Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the novel The Sad End of Policarpo Quaresma [(1915) 2015], by Brazilian novelist Lima Barreto, focusing on the intertextual dialogue with Tolstoyan pacifism. It will point out eventual convergences and tensions between ethnography, testimony and fictionalisation.

Paper long abstract:

Early literary criticism understood much of Lima Barreto's writing as overly biographical, therefore lacking in literariness. Such evaluation echoed ambiguously on his last novel, The Sad End of Policarpo Quaresma [(1915) 2015], which was acclaimed as a masterpiece of the Brazilian literature of social critique after the author's death. Subsequent readings focused on his merciless critique of nativism and correlate militarist and authoritarian tendencies of the positivist ideology, which dominated the early years of Republican régime in Brazil. Notwithstanding this, the paper suggests that the critique of authoritarianism and militarism in The Sad End of Policarpo Quaresna has as an implicit counterpart in the pacifist ideal prevalent in the anarchist movement of the early 20th century. More closely, the paper contends that the novel resonates with Tolstoy's prolific production - both fictional and non-fictional - on pacifism and non-violent resistance. Such interlocution field will be used to explore the convergences and tensions between ethnography, testimony and fictionalisation.