As figurações da morte em Baú de Ossos, de Pedro Nava

Abstract

The present dissertation has as its most relevant objective to discuss death in Pedro Nava, notably in the work Baú de Ossos – although we have drawn from other sources, such as interviews and personal notes. Many critics of Nava's work noted that the influence of death in the Memórias is massive. Analyzes usually conclude that the presence of death is justified by its denial; of, through writing, forging a sentinel of life against the devastating feeling of finitude. In short, there would be the manifest intention of conferring perenniality on the transience of the human condition. In our turn, however, we would like to predict death by other paths: by the bias of its confirmation. Knowing that he is the loser of death, it is up to Pedro Nava to just “practice” dying; and the path of biological death is learned, above all, through the destruction that time undertakes in everything that exists, because remembering is not living – it is dying. In this sense, in the end, we hope to have demonstrated that Baú de Ossos is a long and opulent maturation and preparation of man for death – death as its absolute, irremissible and definitive term.