Abstract:
This article discusses the image of Brazil in Robert Menasse’s Sinnliche Gewißheit and Selige Zeiten, brüchige Welt. Sensuality and regression play a decisive role within these two novels’ as they are essential to the author’s rendering of Brazilian characters. The relief provided by mimesis and regression, as discussed by Jeanne Marie Gagnebin, are at the root of a kind of Dionysian pleasure which is portrayed by Menasse as an important aspect of Brazilian culture. This mimetic experience is related to the abandoning of crystallized cultural identities, to the dissolution of the self in the dream (or in nightmare) of Heg el’s sinnliche Gewissheit . Its renderings in the novel can be seen as criticizing the social reality in Brazil in the final years of the military dictatorship.
Key-words:
Austrian literature; forgetfulness; sensuality; dionysism; literary rende rings of Brazil