Tenho mais almas que uma: o percurso ficcional de Ricardo Reis, da heteronímia pessoana às telas de cinema

Abstract

This study aims to examine, through the lens of the character category, Ricardo Reis´s fictional trajectory, as conceived by three Portuguese authors: Fernando Pessoa, the original creator, who devised the heteronym in the 20th century´s first decade; José Saramago, who transubstantiated him into a protagonist novel, in The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis (1984); and João Botelho, the homonymous film adaptation´s (2020) director. Regarding the first movement — heteronymy/novel —, scholars had already produced a number of studies, as seen in works dating back to the 1980s, such as those by Luís Rebelo (1985) and Teresa Cristina Cerdeira (1989), as well as in more recent publications by authors like Carlos Reis (2017; 2018a; 2028c) and Sara Grünhagen (2021; 2022; 2024). The present research seeks to investigate the implications of this trajectory, also considering the second and more recent Ricardo Reis´s transmutation — from literary language to film language — as well as the symbolic representations inherent in the transition between media. As a starting point, the investigation is guided by the following research question: how can one analyze, through character´s category, the meanings produced throughout Ricardo Reis’s trajectory, from heteronymy, through novelistic adaptation, to filmic adaptation? To this end, the analysis draws on concepts such as character (Candido, 2011; Gomes, 2011; Brait, 2014; 2017; Reis, 2001; 2017; 2018), hypertextuality (Genette, 2010), adaptation (Stam, 1992; 2003; 2006; 2008; Hutcheon, 2013; Azerêdo, 2012; 2013; 2019; 2022), intermediality (Rajewsky, 2012), dialogism (Bakhtin, 1997a; 1997b; 2002; 2019; Barros, 1997), among others. Ricardo Reis, one of Pessoa’s three main heteronyms, was chosen by José Saramago to have his biography, outlined in detail by Pessoa, continued. Saramago thus drew upon elements found in letters and other Pessoa´s writings to construct a fictional character based on another fictional being, which is one possible definition of a heteronym. In this way, Ricardo Reis is displaced from the condition of an invented poet to that of a novelistic character, marking the first shift in his fictional trajectory. With The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis as a film adaptation, a second, even more analytically productive shift can be observed, since the strategies used in the adaptation process can serve to construct and, above all, to expand the meanings of the original work of art. This research aspires to contribute to a deeper understanding of the character category by tracing Ricardo Reis’s fictional trajectory across diverse semiotic domains, while also engaging with the thematic contemporaneity of Botelho’s film, which enhances film adaptation´s polysemic nature. It is hoped, therefore, that this research will offer a critical contribution both to the field of literary studies, particularly through engagement with the works of such distinguished authors as Fernando Pessoa and José Saramago, and to the broader discussion of literary adaptations into other media, with a specific focus on cinema through the analysis of João Botelho’s work.