By SOLENI BISCOUTO FRESSATO*
Commentary on Jorge Amado's book
Dead Sea was written in 1936, when Jorge Amado was only 24 years old. It was the first of his novels read by Zélia Gattai (his partner for over fifty years), when she had no idea of meeting the author, much less falling in love with him. Despite having read all of his novels, Dead Sea, “a dream-making novel, full of poetry” (Amado, 2008, p. 273), did not lose its place as his favorite.
For Ana Maria Machado (2008), it is the author's most lyrical novel, strongly marked by subjectivity and romanticism. However, it is not an innocent sentimentalism, much less corny; Amado intensely describes the emotions of his characters, their doubts and uncertainties, their beliefs and challenges.
At the age of 18, the young and determined writer set out to write a series of novels entitled The novels of Bahia, with the aim of capturing “the life, the picturesque, the strange humanity of Bahia” (Amado, 1937, p. 11). The result is six books[I] which reveal not only the author's realistic vein, but, above all, the habits and customs of the people of Bahia. Valuing the popular element and marginality, the young author transformed the people into his main character. The novels is a response by Jorge Amado to the various authors, from Bahia or not, who wrote about life in Bahia.
For him, no novel published up until then had managed to capture the true humanity and Bahianness of the people and the mysteries of the territory. All had shown an absolute disregard for local, cultural and social specificities. Jorge Amado goes against this proposal and seeks to reveal the true Bahia, the customs, feelings and problems of its people. His experiences in the capital's cafes, on the cocoa farms in the south and in the small towns in the interior of the state gave Jorge Amado a unique and more complete vision of Bahia and its people.
Looking at the suffering people head on was a great adventure, but also a great sacrifice. Honestly revealing the dilemmas and hardships of the poor population of Bahia was not an easy task, because the writer placed himself in a position of empathy. There is, therefore, an emotional connection in his writing, which manages to capture, beyond the suffering, the capacity of these people to be happy and resilient. The result: works full of feeling and reality, written with a strong tone of denunciation of social inequalities and human misery.
Dead Sea It is the fifth novel in the cycle, which differs from the others in that it contains no reference to the proletarian world of strikes and unions. For Machado (2008, p. 278), the author “never embarrasses the reader with partisan speeches, slogans, pamphlet speeches”, which can be found in the other novels in the cycle.
Em Dead Sea, the highlight is the hard life of the saveiro masters in Baía de Todos os Santos and their religious beliefs. Until the 1960s, before the construction of state and federal highways that connect the coast to the interior of Bahia, the saveiros were responsible for transporting people and goods and were the guides for large cargo ships at the entrance to the bay. Despite developing an important economic activity (without which the state would not have developed) and social activity for the local population, the saveiro masters were exposed to the most humiliating living conditions, poverty, illiteracy and degrading working conditions.
In addition to dealing with social aspects, Dead Sea It is “the story of Guma and Lívia, which is the story of life and love at sea” (Amado, 2008, p. 9). Nature, represented by the sea, emerges in a powerful, integrated and inseparable way from this love story. However, the novel begins with a chapter on death, on how the men on the docks lose their lives in the storms and the untamed sea. Love and death, Eros and Thanatos, emerge as two sides of the same coin, complementary and necessary to each other, like the two drives, conscious or not, that move the subject.
In this sense, the proposal of this text is to analyze how the characters Lívia and Guma experience the sea. To this end, two confluent theoretical-reflective bodies will be used, one based on the mythical narratives of the Yoruba people and the other on the reflections on the life and death drives of the doctor and psychoanalyst Sándor Ferenczi.
Despite being situated at the interface between literature and psychoanalysis, the objective is not to transform psychoanalysis into an instrument of literary investigation, in an “additive relationship, where one tries to add meanings to the literary text based on psychoanalytic interpretation” (Villari, 2000, p. 4), that is, the aim is not to confirm Ferenczi’s psychoanalytic proposals in Amado’s literary discourse or to use passages from Dead Sea to illustrate Ferenczian theory. Nor to outline psychological aspects of the author or his characters. Psychoanalytic theories are guides for reflection, but as a method, the inspiration came from Roland Barthes, who considered that it is not only the writing that is interesting, but, above all, the reading that it awakens.
