Being and non-being: truth and fiction in the construction of the self in O ano da morte de Ricardo Reis

Abstract

This essay is the result of a reflection on the concepts of identity and mimesis in the reading of the novel O ano da morte de Ricardo Reis [The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis] by José Saramago.  Bydiscursively embodying Fernando Pessoa’s heteronym, Saramago foregrounds themes such as the disenchantment and constitution of the subject and the impossibility of a fixed identity. Within the context of the first half of the 20th Century, the experience appears equally fragmented by capitalist and technological advancement and the consequences of modernity that become clearer in the 21st century with the digital simulacrum and its possibilities. By inserting a heteronym with the mindset from the years of 1935 and 1936, Saramago also explores correlated themes such as mimesis, simulacrum, memory and time, which makes the scenario a speculative part of the fiction’s problematic structure. This essay’s questions have no difference from the ones made beforehand by Pessoa, Reis and Saramago: Who are we? Who do we believe ourselves to be? I intend to point out how fiction and its mirroring make possible an experience from within and without the self, from the other; pivotal experiences either to the construction of the self and of what might be the draft of a reply to the previous and initial questions.