From the report of discourse to the polyphonic discourse in Eu Hei-de Amar uma Pedra

Abstract

The novel Eu Hei-de Amar uma Pedra is a characteristic novel within the work of Lobo Antunes. It is a work in which there is not one novelistic line as in traditional novels. The novel is organized into four parts (the photographs; the consultations; the visits; the narratives), apparently without any sense connecting them. But the connecting thread among them lies in the voices of the characters, which are heard throughout the novel in memories of moments of their lives. The polyphonic play of the many voices repeated till exhaustion keeps the characters alive through the ilocutory power of enunciation. Thus, subjectivity is transformed into intersubjectivity and in the mirroring of psychological acts that are expressed through loose units, leaving to the reader the task of fitting one into the other. Thus, the characters acquire body and soul along the work by means of echoing evocations in every speech act, which, though propositionally identical, become intentionally different by each repetition. To say is to do, but to say is also to build oneself. The analysis of the speech acts clarifies efficiently the workings of the novelistic dialogues in the work of António Lobo Antunes. The same happens in this novel.