The pleasure and enjoyment of reading and writing
In Roland Barthes's theory of literature, reader and text, in the reading process, enter into dialogue, in a relationship that implies distinct temporalities and historicities. A text confronts the reader with a universe of meanings that may be strange to its condition (historical and social), because, "a text is made up of multiple writings, originating from various cultures and that enter into dialogue with each other" (Barthes, [1968]2004, p. 64). It is precisely in this estrangement that the most essential meanings of the text emerge, confronting a historical tradition and leading the reader to the challenge of criticism, based on the differences.
Such differences project new meanings and update the senses, and can promote self-knowledge in the reader, who is confronted with new questions about himself, opening up other possibilities of ways of being. It is in this possibility of self-knowledge, open to the reader, that the pleasure and enjoyment of reading resides, in an act of losing oneself, spending oneself, distorting oneself.
This idea, which places reading in a space of pleasure and enjoyment, going beyond the Logos and rationalist, Christian and positivist thought, according to Kempiska (2015), manifested itself very early in Barthes' reflections, culminating in the irreverent The pleasure of the text, originally published in 1973. In this controversial text, reading, because it is multiple and marked by diverse rhythms, movements and attentions, is described through comparisons anchored in the body and in sensitive experiences. In this sense, at first, Barthes ([1973]1987, p. 32) used food and taste metaphors, followed by increasingly bold erotic ones, related to love and pleasure: “one must always give in to the impatience of the text, never forget, no matter the demands of the study, that the pleasure of the text is our law”.
Years later, in Fragments of a loving discourse (1977), increasingly driven by unconscious desire, Barthes even describes the act of reading as a space of enjoyment and the relationship with the text was directly compared to the relationship with the loved one. The contact between reader and text will be increasingly understood as a loving relationship, made up of sentimental, erotic and rhetorical elements, at an intersection of imagination, body and language. It is no coincidence that Julia Kristeva identified love as the core of know-how Barthesian (Kempiska, 2015, p. 163).
For Barthes ([1975]2004a), pleasure in reading is associated with the desire it awakens, marked by two fundamental traits. Firstly, the reader is confused with the mystical subject, who replaces mental prayer with reading (Teresa of Ávila being the most notorious example), and with the passionate subject, who withdraws from reality and the external world, entering an imaginary world, provoked by reading.
The second trait concerns the bodily emotions present in the act of reading, such as fascination, pain and voluptuousness. This dual desire, present in reading, provokes pleasure and captures the subject-reader. Initially, a fetishistic relationship with the text is established, as the subject-reader feels pleasure in certain words, in certain constructions of the text, in the multiple ways the writer used to express thoughts, feelings and actions. Another pleasure is how the subject-reader is captured by reading, being driven to read more. Metaphors and metonymies, antitheses and synesthesias, in short, all the figures of speech used by the writer, “hook” the reader to the text, creating a kind of suspense.
The reader seeks to uncover something that is still hidden in the writing, speeding up the reading. This inability to wait is the “pure image of enjoyment”, states Barthes (2004a, p. 39). Finally, just as there was a desire and enjoyment in reading, there is a desire and enjoyment to write about this reading, about the thoughts and feelings that it provoked: “we desire the desire that the author had for the reader while he was writing, we desire the love me that is in all writing (…). From this perspective, reading is truly a production: (…) the product (consumed) is returned in production, in promise, in desire for production, and the chain of desires begins to unfold, each reading being worth the writing that it generates, to infinity” (Barthes, 2004a, p. 39-40).
