Keywords
Exile
Writing
City
Responsibility
How to Cite
Abstract
My reading unfolds, in the novel Jesusalém, by Mia Couto, not only the implications of its title, but also those of its English and Brazilian editions. It starts by putting into play, both the ambivalent meaning of the adverb “além”, there referred to the name of “Jesus”, and the paronomasia with Jerusalem (a city ethically, politically, and religiously thought in Au-delà du verset, by Emmanuel Lévinas). It stresses out in Silvestre’s character not only his certain denial of the Christian faith, but also both the causes for his exile from the city and for his madness, his melancholic survival to the death of his wife, Dona Dordalma. Regarding Mwanito’s writing, the novel’s fictional author. I also examine its compatibility both to the deconstructive concept of “writing in general”, by Jacques Derrida, and to the concept of image, in Emmanuel Lévinas, entailing both the same sort obliteration of “being” as a full presence.
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