ETHICS AND AESTHETICS IN “ESTÃO APENAS ENSAIANDO”, BY BERNARDO CARVALHO

Abstract

In certain circumstances, seeing fictional writing as another dimension of reality seems to be equivalent to supposing that the wonder of a magic trick did not lie in the technical ingeniousness by which our senses are deceived, but in the idea that, for an instant, the laws of Physics were really suspended and a person levitated, or two bodies occupied the same space simultaneously. In the light of Ortega y Gasset’s considerations about the autonomy of the artistic object in relation to the reality the general public cannot do without when dealing with art, the short story “Estão apenas ensaiando”, by Bernardo Carvalho, is abundant with reading possibilities that highlight a clash between ethics and aesthetics, due to both its content and its expression. Therefore, in this analysis of Carvalho’s short story, we apply Gasset’s allegory and Adorno’s and Brecht’s ethical and narrative reflections in order to show how the chronological order between a catastrophic event and an artistic object that bears resemblance to it are little important in the interdiction of the aesthetic discourse.