With its first English
publication, via an English translation by Clifford E. Landers, Antonio Lobo
Antunes' 1980 Portuguese novel Knowledge Of Hell will probably be lumped
in with the work of other Romance-language magical realists like Gabriel Garcia
Marquez. But the more apt comparison may be to Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk,
whose novels, for all their philosophies, never disconnect from a perpetual
current of dread that undercuts whichever character is speaking at any given
time. But Pamuk's innocuous images, like the weather-victimized village of Snow, are no match for
Antunes' onslaught of multi-sensory nightmares.
To the extent that it
matters to the novel, the plot follows a psychiatrist—who shares the
author's name—traveling through the Portuguese countryside back to the
Lisbon hospital where he works. The return to his post fuels his dread; while
he's moving forward, each stop in his travels floods him with memories of his
work with soldiers and casualties of Portugal's war with Angola, as well as the
patients he has charge of now. The narrative shifts fluidly from first to third
person, but never abandons the doctor's perspective: "He examined himself in
the mirror, making sure of his tie, his jacket, the part in his hair, and
thought 'I'm a doctor' just as children repeat 'I'm grown up'… I'm finally
going to be a respectable person leaning over a prescription pad in hasty
abstracted nobility." (Credit must be given to Landers' translation, which
accomplishes these transitions without adding to the confusion inherent in the
doctor's story.)
The doctor's hell is
present even in memories that should be soothing, like images of his wife
during their long-past honeymoon and glimpses of seascapes along the road, and
the prying open of his head so readers can experience this increasingly
horrific string of images makes Knowledge Of Hell burn off the page. In the
doctor's elaborate nightmares, too, is the sense that his story is too
horrifying to be engaged directly. He has a Jean Rhysian refusal to take the
signs of things he passes at face value; they can only remind him of past
shocks. The doctor's complicity is part of the nauseating wave that pushes him
back toward his hated job, built on the sense of responsibility he can never
completely account for. Only the lyrical delivery of these memories, layer on
layer, keeps readers moving forward through his delirious waking dreams.