“I liked to fuck with the beasts in the valley of the shadows”: the question of the subterraneous in the work of Lourenço Mutarelli
Lourenço Mutarelli; cave allegory; subterraneous.
The present work has as general proposal to study the composition of the fictional universe of Lourenço Mutarelli. We propose to discuss the aesthetic expression of this author, the main themes emanating from this universe, and, ultimately, the representations of reality that are constructed from this work. However, it would be impossible to cover, even superficially, a work as vast and dense as the mutarellian; a work who sums up, up to the moment of production of this work, 7 (seven) novels, 13 (thirteen) HQs and 1 (one) book of collected pieces – not to mention scketchbooks, fanzines and other strictly visual productions. So that we could accomplish this task in a plausible and yet deeper way, an objective cut was necessary. We then emphasized Lourenço Mutarelli's romanesque production, focusing more specifically on two of his works, which served as our object of study: O cheiro do ralo, the author's inaugural novel, and A arte de produzir efeito sem causa. Within these works, we focus our attention even more, turning to the question of the subterraneous in the mutarellian literature. Supported by the philosophical perspectives of Plato (2011) and Nietzsche (2005); by the critical-philosophical reflections of Kelsen (2008), Trabattoni (2010) and Vattimo (2010); by theories and methodologies of Auerbach (2011), Bakhtin (2009) and Adorno & Horkheimer (1985); and still under the analytical bias of Marshal Berman (1986), we construct our criticism. Our approach was then based on three key steps, developed over three chapters. In Chapter I, anchored by the comparative reading of elements of platonic philosophy – with emphasis on the cave allegory – and nietzschean philosophy, we dedicate ourselves to the first step of our approach: to discuss and construct the theoretical concept of subterraneous; a concept that, a posteriori, we use as a key to analyze the mutarellian work. Next, we turn to the commentary on the formal construction of language, the narrative elements and the thematic discussions of mutarellian prose. Finally, we raise our criticism to the level of reading the representations of reality, and we started to comment on the criticism of reality perpetrated by the question of the subterraneous in Lourenço Mutarelli’s novels. These last two analytic steps are developed in both Chapter II and III of our work, each of these chapters centered around one of the novels we take as object here.