As a reader of Dead Sea, I put myself in this place of lack and of seeking knowledge about myself, in a process of self-analysis. It is from this place that I write. This text is the result of the multiple ways in which I, the subject-reader, was impacted and captured by the anxieties and pleasures of reading in the Amadian universe, which sent me to the search for a pleasure and enjoyment of writing.
The sea and its mysteries
Guma is a man of the sea. “A light-skinned mulatto with long, dark hair” (Amado, 2008, p. 80), he lives in Cidade Baixa and never knew his parents. He was raised by his uncle, Francisco, who made him the best master of the saveiro on the docks. He grew up attending the candomblé of his father Anselmo, where he became an ogã.[ii] of Iemanjá. Lívia is “young, very young, because her breasts barely show through her red calico dress” (Amado, 2008, p. 88). She was also not raised by her parents, she lives with her uncles in Cidade Alta, she is a woman of the land, and therefore has difficulty accepting the impositions of the sea.[iii]
This unlikely love story, after all Guma and Lívia belong to different worlds, is set in motion by the mysterious sea, which presents itself in multiple forms, giving a unique and provocative rhythm to the narrative, allowing the reader to imagine scenes and situations. Judith’s mother “sailed to Cachoeira” (Amado, 2008, p.19). If Rosa Palmeirão finds out that Guma is in love with Lívia, he “will be shipwrecked”, warns his friend Rufino (Amado, 2008, p.88). The young prostitute, who was only sixteen years old, was already “done like the hull of a shipwrecked sloop”, thinks Guma (Amado, 2008, p.108).
When someone on the dock is in a bad mood, “the rudder is turned” (Amado, 2008, p.94). Filadélfio, one of the few who mastered writing on the dock, wrote loving letters to all the saveiristas. He was the first to praise his own gifts: “if this doesn’t make her fall like a capsized canoe, I’ll give her back the ten tostões” (Amado, 2008, p.134). When leaving Lívia and Guma’s house, Rodolfo decided to follow the “waters of a cabrocha who was also coming down the street” (Amado, 2008, p.212). The sea is also present in the characters’ bodies.
No man who lives on the edge of the dock “walks with the firm step of men from the land” (Amado, 2008, p.22), they have “the wide and uncertain step of those who live on boats and their bodies sway as if they had caught a strong wind” (Amado, 2008, p.104). Rosa Palmeirão walks with a swaying body, “as if she were a seafarer too”, her buttocks “sway like the bow of a sloop” and her eyes are deep and green like the sea, provoking fear (Amado, 2008, p. 57,60). Lívia has “eyes made of water” and, when she “moved to the sea”, her flesh began to have “the taste of the salty water of the ocean and her hair became damp from the spray of the sea” (Amado, 2008, p.88, 129, 138).
It is not only the saveiristas and canoeists who are impacted by the mysteries of the sea, but all those who choose to live close to it, facing its unpredictable temperament on a daily basis. This is the case of Dulce, who, still young, having just graduated from the Normal School, arrived at the pier to replace her teacher. Despite having seen much sadness and misery, she cannot leave the pier and believes that a miracle can happen, changing the lives of those suffering people, just as the sea changes every day. This is also the case of Dr. Rodrigo, a doctor who works on the edge of the pier and treats all those people, earning almost nothing, looking at the ever-changing landscape of the sea and writing his poems.
The sea presents itself with all its potential, because it is from it that all joy and all sadness come. On calm, sunny days, it is a friend, a sweet friend, from which sloop owners, canoeists and fishermen earn their living, where they love their wives and raise their children. On days of strong winds and storms, the sea reveals all its fury and the vulnerability of life. The sea represents the eternal cycle of life-death-life, present in all of nature, in a synthesis of the impulses that move all subjects. Living in and from the sea makes everything fast and uncertain, which is why the people on the docks live and love intensely, because each moment could be their last.
