Never-Ending Youth: Book Review & Excerpt

Some excerpts from Alcir Pécora’s review of the novel “Never-Ending Youth” (A Mais Longa Duração da Juventude) by Urariano Mota in Racunho, Brazil’s literary journal (translated by Urariano Mota):

‘The Never-Ending Youth’ has a complex structure, full of twists and turns and flashbacks, as well as an unbridled ambition: to capture, in vivid detail, the decisive moments of the terrible years of 1972–73. Terrible, it is true, as the novel makes clear, yet significant as some of the best years of Júlio’s life—the narrator—who spent the rest of his life trying to recapture the intensity he had experienced during them. Paradoxically, he only succeeds in his quest when he learns of the death of his friend and former comrade-in-arms, Luiz do Carmo, in 2016. Although bitter, the news acts as Júlio’s Proustian madeleine, making him aware of the lingering presence within him of those years of guerrilla warfare, during which several comrades were killed. Now, at last, the awkward kiss he once stole from Soledad is returned to him in the form of the ongoing present he is trying to capture in his narrative.

The charged language also complements the sensuality that permeates the entire novel, cuts through the theoretical debates of Marxism and clashes with the Party’s moralism. Everything in Júlio’s guerrilla movement is lust, albeit repressed. It really does give the impression that the guerrilla movement is the very political expression of pent-up sexual desire, or vice versa. This lends greater intensity to the scenes set in the past, with Júlio’s eyes wandering boldly yet shyly over the thighs of the female guerrilla fighters, and it also prevents the struggle for socialism from becoming merely a struggle between political parties or ideas. It is sex that seeks the Cause amongst the vestiges of time; it is sex that calls for literature, which best conveys the Revolution. The spirit discovers the flesh, afflicting itself, so to speak.

At least three of these recurring scenes struck me as particularly powerful: the first shows the activist Vargas on the night bus home, certain that his downfall is imminent; during the journey, he becomes desperate and rebellious: for his own sake, out of fear of torture, but even more so because of the risk of dragging his partner – who had just given birth to a daughter – down with him. The second scene shows Júlio as a shy lover who, in a clumsy and abrupt gesture, ends up revealing what he had been hiding: his love for Soledad, which is intertwined with his devotion to the Revolution.

Corporal Anselmo’s betrayal is counterbalanced by Vargas’s self-sacrificing loyalty; whilst still on the bus, Vargas rebels against the death and torture that awaited him at the end of the journey, yet at the same time strives to keep a clear head in order to find a way to save his wife and daughter. Anselmo’s contempt for Soledad offends the passion with which Júlio devotes himself to her. Ultimately, Urariano Mota’s book is anachronistically romantic in a way that few others in the literature of the armed struggle have managed to achieve.

I must mention the significance of the city of Recife in the structure of the novel; it is not merely a setting, but its ultimate protagonist. Every moment Urariano brings to life in the characters’ memories is steeped in the landscapes of Recife. It is these landscapes that the comrades drink in until they lose sight of the fact that, according to the party, they ought not to get drunk or frequent prostitutes. The city’s physical and human geography, so to speak, brings together the most intense memory of each character — the one that lasts indefinitely and which Urariano’s literature seeks to capture.

It is Recife — its neighbourhoods and bars, the frevo and the jazz, the poets and the guesthouses, the red-light district and the bridge spanning the river, the ancient ghosts wandering, lost — that ignites the fever of time, superimposing 1972, 1973 and 2016. A fever incapable of providing a way out of the historical labyrinth of the failed guerrilla war, yet as potent as the erratic script of its spirit.”

Alcir Pécora is currently Brazil’s leading literary critic. He is the author of essays on Padre Vieira, a classic of the Portuguese language, as well as on other writers.

The guerrilla fighter Soledad Barrett, spied on until her death by her husband, Corporal Anselmo

By Urariano Mota

From the pages of the novel *Never-Ending Youth*, translated by Peter Lownds:

“Soledad has left the kitchen and is in their backyard in Jaboatão, talking with his and his brother Lenin’s girlfriends. She is knitting booties for the baby she is expecting within months. They say pregnant women grow more beautiful. But when pregnant women despair there is a shadow that accompanies this exuberant blush, a gaze that is not fixed on the future, but lowered to the ground. That is the way it was with Soledad in December, 1972. In Olinda where she and Daniel lived, as in Jaboatão, Soledad’s finura and delicadeza were seen by the women as the attributes of a “well educated girl.” She never raised her voice and was always attentive to what they told her and, when she smiled, she transmitted a feeling of feminine compassion and solidarity. They were not threatened by her foreignness or her beauty because she led with neither, punctiliously avoiding anything that could be even remotely interpreted as flirtatious whenever men were present. No ambiguous phrases, nothing that called attention to her or that made her seem in any way special. We did not know it then, but Soledad underwent extensive guerrilla training in Cuba. I spoke with Aton Fon, a fellow trainee, in 2009.

“What was Soledad like?”

“She was very, very serious.”

“How so?”

“She declined any help with the equipment she carried, even in the wilds of the Sierra Maestra ‘Treat me like a man, a compañero,’ she told us, ‘I can take care of myself.’”

“She was one of the few women there and surely the most beautiful. You never came on to her?”

“It never occurred to me.”

