Eco de Dias Submersos – Uma Leitura de Rio Homem de André Gago

In André Gago’s Rio Homem, the personal fate of resignation and exile of an individual (a fugitive from the Spanish Civil War) is intertwined with the fate of an idyllic community on the verge of extinction (Vilarinho das Furnas). The time span of the narrative is between the arduous period of Rogelio’s escape and his (involuntary) suicide in the early 1970s (coinciding with the submersion of Vilarinho). The narrative is punctuated by moments of contextualization of the historical and political, national and international conjuncture. Vilarinho das Furnas emerges as an emblematic stronghold of individual and collective resistance to a leveling modernization process. In addition to being a human oasis, through the aforementioned main character, Vilarinho das Furnas emerges as an archaic prototype of a utopian community at a time of withdrawal from the political vanguard. In the novel, the nostalgic feeling for doomed places – irreversibly affected by degradation and dilapidation of the biological and cultural-historical environment – is accompanied by a fascination for the absolute magnitude of the forces of nature and also, here and there, by a mitigated fascination (tinged with terror) for the relative magnitude of modernizing forces.