The quest for an “adequate verbal sedation” – overflying the genesis of Carlos de Oliveira’s Finisterra, Paisagem e Povoamento

Abstract

The following essay focuses on four specific material objects, found at the archives belonging to the set of literary papers left by Portuguese author Carlos de Oliveira (1921-1981), presently under the care of Museu do Neo-Realismo, in Vila Franca de Xira, Portugal. It consists of three handwritten notebooks, two of them penned before the publication of Finisterra, Paisagem e Povoamento (novel, 1978), and one after; and also on a set of 5 loose typed sheets, dated 1970 and titled “Cosmogony”. In the two notebooks written prior to publication date, the author sketch­es “notes” and “schemes”, appending a series of remarks about the craft of writing. In the third one, Carlos de Oliveira replies to a “curious fe­male reader” of the novel, explaining details and references, and re­senting the critics who, by his own words, “failed to understand” the inner logic of the narrative. “Cosmogony”, on its part, represents the “philosophical” rationale of the novel. Thus, emphatically, the 27 handwritten pages on the three notebooks allow us to retrieve – in a contin­uous, progressive survey – both the pre-existence of the novel and, also, a crucial part of its posterity.