Jorge Amado was a modernist Brazilian writer. He remains one of the most read and translated Brazilian authors, second only to Paulo Coelho. In his style of fictional novelist, however, there is no parallel in Brazil. His work was further popularized by highly successful film and TV adaptations. He was a member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters from 1961 until his death in 2001. In 1994, his work was recognized with the Camões Prize, the most prestigious award in Portuguese literature. His literary work presents two distinct phases. In the first, there is a clear social critic and political focus, with works such as Captains of the Sands and Sea of Death standing out. In his more mature phase, he adopts an aspect of good-humored and sensual chronicler of his people, abandoning ideological motivations, with works such as Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon, The Double Death of Quincas Water-Bray and Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands.
This work is the novelized biography of Luís Carlos Prestes (1898-1990), written as a piece for the amnesty campaign for the communist leader. During the dictatorship of the Estado Novo, Prestes was imprisoned for his leading role in the frustrated attempt at revolution in Brazil in 1935. Originally published in Spanish in 1942, when Amado was in exile in Argentina, the book had clandestine circulation in Brazil until 1945. A huge success at the time, "O Cavaleiro da esperança" is only valid today as a historical curiosity. The work becomes didactic by showing how an engaged author operates. To serve the cause well, he defies form and content. Concerning aesthetics, Amado uses the socialist realism that prevailed in the Soviet Union. Addressing an imaginary reader, whom he calls "friend" or "black," he pours out superlative phrases about the myth he helps to create. Prestes emerges from the story as a caricatured hero. We are facing someone called "star in the black night, storm of the people, lightning in the darkness, northwest wind that shakes tyranny." It's as if Jorge Amado wrote while kneeling. The style is in no way reminiscent of the novels of manners that, from the end of the 1950s, guaranteed him the prestige possible for an author who always wanted to be famous. His communist activism marks Amado's first works. In fiction, however, the author sometimes needed to bend to the party's interests, creating characters that did not fully fit into the idealized model of the revolutionary proletarian. The content could serve as a more reliable source of information. It's less a biography than a eulogy. Leaving aside the hyperbolic adjective, perhaps the best thing is the detailed description of the Prestes Column, which crossed Brazil in the 1920s and contributed to the political circumstances that led to the Revolution of 1930. The reporting of other episodes has little to do with the facts. The author describes the meeting with Olga with romantic colors when it becomes known that the Soviet government had appointed Prestes' future wife to take care of his safety. In another example, Amado clears Prestes of responsibility for the death of young Elza, a companion of a communist leader and accused of treason, when it was clear that the execution order had come from him. The author left the Communist Party after the disclosure, in 1956, of Stalin's atrocities but never publicly disowned "The Knight of Hope." The closest he came to self-criticism was his admission in 1979 that the work was naive. He was right.
Fale das pessoas que você gosta com a mesma empolgação que o Jorge Amado fala do Prestes. O livro é bem bom, oferece uma boa perspectiva da primeira metade da vida do Prestes e, por ter sido escrito no auge da segunda guerra, oferece também muita perspectiva sobre como as movimentações políticas e geopolíticas eram percebidas por aqui. Existem passagens que infelizmente são meio arrastadas de se ler, como partes da marcha da Coluna Prestes, que em determinados momentos se torna um amontoado de nomes (e que bom que o Jorge Amado fez o trabalho de lembrar de cada um desses nomes para dar crédito, mas isso torna a narrativa um pouco enfadonha). Outro período que o livro se torna um pouco arrastado é quando Prestes é preso e seguido de umas 100~ páginas de tortura do Prestes, tortura de outros líderes da ALN, tortura da Olga, atualização sobre a guerra, tortura do Prestes, julgamento arranjado, tortura... Enfim, talvez esses "defeitos" no ritmo sejam características da própria história do biografado. A forma de narrativa que o Jorge Amado encontrou para contar essa biografia também é bastante interessante.
A gente aprende mto por cima a história desse importantíssimo personagem do nosso país. Foi isso que me remeteu a leitura dessa biografia (mesmo que não de toda sua vida) a importância de Luiz Carlos Prestes nos rumos do Brasil na primeira metade do século XX são tremendamente estratosféricos.
Sobre Jorge Amado, não é a toa que é um dos maiores escritores da nossa língua, simplesmente envolvente mesmo numa biografia densa e cheias de detalhe. Nos abre a visão embaçada que temos sobre essa personalidade que presumo não teremos a oportunidade de ver outro com tamanha grandeza.
Un panfleto, mas que un libro, de la figura de Luis Carlos Prestes. Se comprende por la urgencia del momento de luchar por liberarle. 75 años después sólo tiene Interes para los fanáticos de Amado o quien quiera co o er ese período de la historia de Brasil. Aun que seguramente habrá libros mas objetivos
Uma das leituras mais interessantes que fiz esse ano, Jorge Amado mistura biografia com romance, manifesto político e um toque de crítica literária que alimentou e acalantou meu coração de professora de literatura. A língua e a literatura nunca foram tão vivas quanto sob os comandos de Amado.