Svět Literatury (Oct 2017)
Rozpadající se dvoukolka na blátivé cestě. Prostor domu v románu Carlose de Oliveiry Včela v dešti // A derelict barrow on a muddy road. Space of a house in the novel A Bee in the Rain
Abstract
The study offers an interpretation of the novel A Bee in the Rain (1953) from the perspective of a house. The novel is the last in the so-called Gandara tetralogy, a collection of neorealist prose which Carlos de Oliveira set in his childhood country, a poor and barren land of sand dunes in central Portugal. The house of the declining Silvestre family becomes a battleground between a man and a woman and in the end also between social classes. A barrow heavily making its way on a muddy road, in which the Silvestres are fighting for space, becomes a miniature of the house and a reflection of its fate. Next the house is compared to a beehive with a decaying swarm inside whose bees, blinded with spite, make bile instead of honey and spread it around. The neorealist level of the novel gives way to the symbolic level. The author works primarily with the symbols of honey, fire and gold, which he juxtaposes with the symbols bile, water and mud.