For the people of the pier, love is in a hurry. It is urgent to merge and mingle with another being, to seek support, encouragement and shelter from them, the only possibility to face the hardships of life and death itself. For only those who love intensely, like Lívia and Guma, live fully and are not afraid of dying. Since it is their destiny to die at sea, following the same cyclical story as their parents, grandparents and uncles, there is nothing better than facing destiny with bravery, because dying at sea is a heroic act and the way to find the only woman who can be both mother and lover, Yemanja.
Yemanja: the mother and the lover
February 2nd is the most beautiful day there is! It is the sea, it is love, it is the total affirmation of Iemanjá (Several complaints, The Gilsons, 2020).
In Brazil, specifically in Bahia, Iemanjá is the lady of the seas and oceans, mother of all the orishas. According to the Yoruba tradition, which is present in Candomblé, as a protective and welcoming mother, she is the one who supports the baby's head at the moment of birth, and is associated with women's fertility and motherhood. As a mother, she guides and directs, but she can also confuse and paralyze with her mermaid attributes, charm and seduction. Iemanjá is associated with the creation of the world and the continuity of life, being an image rich in ancestral and timeless experiences, capable of expanding consciousness and the way of perceiving life.
Originally, Yemanja is a derivation of Yemoja, Yeye Omo Eja, which means mother of the fish children. Yemanja was the main orisha of the Egbá, a people who lived between the cities of Ife and Ibadan until the 1981th century. With the wars between the Yoruba nations, explains Verger (XNUMX), at the beginning of the XNUMXth century, the Egbá migrated to Abeokutá, on the banks of the Ogum River, which became the new home of Yemoja. Thus, in Africa, Yemanja is associated with fresh water, fishing, and the planting and harvesting of yams.
Therefore, the original greeting, Odoyá, which means mother of the river, is preserved in the Candomblé terreiros of Bahia. Such changes occurred in the myth of Iemanjá because the forced immigration of various African peoples to Brazil led to the formation of different ways of being and new understandings of the world and people. As Gilroy (2001, p. 20) rightly stated, “natal alienation and cultural estrangement are capable of conferring creativity.”
Along with Oxum and Nanã, Iemanjá is one of the great mothers in Yoruba mythology. Oxum is love, the revolutionary vital energy present in all of nature, the guiding principle of natural functioning, which interconnects all living beings in a harmony of care. Where there is love, Oxum is alive and expressing herself. She is the orisha of waterfalls and fresh water, associated with the development of the child while still in the mother's womb, governing the entire process of fertilization and pregnancy, until birth.
In this first period of its existence, the child lives in a bag, immersed in the waters of Oxum. She is commonly represented as an elegant woman, sitting on the edge of a river, breastfeeding a child. Nanã is the mother of rain, originating from the contact between water and earth, she is the mud. She is the oldest, most powerful and serious orisha, she is the lady of the passage from life to death, because between the world of the living and the dead there is a portal governed by her. Although they are not mentioned by name in Dead Sea, Oxum and Nanã are present, as it is a love story that coexists with death.
Even though she is worshipped as the great original matrix, the one who generates everything and holds all the secrets of creation, Iemanjá is also represented as a mermaid, a demanding and libidinous lover, who has an intense love life, in an exaltation of female sexuality. Several orishas have succumbed to her charms, among them Oxalá, Orunmila, Ogum, Xangô, Olofim-Odudua and Oquerê. However, the mermaid Iemanjá does not only seduce the orishas. Prandi (2000, p. 609) cites a mythical narrative in which Iemanjá is described as “a capricious woman with extravagant appetites”, who comes to earth in search of the pleasure of the flesh, looking for young and handsome fishermen to take them to her “liquid bed of love”, where their “bodies know all the delights”.
But, as they are only human, they do not survive the charms of Yemanja and end up drowning. Therefore, the wives of the men who live in the sea bring many gifts to Yemanja, so that she will spare the lives of their loved ones.