So much for instigation. Self-respecting men respect Soledad. While she fascinates less stolid types like me. Apparently, she never bared her legs in public. In the first wave of feminist affirmation, when young women wore short shorts and miniskirts. Soledad’s thighs, like Selene’s shanks, bore battle scars. Why was all this cautious downplay of her allure exempted for treacherous Anselmo? Why did a woman who was celebrated as Daniel Viglietti’s and Mario Benedetti’s Muse fall into his trap?

This is very upsetting to all her admirers—not only were we bested by a conservative snitch but the reason Soledad focused her hunger for love on an artless turncoat and killer who never appreciated or desired her as anything but an informant, a shield, and an alibi remains a painful mystery. Although it pisses me off to say so, he must have been or done something special for her to want to bear his child. I am convinced that their relationship had nothing to do with Anselmo’s unique qualities or Soledad’s mediocre needs. He conquered her because he had no scruples. He bamboozled her in ways that had nothing to do with desire. Namely, with heroic stories of his having been part of the 1964 Brazilian Navy rebellion, his enduring militance and in-depth knowledge of guerrilla tactics, his artistic accomplishments as a painter, photographer and tapestry maker and the purloined funds he donated to the socialist cause as an expert safe-cracker—all bullshit! He had been spy for the military since before the 1964 coup. He beguiled her, used her and destroyed her. He did not need to declare his love. Instead, he proposed that they work together on a number of projects in a free and open relationship. For Soledad, this proved irresistible. How could she fall for this con, this two-bit swindler? When it came to love, she had democratic or populist leanings that reflected her political credo. In the years of the dictatorship, the most ardent militants wanted to impress the immediacy of their partisan convictions on others’ hearts. Sometimes it was not even necessary to mimeograph the words of a pamphlet, because it had already been emotionally inculcated. Socialist militancy was a bubbling stew of sentiment, from the most pious Christian precepts to the sternest orders and commands. If we wanted to overthrow the world so that the exploited and oppressed would become the new sovereigns, then we would have to love the people who were marginalized by the rich and wellborn. From this point to the collapse of relationships, of feelings and of choice was a downhill journey. When the heart must submit to something external, it rebels, slowly and indecisively at first, but later shouts its protest against obligatory solutions. Now this may seem obvious but was not so fifty years ago when love for the people led some militants to marry women who worked in factories because they worked in factories. Today, we see that marriages between petty bourgeois partners or working class partners turn out better. But we considered having a political option good metaphysics because it meant respecting ordinary people. Sometimes, such fantasies met rapid ends. Others dragged on for years.

Soledad incorporated both the era’s predilection for revolution and a family legacy of anarchism which was no less revolutionary but whose intentions superseded a program based on reason. What her heart demanded was absolute freedom according to libertarian anarchist ideals, the antithesis of the conservative doctrine of the self-proclaimed “stewards” of Brazilian nationalism. The legator of this rebellious legacy was Soledad’s grandfather, the writer and philosopher Rafael Barrett who wrote: “As long as their pain does not create a fire in your guts, if even one day of hunger and abandonment does not ally you with the vast multitude of human beings, you will never understand.” As his philosophical legatee, it was not easy for Soledad to find people with whom to share her ancestor’s ardent belief in personal autonomy. That is when Anselmo appears as a self-sufficient, revolutionary angel, saying and doing all the right things. He is the ideal lover for someone who wants a unique companion, in favor of but distinct from the general populace. He would be the bravest of men when the world swirled with revolutionary violence. He would be the voice of experience when she wanted to lead and inspire. He would find a place if she needed to rest. He seemed to be everything she desired: a cultured companion without material concerns since he kept some of the money from his assaults on State enterprises for personal use. He was a serious and trustworthy man, one who knew the milieu into which she had been born, the socialist cause.

Then, there were the headlines of January, 1973, the picture of Soledad, made purposely obscured in the photo lab of the political repressors. They wanted to play down her beauty, to show her face as that of a violent subversive. The caption beneath the doctored photo said: “Soledad Barrett Viedma was sent to Northeast Brazil as an agent representing South American terrorist groups. She met Brazilian terrorists in Chile.” To see her defamed alongside Vargas was a double shock. I lost my balance crossing the Boa Vista Bridge and vomited into the turgid waters of the Capibaribe. There was a terrorist link, but my terror was the confirmation of a trauma, the death of a pregnant woman. That old fear, dating back to early childhood, when my mother died for lack of postnatal care, was reactivated by Soledad’s assassination. For me, there was a link beyond the homicides of six socialist militants—Maria, Nelinha and Soledad hold hands in my mind. Nelinha survived, but I was not aware of that at the time. The deaths of my mother, Maria, in 1958 and Soledad in 1973 were devastating. I am not a poet but, if that were my destiny, I would have written. “Father, why do you wound the object of my tender love? I know you want to harden my heart, to make me small, cruel and obdurate. I looked at my feet as I walked back across the bridge. My conscience was mute. Giving voice to your conscience was against the law, even in your inner world where you voice opinions only to yourself. Inner landscapes of shame and fear must be hidden from the hegemony. We silenced our consciences because men like Medici, Fleury and Anselmo abounded. Scoundrels were everywhere. In the poisoned garden of the dictatorship, they sprouted like noxious weeds”.

Urariano Mota is a writer and journalist, author of the novels "Soledad in Recife" and "Never-Ending Youth" which narrate the Brazilian dictatorship.

See also: Betrayal and love between Soledad Barrett and Corporal Anselmo during the Brazilian dictatorship