The drowned and the saved: Alves Redol’s approximations to the Holocaust
Abstract
Picking up on Primo Levi’s famous formulation on The Drowned and the Saved (1987), this paper shows two examples of fictional works by Redol, in which his usual political views are conveyed through connections to the Holocaust: A Barca dos Sete Lemes [The Man with Seven Names] (1958) and O Cavalo Espantado (1960). The first work displays the journey of a young man born on the banks of the Tagus, who then fought in the Marocco War and ended up in a Nazi-ruled prison in France during the Second World War, his African experience in the war being seen as potentially useful for a concentration camp guard; the second novel narrates the story of a rich Austrian Jewish couple in Lisbon, who fled a regime with which they had collaborated that now was sending people like them to work and die at the Mauthausen quarry.
While the hero of the former escapes from a miserable Portugal but drowns close to the drama of the Holocaust, the couple of the latter is saved from that drama via Lisbon. Two different directions during the catastrophe, one common figure in the novel: Alves Redol as a literary alter ego in contact with these characters, witnessing how one drowns or is chosen for salvation in apocalyptic times.
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