The image of the mermaid, although sensual and voluptuous, is also a maternal image, after all, after losing the womb, the child is welcomed and nourished in abundant breasts of milk. Because she is half woman (with generous breasts always on display) and half fish (devoid of the female sexual organ), the image of the mermaid insinuates the possibility of the partial realization of incest, through oral eroticization, according to Freud ([1905]1996), the first stage of the child's sexual organization.
This is how Iemanjá appears in Dead Sea, as the mother and lover of all the saveiristas. She loves them and welcomes them as if they were her children, while they live and suffer. However, when they die, full of desires, they want to find their lover's body, as Orungã found Yemanjá. From the union of Obatalá (the sky) and Odudua (the earth) were born Yemanjá and Aganju (the god of the dry land). Yemanjá and Aganju had a son, Orungã (god of the air). Despite traveling the entire world, Orungã could not forget the beauty of the goddess of the waters.
One day, Orungã could not resist and kidnapped and raped Yemanjá. After being raped, Yemanjá's body grew absurdly, forming valleys and mountains, her breasts transformed into two large mountains, from which rivers were born, and from her enormous womb all the orishas were born. In another version of the myth, told in Bahia, when fleeing from Orungã, Yemanjá's breasts ruptured and from them emerged all the waters and the Bay of All Saints.
From her womb, fertilized by her son, were born the most feared orishas, those who govern lightning, storms and thunder. The myth of Yemanja, Aganju and Orungã deals with a double incest, between two brothers (Yemanja and Aganju) and between mother and son (Yemanja and Orungã). However, this is not the only mythical incestuous narrative involving Yemanja. She also seduced her son Xango and if we consider that all the orishas were born from her womb, all those she loved as lovers are also her children.
In the vast majority of societies, incest was severely punished, hidden and associated with tragedy,[iv] until it was prohibited, which reveals its taboo nature and its universal ethical foundation. Anthropology, sociology and psychoanalysis have all studied the subject. Anthropologist Lewis Morgan defended the idea that the prohibition of incest was a way of protecting society from the effects of consanguinity. For Havelock Ellis (doctor and psychologist) and Edward Westermarck (philosopher and sociologist), the prohibition was the result of a repulsion towards the incestuous act.
Sociologist Émile Durkheim argued that the prohibition was part of a set of rules that made up the law of exogamy. In totem and taboo (1914), Freud positioned himself against the medical, anthropological and sociological studies of his time, putting forward the hypothesis that the origin of the prohibition was not in the horror of incest but in the desire associated with it, initiating the debate on the universality of the Oedipus complex.
Only in 1949, with the publication of The elementary structures of kinship, by Claude Lévi-Strauss, the theme of the prohibition of incest was treated outside of evolutionist proposals or an opposition between culturalism and universalism. In other words, the prohibition of incest consummated the transition from nature to culture, becoming the organizing principle of society (Roudinesco, Plon, 1998, p. 372-374).
The desire for incest was not repressed in Dead Sea. Loved and feared by the men on the docks, Yemanja only becomes the lover of men who die at sea on stormy days. And, above all, of those who die saving people. No one finds the bodies of these brave men, because they went with Yemanja. This is the case of Guma, he found Yemanja, and with her he travels through the lands of Aiocá. However, Guma's desire was not only for his mythical mother, he also desired his biological mother.
All the saveiristas said that Guma, despite being eleven years old but looking fifteen, was already a man and it was time to meet a woman, “to satisfy those desires that penetrated his dreams and left him as if he had been beaten” (Amado, 2008, p. 36). That is why, when his mother, a stranger to everyone on the dock, arrived to meet him, Guma believed that she was a woman, brought by his uncle Francisco. Upon seeing that beautiful woman, “a violent desire invades him, takes over him completely” (Amado, 2008, p. 39), he only thinks about sleeping with her and recognizes her as his, the one who penetrated his nerves and disturbed his dreams.
Guma thinks that in her arms, he would finally know all the secrets and mysteries of a woman's body. When Francisco says that she is his mother, the desire does not leave Guma's body, who compares himself to Orungã and thinks about throwing himself into the sea on a stormy day, to appease the desire for his real mother and meet the only one who can be both a mother and a woman.
