Paternal Trauma, Melancholy and Depression

The Representation of Mental Illness in Uma tristeza infinita, by Antônio Xerxenesky, and O ar que me falta, by Luiz Schwarcz

Abstract

 It is proposed here the analysis and interpretation of two contemporary Brazilian literary works, namely, the novel by Antônio Xerxenesky, Uma tristeza infinita (2021), and the autobiographical account by Luiz Schwarcz, O ar que me falta (2021). We seek to clarify, with the support of psychoanalytic studies, how, in both works, the appropriation by the narrators of a traumatic paternal inheritance related to the Jewish experience during the Nazi persecution in the Second World War takes place. The novel’s character, a psychiatrist, suffers from acute melancholy, while the editor writing his memoir battles bipolar depression. The treatment of the disease, which goes hand in hand with a long journey of self-discovery, presupposes, for the protagonists, a personal reinvention of the father’s legacy, an attention to affective relationships in everyday life and a search for a cognitive and therapeutic effect in the representation of psychic suffering.