Mayara Ferrão“In my book, he is to the twentieth-century Brazilian short story what Machado de Assis [1839–1908] is to that of the nineteenth. Both created ways of condensing enormous issues and extremely complex situations into short narratives,” continues Guimarães, who, with Fernando Paixão, of USP’s Institute of Brazilian Studies (IEB), arranged the book Dalton Trevisan: Uma literatura nada exemplar (Dalton Trevisan: Literature not at all exemplary) (2024). Put together in partnership between IEB-USP and publisher Tinta-da-China Brasil, the compilation brings together eight essays by literary researchers and critics such as Eliane Robert Moraes, of USP, and Arnaldo Franco Junior, of São Paulo State University (UNESP), São José do Rio Preto campus. The collection also includes a flash fiction work by Minas Gerais–born writer André Sant’Anna, and an interview with Berta Waldman, of USP’s Department of Oriental Letters, a pioneer in studies on the author, who started his research at the end of the 1970s.
The near-centenarian, born in Curitiba in 1925, has been receiving a series of tributes for his birthday, including the reissue of his works by publisher Record. Among the rereleased titles is Cemitério de elefantes (Elephant cemetery) (1964), texts by Argentine poet César Aira and São Paulo State native Marçal Aquino, with the cover illustration by Curitiba graphic artist Poty Lazzarotto (see Pesquisa FAPESP issue nº 340), who nurtured a 40-year partnership with Trevisan. There are reflections on Macho não ganha flor (Machos don’t get flowers) (2006) from editor and poet Augusto Massi, of USP, and translator and author Caetano W. Galindo, of the Federal University of Paraná (UFPR).
Trevisan gained more fame in the literary world with the magazine Joaquim, created with educator Erasmo Pilotto (1910–1992) and editor Antônio P. Walger, in 1946, “to shake the conservative foundations that underpinned the culture of Parana,” as explained by historian Fabricio Souza, of Amazonas State University (UEA), who analyzed the publication in an article in Revista Brasileira de História (Brazilian history magazine) in 2022. “Set in the post World War II era, the magazine promoted a space through which writers could reexamine the relationships between art, society, and human existence,” observes the researcher, author of PhD thesis “A matança dos mortos sagrados: Memória, literatura e história na obra de Dalton Trevisan” (The killing of the sacred dead: Memory, literature and history in the work of Dalton Trevisan), defended at USP in 2019. “In Curitiba, the resumption of modernist iconoclasm had a clear aim: to destroy a tradition that would have made it impossible for the city to experience modernism similar to that which developed in São Paulo.” In this regard, according to Souza, Trevisan published a series of manifests to desecrate leading figures, such as symbolist Emiliano Pernetta (1866–1921), a native of Paraná State, and to eradicate the local culture in a rhetorical bid to restart it from scratch.
The publication was also responsible for the author’s entry into Brazilian editorial and literary circles. “This editorial initiative, for example, allowed Dalton Trevisan to maintain a close exchange of correspondence with Carlos Drummond de Andrade [1902–1987],” relates Souza. “It’s evident from these messages that the Paraná native sent texts for the modernist poet to read and suggest possible alterations. Another point worthy of note is the undertaking that Trevisan, Pilotto, and Walger, of Joaquim, entered into with Drummond: not to close down the magazine before issue number 20. And that’s what happened. The publication closed its doors with issue 21.”
Many of Trevisan’s stories are inspired by his time as a police reporter
Known for his interminable rewriting of his short stories, Trevisan has carried on refining them, even at an advanced age. “This practice is a procedure that reiterates certain values and ways of thinking about the story, and making it literary. This is proven by his rewriting—characterized by an unceasing quest to condense, to the point of cutting out episodes and characters from several texts,” says Leandro Valentin, a PhD in languages & literature at the São José do Rio Preto campus of São Paulo State University (UNESP). “By seeking to make the text as economical as possible, in this rewriting Trevisan frequently uses ellipsis of the subject in his clauses, and omits verbs, conjunctions, and other linking elements, giving emphasis to noun phrases. As literary critics have observed, this reductionism speaks of a desire for silence. The least said, the better,” adds the researcher, whose thesis on Brazilian short-story writers between 1950 and 1970, including Trevisan—defended in 2020—was supported by FAPESP.