Guma is immersed in unconscious images linked to the maternal figure and which are projected onto the figure of Yemanja. In his daydreams and in a hallucinatory way, he seeks to fulfill his “thalassic desire” of rediscovering his mother’s uterine waters, lost at the moment of birth, by seeking the sensual waters of a lover.
Ferenczi: the “desire for thalassic regression” and the life and death drives
Sandor Ferenczi (1873-1933)[v] was a talented psychoanalyst. Sigmund Freud considered him his “favorite disciple” and in the more than 25 years they lived together, they exchanged 1.200 letters, discussing psychoanalytic theory and practice, in addition to sharing personal confidences. This closeness did not prevent theoretical differences and differences in the ways of conducting analysis, culminating in a definitive separation between them. His ideas were particularly well received in France and Switzerland.
In Brazil, his complete works, composed of four volumes, and the Clinical Diary[vi] were published for the first time only in the 1990s by Martins Fontes Editora, translated from French. And the correspondence with Freud was published by Imago Editora, also in the 1990s.
In 1914, while Ferenczi was serving in the army, in a hussar unit (light cavalry soldiers), he translated into Hungarian Three essays on the theory of sexuality, by Sigmund Freud, first published in 1905. The work sparked some reflections in Ferenczi on the function of the sexual act and the psychic developments that accompany it, such as dreams and fantasies. From these initial concerns, Ferenczi was led to reflect on the psychic importance of intrauterine life and the trauma of birth and on the life and death drives.
All these ideas, added to their clinical experiences, were systematized in Thalassa: essay on the theory of genitality,[vii] originally published in 1924. Thalassa is a feminine given name of Greek origin that means “coming from the sea”. The choice of Thalassa is not innocent, since it clarifies part of Ferenczian proposal, as analyzed below.
As an essay, it is an experiment, a kind of laboratory, where Ferenczi creates more problems and hypotheses, in a multiple reference of images and symbols, than he proposes definitive answers. This whole process, as Camara and Herzog (2018, p. 249) warn, is “far from being based on a transcendentalist idea of a 'collective unconscious', and is based on a radically corporal perspective of a 'biological unconscious'”. Freud ([1933]1994, p. 148), in the obituary he wrote about Ferenczi, considered Thalassa a “little book”, being the “most brilliant and fertile achievement” of its author.
For the founder of psychoanalysis, it is a text that could not be understood in one sitting, making it necessary to read it more than once. For those who face the challenge of reading Thalassa, know that Freud was right, because he takes the reader out of his comfort zone on dry land and places him in a zone of aquatic suspension. Or, as if he were on a couch, he awakens nuances typical of the unconscious, where rationality, most of the time, is surpassed.
The dialogue with three essays is established by the choice of terms (essay and theory) that make up the title of Ferenczi's text. A dialogue that does not mean agreement with all the ideas and positions put forward by Freud; on the contrary, because he was inventive and innovative, Ferenczi knew how to respect and follow many Freudian proposals, while at the same time maintaining identity and autonomy, both in his texts and in his clinical activity, which earned him the nickname of “enfant terrible” of psychoanalysis.
The differences arise right at the beginning of Thalassa. While Freud ([1905]1996) defended the primacy of the genital zone as a substitute for previous autoeroticisms (oral, anal, phallic), even with the survival of these previous stages, but only as preliminary pleasure; Ferenczi (1990) proposes an amphimixia[viii] of eroticisms. In other words, there is no overcoming, but rather combinations of various eroticisms (cutaneous, oral and, above all, urethro-anal), which move from one organ to another, until reaching the genital, responsible for leveling erotic tensions. The term allows us to approach the sexualized body as an expression of various planes of sensuality, including the psyche.
