The “bloody fact” (“fato cruento”) and the experiment of tragic continuity in the short stories of O cego e a dançarina, by João Gilberto Noll.

Abstract

This article revisits the collection of short stories O cego e a dançarina (1980), by João Gilberto Noll, using the expression “bloody fact” (“fato cruento”), presented in the last short story, to explain the evolutions of a violent, destructive imaginary, which transits from eroticism to the effective immolation of the body. From the analysis of these variations, the element can be associated with the fictional landscape defined by the tragic alienation of human life, whether in an intellectual, affective, or libidinal sense. On the other hand, we aim to read it as a resource of human continuity by intervening in this landscape through excess. The experiment would also respond to a metaliterary reflection by dramatizing the narrative and representative limits through the event perspective, here mediated by the theatrical and performative reference dear to Noll’s creative imagination.