O espectro da morte ou “a eterna grinalda brilhante” em Neverness de Ana Teresa Pereira

Abstract

“Benjamin observed that in memory (which is something different from memory understood as a motionless archive) we operate in the past, in a way we make it possible again”, says Giorgio Agamben. Based on this assumption, our intervention intends to analyze the theme of photography in the work of Ana Teresa Pereira, one of the most original voices in contemporary literature, who has always devoted special attention to the regime of the image. She creates a process that always begins with an image of a reference artist who belongs to the reservoir of mental images of our contemporaneity, thus making it ‘possible again’ but from a different perspective. In this regard, the novel Neverness by Ana Teresa Pereira presents various analogies with the story “The little photographer” by Daphne du Maurier. In particular, both narratives approach the theme of photography as an object of fascination and blackmail, offering us different suggestions for reflection on the relationship between image and literature. The present contribution aims to investigate, from a comparative perspective, the narrative functionality of photography in the above-mentioned Portuguese novel and the mechanism of reactivation of the English short story as the transformation of memory as a fantastic image.