Babel, dispersion, unfinished matters: the writing of bordering and the text of fruition, a scale of confluences between Osman Lins and Roland Barthes

Abstract

Pernambuco writer Osman Lins’ understanding of the literary profession, the fictional formulations, philosophical questions and aesthetic innovations, throughout his work, especially in the novel Avalovara (1973), overlaps with Roland Barthes’ propositions regarding the “Fruition text” – causing destabilization, discomfort, loss and wavering regarding the reader’s historical, cultural and psychological bases. The writer’s and reader’s crisis concerning language and representation is illustrated in this article based on the myth of Babel and the signs of misfortune and incommunicability that characterize the Osmanian work, perceived in the German character Roos in her linguistic mismatch with the leading character Abel. Built with the purpose of reaching out to the sky, the Babel Tower is associated with disagreement, disorder, dispersion, resulting in misfortune, failure and ruin. Along with Roland Barthes, reflections by Zumthor and Benjamin are important to understand the notion of unfinished matters, confirming the notion that language proves to be flawed and insufficient. Based on the Barthesian record of enjoyment and fruition, we highlight in the studied novel the narrative tension based on syntactic ellipses, textual fraying, the shuffling of phonemes and words fusion.