By inserting the psyche into the sexual body, Ferenczi (1990) brought the fields of biology and psychoanalysis closer together. In a bold way, without being reductionist and going against the rules of the scientific model then in force, he proposed that experiences originating from the psychic domain would build a new chapter in the field of biology, just as notions gathered in the field of biology would contribute significantly to the development of the science of the unconscious.
After all, there is no action or reaction in human psychology that is not also biological. To this end, Ferenczi created the Utraquist method, which consists of using concepts from one discipline in another. With this method, Ferenczi freed himself from the rigidity of scientific Cartesianism, drawing parallels between psychoanalysis and biology, between the sciences of the spirit and the natural sciences, offering each of them new discoveries, with elements that move freely.
It also overcame the great gap that separates, in modern thought, subject and object, mind and body, logic and affection. Thus, the assumptions of a new discipline were launched, not in line with the “separating and purifying demands of classical science, and very close to what we currently understand as transdisciplinarity” (Reis, 2004, p. 58-59), which Ferenczi called bioanalysis. Thalassa, where the author will pursue the objective of constructing a theory that provides the multiple meanings of genitality, ontogenetically and phylogenetically, is his inaugural text.
According to Ferenczi's bioanalytic proposal, coitus, followed by orgasm, has two functions. Biologically, it is the relief of libidinal tension, which moves through amphimixis to various organs, in addition to the genitals. In orgasm, a tension that has reached a high level of intensity suddenly calms down, causing a powerful feeling of happiness. Just as libido moves between the various organs, it also “diverts from the genital organ to the psychophysical organism”, and it is from this movement “that the sensation of happiness arises (…). Orgasmic satisfaction corresponds, in a certain way, to the explosive genitalization of the entire organism, to the total identification of the organism with the organ of execution” (Ferenczi, 1990, p. 48).
It is also during the sexual act, more specifically during foreplay, that mutual attraction and identification occurs between partners. During attraction, the subject seeks to “weld himself to the body of the sexual partner” and identification acts to eliminate the boundary between individual egos, “in the sexual act, the desire to give and the desire to keep, the selfish tendencies and the libidinal tendencies, manage to balance each other out” (Ferenczi, 1990, p. 43 and 22). Symbolically, the sexual act is the happy reunion with the maternal womb, represented in the partner’s body, or even the reunion with the lost half, as narrated in the myth of the androgynes.[ix]
From birth, even though he is forced to adapt to reality, the subject seeks to reestablish intrauterine comfort and protection, driven by the pleasure principle. For the full development of the reality principle, it is necessary to renounce this search, finding a substitute for the lost object, the maternal womb, in the world of reality. In other words, little by little, the subject learns to play with his own body, the double game of being the welcoming maternal and being a child, and thus, become independent, on the libidinal plane, from the person who cares.
Introjection allows part of the person to embody the mother and the intrauterine warmth and thus find within themselves the possibilities of support, sufficient for the process of maturation and adaptation to reality to take place (Oppenheim-Gluckman, 2014, p. 107). However, only part of the personality participates in this development; another part seeks to reestablish the primitive desire and succeeds, in a magical-hallucinatory way, through sleep and dreams, fantasies and sexual life. The sexual act allows the real return, even if partial, to the maternal uterus, as it is a moment of suspension, where the painful rupture between the ego and the environment can be overcome, liquidating the trauma of birth.
Surviving the anguish of birth is recorded in the memory as a success that the subject seeks to rediscover, even if in a fanciful way, by repeating similar situations. “The fact that a human being managed to survive the danger involved in birth and the joy of having discovered the possibility of existing, even outside the mother’s body, remain in the memory forever. This is what encourages us to periodically reproduce similar but attenuated dangerous situations, just for the pleasure of avoiding them again,” explains Ferenczi (1990, p. 53).
Coitus is one of these “dangerous situations”, because during the act, breathing and heartbeats accelerate, generating anguish, repeating the struggle for oxygen that every subject goes through at birth, changing their breathing from aquatic to aerial. At this point, Ferenczi once again returns to Freud (1926)[X], agreeing with his ideas about the close relationship between anguish and libido. After painful tension, orgasmic satisfaction is reached, similar to the moment of pleasure experienced after birth and the reception of the mother's breast, the first substitute for the lost womb.
