 |
| 2012 |
Cities recapture what they once were. Oblivion, the
dissimulated manifestation of any loss, is the unresolved ever-present
"endless cycle" (227). A Noite
das Mulheres Cantoras, one of the latest books of Lídia Jorge, is set in Lisbon in
the late 80's, representing the stage of a society saturated with
"presentism" (Hartog). This extraordinary tale(s) of five female
singers against the ephemerality of the "minute empire" (expression
that describes the dizzying speed of the roaring eighties) is an exercise of
"acknowledging the singularities" (Traverso, 2008) - "I go back
to the trivialities of the past and tie myself to their use" (30) - of the
collective history of the "realm of the ephemeral" (18) into which
post-revolution Portugal and post-war Europe in general were transformed. On
the one hand, these are the singularities of a group of women who are
"joyful because they are so sad" (152). On the other hand, these are
the singularities of a time without "any visible order" (312), of a
time of both celebration and mourning. They are described from the perspective
of Solange de Matos, the protagonist and first-person narrator. Although at
first sight the scenes show no causal relation between one another, they
interweave the thread of the narrative as they are bound together by
remembrance, absurd and the art of improvisation when faced with memory gaps.
In short, the narrative focuses on a woman's body - the narrator's and
simultaneously of all women - looking for a stage while straining against the
transcendence of the "limitless abundance" (310) and its underlying
oblivion - "If I insist on the oblivion issue, it is because maybe no
other issue has been this important" (229). Furthermore, the stage is also
the text, and the act of writing memory is the way of simultaneously
celebrating and putting on the show.
The plot: the eighties and a mysterious halo of
forbidden uncertainties, the beginning of "The Society of the
Spectacle" in Portugal, shortly after it entered the European Union.
Solange is a 19-year-old student who started the music group ApósCalipso
together with Gisela Batista, the Unstoppable Maestro, the Alcides sisters,
Maria Luísa and Nani, and Madalena Micaia, the black jazz singer. They intend
to change the world with their music - "We want to forget everything that
is behind us and to determine everything that is before us" (198). The
story focuses on the recording of their debut album and especially on their
rehearsals. In fact, a series of uncommon adventures takes on the narrative,
where laughter goes hand in hand with naked bodies on stage and catastrophe. To
be quickly forgotten is another feature of the "minute empire".
However, behind a curtain there is always an old looking glass - the other side
of the illusion -, which is also where the world ends and starts.
This tale is told 21 years after the "minute
night" or "Perfect Night", which refers to the night when the
main characters meet again in a live TV game show. The real threat is the past
- "Anyone who tries to reproduce it is a fool" (24) - which dictates
the need to tell. This is also the tale about what is left of that ghostly
realm of comfort and abundance - and over and over gets buried and resurfaces
-, because "the history of a group always reflects the history of a
people" (9). The well-kept secret of this group mingles with the one of
this "suspended world" (14) - impossible to disentangle from one
another -, namely Portugal in the eighties. In fact, its tragicomic history is
described as an "unstoppable mass of air" (202).
To a certain extent, the eighties were the time when
art took over the stage - "I believe we are on a stage and all
improvisation is allowed" (245). Lídia Jorge describes the memory of
several bodies in ecstasy taking on several stages: time, which is volatile,
reconstructed and facing oblivion; space, namely the city, here representing
the large stage of the profound social and cultural changes Portugal was undergoing.
These bodies are also transformed into spectacle, "dancer[s]" (281)
of memory and of the surrounding scenery, the "bright" city (150),
"full of junk and drifting papers" (197). However, a body vanishes.
Narrative is also a way of bringing into scene that empty space, filled by the
silence of practically all that is mute in history and in memory. In a body
brought back on stage, its disappearance stands out. Celebration or mourning?
There is no definite premise. Meanwhile, both coexist peacefully in this
"small minute world which Earth has become" (299). What one knows for
sure is that irony is also a state of exhilaration and that the text is the
balance or the art of (un)tidying up and making everything fall into place.*
* - publicado em Portuguese Literary & Cultural Studies, 25, 199-202.
