O gosto pelas coisas mortas: Uma leitura de Diorama, de Carol Bensimon

Abstract

The tragic murder of João Carlos Satti, a well-known politician and journalist from Porto Alegre, mobilizes the media and the society of Rio Grande do Sul in the 1980s. Cecília, the daughter of the main suspect and a fellow legislative assembly member, recounts these events, mapping out the city she left behind to become a successful taxidermist in the United States. This is the premise of Diorama, a novel by Carol Bensimon (2022), which delves into the fictionalization of one of the most emblematic crimes witnessed by Rio Grande do Sul: the murder of journalist and state deputy José Antônio Daudt, a strong and controversial figure in the scenario at the time. Balancing between lived history and imagined history, the author employs a complex narrator, who oscillates between two distinct periods: her childhood in the 1980s and thirty years later, when she lives in the United States and decides to return to Porto Alegre. This article aimed to investigate the narrative devices of the ingenious construction of Diorama, which at times presents a third-person voice and at others a first-person voice, while also discussing the importance of space in the development of both the character and the work as a whole: the house in Porto Alegre; the museums where the protagonist works; places and non-places that reflect Cecília’s actions and deepen the novel’s intimate and detective story elements. Furthermore, Diorama rescues a crime of homophobia in the silencing of the voices of marginalized groups, even those who flirt with power, as was the case with Satti/Daudt. As theoretical framework, the text draws on names such as Brian Richardson, Otto Bollnow, Marc Augé, Erich Fromm, Luis Alberto Brandão, Luiz Antonio Assis Brasil, among others.