Forgotten writings: about Quatro-olhos, by Renato Pompeu, and a reminder of Kant

Abstract

The traces of memory have been printed along with the lines of writing since the first texts. However, that same line is also moved by another force that may fragment it, build blanks around it or even take it to the edges of impossible: forgetting. We don’t refer to the other side of memory, its opposing form or counterpart, but to something that, in filling memory with empty spaces, makes it possible. In literature, there are texts moved mostly by the forces of memory – such as diaries and testimonies. We should ask, on the other hand, what forms texts moved by forgetting could take. Texts which, incapable of assessing the past, come from absences, empty spaces, abysses of memory. Thus, texts that come from the impossibility of remembrance. In order to search for answers for this question, we will recur to two manifestations of this writing of forgetting: a note that Immanuel Kant wrote to himself to remind him of forgetting a former butler, and the novel Quatro-olhos, by Renato Pompeu, written during the harshest times of Brazilian military dictatorship.