Travels, regimes, views: Fernando Namora in the Soviet Union and in the United States

Abstract

This essay focuses on two books by the Portuguese author Fernando Namora: Cavalgada Cinzenta: narrativa (1977) and URSS Mal Amada, Bem Amada: crônica (1986). Both belong to the last phase of his career. Based on the discussion of the relations between the Neorealism as a Portuguese literary movement with the ideals of communism, some examples of Namora’s aesthetic project are exposed. Afterwards, the procedures employed by the writer in the works which cover two travels (to New York, in 1972, and to the Soviet Union, in 1973) are scrutinised. Taking the second book as the core of the analysis — in permanent contrast with the first one —, it is possible to say that some of the biases supported by both Neorealism and Namora (freedom, democracy etc.) when facing a totalitarian government in Portugal — the so-called «New State» — are put aside for the benefit of the eulogy of another state of exception, the Soviet Communism.