This rewriting also shows up in the recurrence of certain characters who appear with the same name, such as João & Maria (historically Brazil’s most common given names). According to Valentin, this characteristic is used in repetition as a base literary procedure in Trevisan’s poetic style. “In addition to emphasizing the intertextual dialogue in his own work, the repetition points to a literary endeavour operating with combinations of a certain set of dramatic situations and characters,” comments the researcher. “Additionally, the reiterated repetition of such common names in Brazilian culture moderates the identity of the characters, making them stereotypical, more so for always being drawn within narratives that broach the subject of conjugal conflict. This highlights the sameness of human life.”
Trevisan was honored four times with the Jabuti Award in the short stories and chronicles category, one of which for Novelas nada exemplares (Novels not at all exemplary) (Livraria José Olympio Editora, 1959), the author’s third published book. He had already written Sonata ao luar (Moonlight sonata), released independently in 1945, and Sete anos de pastor (Seven years a pastor) (Edições Joaquim, 1948). Other titles included Cemitério de elefantes (Elephant cemetery) (Civilização Brasileira, 1964), Ah, é? (Oh, yeah?) (Record, 1994) and Desgracida (Disgraced) (Record, 2010). As well as the Jabuti, Trevisan has received some of the most notable Portuguese language prizes, such as the Portugal Telecom Literature Award (today known as Oceanos), in 2003; The National Library Foundation Literary Prize in 2008 and 2015; the Camões, and the Machado de Assis awards, both in 2012.
Another Curitiba
“On every corner of Curitiba, a Raskólnikov greets you, hand on hatchet under his jacket,” wrote the author in one of his microstories in 234 (Record, 1997), a nod to the lead figure of Crime and punishment by Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevski (1821–1881). “The Dalton Trevisan short stories gained fame in Brazilian literature for their themes of violence, hatred, solitude, and desire in a decadent world. With minimal, sometimes unremarkable episodes, his stories bring out the complexity of the human dramas that emerge from integration of everyday relationships,” says Valentin.
That violent, provincial, and terrible Curitiba, home to the marginalized, populated by drunks, prostitutes, murderers, and sexual predators, is a constant theme in many of Trevisan’s compositions, and can be seen clearly in stories such as “Uma vela para Dario” (“A candle for Dario”), “Cemitério de elefantes” (“Elephant cemetery”), and the celebrated “O vampiro de Curitiba” (“The vampire of Curitiba”), published in the 1965 book of the same name. In the story, Nelsinho, obsessed with sex, roams the streets of Paraná’s capital in search of women to satisfy his desires. He appears in other short narratives, such as “A noite da paixão” (“Night of passion”), the last short in the same work, in which he finds himself in the place of the “victim” on having sex with a toothless prostitute. This character became so famous that his image came to be confused with Trevisan himself, whose reclusive, interview-averse lifestyle only served to increase the mythical air surrounding him. His fictitious creations, though, are very much inspired by the time he spent working as a police reporter after graduating in law.
Mayara FerrãoThe vampire, then, is intrinsically linked to the city of Curitiba — also true for the author himself, who treats this urban backdrop differently than normally seen in literature. “It is very common in literature or recollective writing for the city of birth to be portrayed as a comforting place, evoking nostalgia. This is not, however, what happens in the works of James Joyce [1882–1941] and Dalton Trevisan,” comments Priscila Giacomassi, Portuguese and English language professor at the Federal Institute of Paraná (IFPR), and PhD in literary studies at the state’s Federal University (UFPR). Last year, in USP’s The Brazilian Journal of Irish Studies (ABEI Journal), she published an article comparing the city of Dublin in the works of Irishman Joyce to Trevisan’s Curitiba. According to the researcher, in the fictional universe of these writers, both cities are inhospitable, suffocating localities, from which the characters repeatedly yearn to escape. “These are not just settings—they take on a much greater role, like a dreadful ‘persona’ who imprisons their inhabitants and charts their fate.”
