddess came for Adalgisa and Manela. The “right to life and love” should be proclaimed and enforced. There is an occasion. Manela met Miro on Thursday from Bomfim. The all-round successful appearance of the young couple in the Macumba step was broadcast on regional television. Adalgisa, the older sister of Manela's deceased mother Dolores, who had been her foster mother since Manela's thirteenth year, had the rebellious foster daughter placed in the monastery of Lapa. Together with Adalgisa's confessor, Father José Antônio Hernandez, she had given the juvenile judge Dr. Mendes d'Ávila prevailed. When Danilo learns of the roadblock, he wants to free the girl. In vain - since Danilo's impotence was diagnosed by a doctor, Adalgisa has dominated the marriage. Only a miracle can help. Jorge Amado writes: "The miracles are God Almighty daily bread." So the goddess Oyá Yansã has to come as a deliverer: As luck would have it - Sister Maria Eunice is currently guardian of the service in that monastery Lapa. Of course, the guard recognizes the saint , because she had traveled with her to Bahia on the same ship. Oyá Yansã has a perfectly forged written order from Dr. d'Ávila for the release of Manela and then later dissolves into nothingness outside in front of the liberated woman. Miro, in front of the monastery gate, cheers. When Adalgisa and Father José Antônio Hernandez were outraged by Dr. D'Ávila audition, the lawyer blames his secretary Seu Macedo. Only this person has access to the necessary official documents and stamps. Before the goddess solves the Adalgisa case, she quickly saves Father Abelardo Galvão. The latifundia owner Joâozinho Costa has set the killer Zé de Lírio on the clergyman. The well-paid gunslinger Zé de Lírio has never missed his target. He came up against the wrong opponent at Oyá Yansã. The goddess turns the tools of the trade of the safe archer into a water pistol for small children. Zé de Lírio goes mad. Joâozinho Costa could have saved himself the flight to an alibi destination, very far from the Bahia crime scene.

At the narrative climax of the novel, Adalgisa gets rid of her migraines once and for all with Oyá Yansã's magic. Before that, Father José Antônio Hernandez, who in turn accompanies Adalgisa, is robbed of his clothes in the street by the male entourage of the goddess and chased away. Passers-by point their fingers at the naked priest. Everyone knows each other in Bahia. An acquaintance who mocks the clergyman gives him a fool's dress as emergency clothing for the way home.

The enchantment hurts a little, but Adalgisa suddenly becomes “a fiery horse of the enchanted among the saints.” Fortunately, the healed remains a good Catholic . How could it be otherwise with the patriarch Jorge Amado - patriarchal conditions in the marriage of the former soccer star Danilo are being restored. The "tamed" Adalgisa becomes Danilo's demanding bed companion. Adalgisa remains cheerful and welcomes the marriage of the foster daughter to the taxi driver.

Just before the vernissage, Oyá Yansã transforms itself back into the image of Saint Barbara and takes up the fatal void in the exhibition of religious art. Maximiliano von Gruden does not have to resign.

Self-testimony

Jorge Amado admits that he wrote against racial prejudice in the book and sees the “mixing of races” as a possible way out to overcome it. In this context he advocates a “ mestizo culture”, meaning a “mixture of races and cultures”. The author specifies three large groups for his Brazilian melting pot - Europeans , especially from Spain and Portugal, as well as “ slaves from Africa ” and Brazilian “indigenous people”.

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Although the plot only runs for two days before Easter around 1970 - "in the worst years of the military dictatorship" - in Bahia, the story is brought in along the way and at the end of the novel, the protagonists' further lives are discussed. The author makes fun of the “ anarchic structure” of his “boring reflections” with the “extensive interruptions” he calls flashbacks .

His “Sittenchronik”, which Jorge Amado apostrophizes as “entangled” because of its “numerous spaces and times”, has to be read in parts as social criticism , sometimes wrapped in bitter satire. For example, it is reported by Francisco Pinto, who called Pinochet a tyrant and was imprisoned for it.

The holders of power name the beginning of the military dictatorship, ie 1964 , as the year of "our meritorious revolution" in which "Brazil was saved from communism". For the Brazilian press, which at the time wore the muzzle of the military, the Barbara story is the found food. Fascist ideas penetrated as far as Adalgisa. Manela's educator calls Hitler a "brilliant people's leader". What wonder? Adalgisa's confessor, the Falangist Father José Antônio Hernandez, was sent to Brazil by the Pope as a young man.

The text is full of side stories. For example, that of the unhappy love of the student Patrícia for Father Galvão is touching.

Jorge Amado knows the reader and sometimes has to put him off. If the latter cannot wait for the chapter with Adalgisa's defloration - not until the honeymoon - then - so the sensible author recommends - the boring before should be skipped over.

reception

German-language literature

First edition

  • Jorge Amado: The Disappearance of Saint Barbara. Novel. Translated from the Portuguese by Kristina Hering . Volk und Welt, Berlin 1990 (Licensor: R. Piper & Co. Munich). 467 pages. ISBN 3-353-00665-6 (edition used).

expenditure

  • Jorge Amado: The Disappearance of Saint Barbara. Novel. Translated from the Portuguese by Kristina Hering . R. Piper & Co., Munich 1992. ISBN 3-353-00665-6

Secondary literature

  • Erhard Engler : Jorge Amado. The magician from Bahia . edition text + criticism. Pp. 150–153 (series of writing elsewhere , ed. Renate Oesterhelt) Munich 1992, 180 pages, ISBN 3-88377-410-3

Remarks

  1. ↑ Jorge Amado describes Adalgisa as "brunette, black-brown, flirtatious, pretty, elegant, Andalusian , nice-assed" (edition used, p. 120, 18. Zvo).
  2. ↑ The author contradicts himself. The beautiful Andreza was a dark mulatto (edition used, p. 8, 4. Zvo).
  3. ↑ The plot runs over two days and the finale rises on Good Friday (chapter heading in the edition used, p. 324).
  4. ↑ The place name Piaçava also has the meaning of Piassava in German .
  5. ↑ On Thursday from Bomfim there is a procession in Bahia in the midsummer month of January .
  6. ↑ Adalgisa had failed to teach her niece. Neither scolding, slaps in the face, nor punishment with a leather whip - the latter a gift from Father José Antônio to tame the girl - had worked.
  7. ↑ Jorge Amado narrative moves around the deity Oyá Yansã. The goddess had given Danilo the leather whip. Adalgisa is changed from the "defiant Abicun" to the "docile, docile Iaô " (servant or saint's daughter Oyá Yansãs).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Engler, p. 170, last entry
  2. ↑ Edition used, p. 455, 8th Zvu
  3. ^ Port. Santo Amaro da Purificação
  4. ↑ Port. Lapa
  5. ↑ Edition used, p. 349, 13. Zvu
  6. ↑ Edition used, p. 442, 4th Zvo
  7. ↑ Jorge Amado, quoted in Engler, box on p. 154 below
  8. ↑ Edition used, p. 138, 14th Zvu
  9. ↑ Edition used, p. 121, 11. Zvo
  10. ^ Port. Francisco Pinto
  11. ↑ Edition used, p. 71, 12. Zvu