Stories of Paraná - Where's all this?

Stories of Paraná - Where's all this?

Where is all this?
Roberto Gomes

I hope no one intends to sniff this little text, claims or doctrinal preaching of new directions
for literature in Paraná. I only wish to register a wonder that haunts me since I set foot on this land.
Initially, it was a shock for me to discover literature Dalton Trevisan, which at that time, it is worth remembering, had more detractors than supporters. Was only recognized after the recovery of his work outside the boundaries of Paraná.
Things provinces? Small resentments, in which the vampire is a master? Maybe.
And the amazement following: Prisoner of the small urban-industrial reality of Blumenau, where I was born, I was fascinated by the rich history of the colonization of Paraná. Custei even understand, if we understand it today, its diversity, the mix of people coming from different parts of Europe and Brazil.
Regional differences seemed amazing. The coastline isolated or early decay, the Old North stopped in time. The southeast and north pioneer with their struggles, their thugs, their amazing ability to produce and enrich. And more: The Paraná which was seen by Head
Cow, by Caingangues, monks, the stories around some legendary figures (Mane Machete, Lupion, Baron of Cerro Azul), episodes related to the Revolution of 1893, with the Siege of Lapa, the Contested.
I wondered: how it all turned not literature? I am not referring to an isolated work, but a literature, a line of literary creation and research that could find here a rich lode.
I think it is not arbitrary remember that it is a constant in the large literature in Brazil to historical theme. The mines we have in mind is largely formed by what they wrote and Guimarães Rosa Drummond.
How to understand the Rio Grande do Sul without Erico, José Guimarães, Luis Antonio de Assis Brazil and regionalist literature? The northeast is an obvious example, but also the Rio de Janeiro (Machado Marques and Antonio Rebello Callado) and São Paulo. And today the historical novel is renewed, revealing attracting new authors and established as Ruben Fonseca.
Where it all in Parana? Where the political, economic, social? Where violence, deaths, betrayals, tyrannies.
Where is the man of flesh and blood Paraná who died in an ambush? Where is the passion to live and die, to dream and to betray, to lie and steal, to explore and create, not just the idyllic Paraná of ​​Paranistas, or worse, the advertisers? Where, in the literature, traces of Poty?
The few examples I know are part of a recent generation. There Joseph Angeli, with good and forgotten novel "The City of Alfredo Souza", perhaps hampered by a disastrous issue.
AFI Sundays Pellegrini, who gave life to characters that would only be possible in Paraná, such as "The Red Man" and "The Seven Plagues". And we have the remarkable case, "The Mez's Grippe" by Xavier Valêncio, this delicious book-text-object collage that reinvents both the literary treatment of historical material.
And just because, although excellent, are isolated works.
Writing a novel, still unpublished, about gangsters, squatters and settlers companies, I was forced to face mountains of documents to answer simple questions: how he dressed, loved, amused, a roughneck in the west in the 50s? No one believed that
squatter wagon coming from the interior of Rio Grande do Sul to settle in Gleba Missions? What they thought of themselves an owner of company land and its chief engineer? What did women while their men were armed ambushes or fled to the woods? That figure could emerge a deserted road between Beltran and Quince, in October 1957?
The Paraná is literary to be invented. This is not to dismiss the urban fiction or one that does not use historical material.
It is to ask: where did all this? Why not turn fiction? And if the question is legitimate, it will not be for this reason that the image of Paraná lends itself to so many manipulations stereotyped, are idyllic, segregation, gender Paranista paradise lost, or advertising?
In summary, there are many literatures on the Lord's abode. The absence of Paraná in the head of the writing can be a serious injury, though not any obligation to anyone.

Roberto Gomes, professor and director of Editora UFPR


Source: Stories of Paraná, Brasil.