DREAMS IN YELLOW/ VICENT IL MATTO
(Sonhos em Amarelo)
Reviews Giunti Editore edition - Italy
https://biblioragazziletture.wordpress.com/2014/05/27/vincent-il-matto/
http://latartarugasimuove.blogspot.com.br/2015/04/recensione-vincent-il-matto-di-luiz.html
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22064063-vincent-il-matto-quell-anno-con-van-gogh
MASTERPIECE TREATS KIDS
AS GROWN-UPS
Gustavo Bernardo *
Originally
published in
O GLOBO ** on
06/10/2007
One way of evaluating the quality of a book for
children is to observe the reactions of an adult as he reads it. If the book
“holds on to” the adult’s attention and emotions, then the adolescent reader
will also consider it a good book. This is because the adolescent is a lot more
adult than vain pedagogy would have us believe.
While our social system, and the corresponding
communications media, make considerable efforts to stretch out infancy and to
ward young people from any sort of responsibility for as long as possible,
there are bastions of intelligence, affectivity and responsibility that still
resist. They show up and shine forth each time a teacher treats his pupils, not
as equals, but as responsible peers, or when bright young people come across a
book that neither belittles their intelligence nor treats them like babies,
i.e. when they find a book that respects them like the adults they already are.
Luiz Antonio Aguiar is one of the writers who show
this respect. His latest short novel for young people is called Dreams in yellow: the boy who didn’t forget
Van Gogh (São Paulo: Melhoramentos, 2007). Succinct assessment: this is
nothing less than a masterpiece. When we read it, we are profoundly touched, as
though we still were... youngsters! On the other hand, it is easy to imagine
that a “real” youngster, on reading the book, would stoutly affirm that “it’s
not for children!”, and that was exactly why he enjoyed reading it: to be
treated as someone who has a grown-up heart and brain.
The narrative solution adopted by Luiz Antonio
encompasses this condition: the story is told by a gentleman of 37, just on the
brink of World War I, as he reminisces about the time when he was only 11. This
narrator is a “real-life” character transposed into fiction: his name is
Camille Roulin. When he was a boy, his portrait was drawn a number of times by
Vincent Van Gogh. One of these portraits became one of the painter’s most
famous works and hangs in the São Paulo Art Museum – the title is: Boy with Cap.
The story takes place towards the end of the painter’s
life, when he was at his most productive, and when he most suffered. The
narrator’s father, a simple postman called Joseph Roulin, became Van Gogh’s
closest friend. The humble father and his young son seem to understand Van Gogh
and his painting better than his contemporaries do, including the famous Paul
Gauguin.
Interlaced with the painstaking description of the
day-to-day life style of a small village in the South of France between the
years of 1888 and 1890, when the painter killed himself with a shot in the
heart, we read the spectacular description-narrative of a number of Van Gogh’s
most famous paintings. We say “description-narrative” because they are
presented to us through the eyes of a boy who saw them being painted, so they
are shown to us in movement, right from the first outline sketches. The
narrator’s perception of these paintings is illuminative, because he sees them
with the virgin outlook that was so sought after by the philosophy of the time,
phenomenonology.
This perception clashes with the prejudices of those
who in no way accept the “uncertainty of beauty”, if we may use the expression,
promoted and provoked by the paintings of Van Gogh. The village big-shots had
no time for either the painter’s bipolar aggressive / timid personality or for
his painting, which gave them vertigo. On page 53, one of them, nameless by
design, discourses with rancor: “Can anyone tell me what we can learn from his
paintings? They are evil! What edifying message can they give us? (...) his
brush distorts everything it touches. Nothing he paints is recognizable; it is
all delirium, all falsification. (...) His paintings offer the eyes everything,
but leave nothing for the mind or spirit.”
Luiz Antonio Aguiar’s novel promotes everything that
is contrary to the words of the nameless character. The book has absolutely no
pretensions towards edifying or didactic literature; it is a literature that
purposely distorts reality so as to better show new and novel perspectives.
Like the painter’s works, they neither confirm nor reaffirm the clichés that
stick in our minds, but rather offer the reader’s eyes and imagination a
plethora of intense color, just as they should.
* Gustavo Bernardo is professor of Literary Theory at UERJ, Rio de
Janeiro. He wrote some essays, like A dúvida de Flusser and A
ficção cética, and some novels, like A alma do urso e Reviravolta.
**
O Globo is the newspaper of greatest
number of copies sold everyday in Brasil and one of the most influential in
Brasil.
About "Dreams in Yellow" in YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAW3KWW8ui0
In Amazon:
http://www.amazon.it/Vincent-matto-Quellanno-Van-Gogh/dp/8809792254
Contact Luiz Antonio Aguiar
luizantonio.aguiar@gmail.com
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