Giacomassi says that in these two places, the characters seek to escape from reality marked by frustration, decadence, and paralysis. “Nevertheless, escape turns out to be unfeasible. The impossibility of leaving the city’s physical space invariably has them transmuting this need through other types of evasion, such as dreams, reverie, and, most notably, drink.”
Just as the city is painted in a more raw, less idealized manner, so old age is also addressed from the same standpoint. This was the PhD research theme for Márcia Tavares, of the Federal University of Campina Grande (UFCG). In her thesis, defended at the Federal University of Paraíba (UFPB) in 2002, Tavares analyzed how this aspect appears in more than 60 Trevisan stories; she has been investigating the matter since then. “It’s not a sanctified old age, appealing to the memory; the author’s senior years are dry, hard, violent, solitary. Few of the short stories portray children being close to their parents. The males in this phase still imagine that they are vampires, and will seduce women, while the latter, not infrequently, iterate a recurring phrase: ‘As soon as he dies [the husband], I’ll start to live,” exemplifies the researcher.
In this sense it is a period of later years that intensifies the brutality and cruelty of youth. This is evident in stories in the compilation A guerra conjugal (The conjugal war) (Civilização Brasileira, 1969), starring João and Maria, who represent the various facets and phases of a marital relationship. In “Batalha de bilhetes” (“Battle of notes”), for example, despite living in the same residence, an elderly couple communicates only by way of notes, demonstrating affective alienation and solitude. “The characters at this stage of life have not accumulated wisdom. It’s as if their woes are only accentuated. There is no redemption for these people,” says Tavares.
The researcher highlights other aspects which, until her work, were not addressed in Brazilian literature on the theme: the restricted mobility of older folk in urban spaces, and the lack of collectivity in the stories with the elderly as main characters, marked by an individualist life and confined to their homes, with few outside contacts.
For Guimarães, of USP, Trevisan is Brazil’s most prominent living author, not only for the inventiveness and experimental slant of his body of work, but also for his attentive take on the world and on Brazil over a literary lifespan of more than eight decades. “Much is made of Dalton Trevisan’s repetition, but little is said of how varied his writing is, and how he has reshaped his work over the years. This is output that goes from the lyrical to the obscene; from the comical to the tragic; from the poignant to the farcical; astutely and gracefully chronicling the twists and turns of life,” says the researcher. “And these twists and turns lead as much to changes as to repetitions of the fundamental issues that affect us, which his writing captures in an unmistakable style.”
The story above was published with the title “Master storyteller” in issue 342 of august/2024.
Project
From periodicals to books: The boom of the Brazilian short story between the 1950s and 1970s (nº 16/20464-0); Grant Mechanism Doctoral (PhD) Fellowship; Supervisor Arnaldo Franco Junior (UNESP); Beneficiary Leandro Henrique Aparecido Valentin; Investment R$172,417.14.
Scientific articles
GIACOMASSI, P. C. Devouring hometowns: James Joyce’s Dublin and Dalton Trevisan’s Curitiba. Abei Journal, USP. Vol. 25, no. 1, pp. 99–115. June 2023.
SOUZA, F. Vanguarda e tradição no manifesto da revista Joaquim. Revista Brasileira de História. Vol. 42, no. 90, May–Aug. pp. 167–88. 2022.
TAVARES, M. O território da velhice em Dalton Trevisan. Anuário da Literatura, UFSC. Vol. 26, pp. 01-21. 2021.
Book
GUIMARÃES, H. S & PAIXÃO, F. (org.). Dalton Trevisan: Uma literatura nada exemplar. São Paulo: Tinta-da-China Brasil/IEB-USP, 2024.
