Revista Brasileira de Literatura Comparada (May 2023)
ABIONAN AND EXU MEET IN THE MIDDLE OF THE WAY: THE UNFOLDING OF THE NOVEL INTO A TRIOLOGY, IN ANTONIO OLINTO
Abstract
This piece has the literary series Soul of Africa, by Antonio Olinto, as its object of study and investigates the mechanisms that operate an internal requirement of the narrative language, responsible for promoting the unfolding of the Olinto novel into a trilogy. By following the path indicated by Pereira (2017) and Sodré (2017), a theorical-critical approximation between the operation of the fold (DELEUZE, 1991) and specific elements from the Yoruba mythology and culture, strongly present in the trilogy, was sought. The way the relationship between the three novels is structured, starting from the role that is played by the second book, The King of Keto (OLINTO, 2007b), was investigated. With this, particularly considering the connections between the female protagonist Abionan and the Orixá Exu (PRANDI, 2020; VERGER, 2018), a narrative economy was identified punctuated by the principles of ambivalence, repetition and expansion, that are responsible, among other things, for the affirmation of certain existential experiences in the Yoruba worldview. Such principles, which the figures of Exu and Abionan specially condense, promote the expansive force of Olinto’s narrative language. Such an effect is seen, for example, in the syntax of the sentence, where the option for the comma, instead of the period, implies continuity; but also in the broad syntax of the trilogy, in which, specially the second book behaves as a comma-novel, an opening space for the expansion of the novelistic form.
