Uma forma oblíqua de falar de si: Carlos Heitor Cony e seus eus

Abstract

The literary and journalistic path taken by Carlos Heitor Cony might be explored in analytical investigations that aim at unveiling the meanings of the relationship between subject and language and individual, family, and historical memory. From the author’s literary production, the work Quase memória: quase romance [Almost memory: almost novel] has been selected to critical reflexive analysis as it was built around the search for past through memory. The narrator who is also the author waves around childhood, the time spent in the convent and the experience as journalist, all seen through the relationship with his father, a key character to return to rememberance. His work with chronicles was considered in the collections published as Os anos mais antigos do passado [The oldest years of the past] , O harém das bananeiras [Harem of banana trees], O tudo e o nada [Everything or nothing at all] and Eu, aos pedaços: memórias [Me into pieces: memories]. These books include particular and collective situations that might be formed by personal, professional, family and historical facts. They hold in their content the foundations that make singular the dimension of memory such as life experience, showing the author’s narrative ability as well as sufficient elements to the study of the writing of the self. In those books linked to his personal experience, Cony searches for translating relative truth or he mixes fiction with reality. In other passages, he uses as narrative strategy the character of his father to be able to speak of himself. He also builts through his father’s experience the history of printed journalism in Rio de Janeiro from 1950 onwards. The eye opening to the relationship between subjective world and objective world by the contemplation of his father’s universe is translated in meanings that enable us to understand, analyse, and interpret it including the memory of a time that cannot return but that can be translated in (re)signifying(s).