To enjoy is to be reborn, because orgasm puts an end to anguish. Thus, the reign of the pleasure principle is periodically authorized, because intercourse followed by orgasm produces a global feeling of happiness and, at the same time, an almost complete fading of consciousness, presenting itself to the subject as a return to the welcome and stillness of intrauterine life. This is what Ferenczi (1990, p. 69) calls the “desire for thalassic regression.”[xi]
Bringing together psychoanalytic assumptions and theories of evolution of species, especially those of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and Charles Darwin, in the same genealogical matrix, Ferenczi states that the first beings, from whom human ancestors originated, lived in water. With the great drying up of the oceans and rivers, beings suffered a trauma and had to adapt to life on land, developing organs that were capable of adapting to the new environment. The birth of every human being repeats the same trauma: intrauterine life is aquatic; after birth, the baby adapts its body to live in an environment without water.
In this sense, there is a relationship between the catastrophes of planet Earth (phylogenesis) and those experienced by human beings (ontogenesis). The mother is, in reality, “a symbol and a partial substitute for the lost ocean” (Ferenczi, 1990, p. 68). Coitus and orgasm repeat all the catastrophes and, at the same time, all the struggles that the species has faced to adapt to the new ways of life, imposed by the environment modified by such catastrophes.
For Goldfajn (2021, p. 108): “Coitus is the theme studied by Ferenczi in Thalassa, in its different dimensions and transformations in biology, physiology, embryology, evolutionary theory and psychology. As a material contact between bodies, coitus would be exactly on the limit of the physical encounter and the intersubjective encounter between two adults. Coitus and orgasm, sleep and birth, would stage the primitive desire to return to the maternal matrix, to the mother's body, to the maternal breast, to the intrauterine environment, to the liquid medium through orgasm, which, because it is liquid, recapitulates the original state of the sea, the matrix of origin, also recapitulating the oceanic origin of all species”.
With such ideas, Ferenczi approached the proposals of Otto Rank presented in The trauma of birth ([1924]2016), written around the same time as Thalassa[xii]. In this key work, of a psychological nature, based on clinical experiences and mythological references, Rank defends the hypothesis that the separation of the mother's body at the moment of birth (which also constitutes the loss of pleasure, typical of intrauterine life), is a biological and, above all, psychic trauma in the life of the individual, becoming the source of all his neuroses and, at the same time, responsible for his cure.
Furthermore, this first biological separation from the mother's body becomes a prototype for all subsequent separations (weaning, going to school, Oedipal conflict, romantic separations, etc.) and, fundamentally, the prototype of psychic anguish. The mother is the starting point of all well-being (the situation of safety and protection experienced in the womb) and also of all anguish and pain (birth).
According to Gonçalves de Castro (2016), The trauma of birth led Rank to definitively break with the psychoanalytic movement, because, even though he was taking up an idea launched by Freud in The interpretation of dreams (1900), that birth is always a source of anguish, Rank questioned the supremacy of the Oedipus complex and the role of the father in the human psyche, highlighting the role of the mother and intrauterine life. Until then, the perspective that prevailed in psychoanalysis was essentially masculine and patriarchal; Rank shifted this center to the feminine and maternal.
Same displacement made in Thalassa, after all, for Ferenczi (1990, p. 72), women are the holders of the “lost ocean”, possessing the sea within themselves. During pregnancy, the amniotic fluid in the uterus (the environment where all humans reside during the first months of their lives) is the “ocean internalized in the maternal body”. During sexual intercourse and especially at its peak, orgasm, the partners symbolically regress until they become fetuses in their mothers’ wombs, says Ferenczi, finding the aquatic environment lost due to the trauma of birth. The ocean and the maternal womb come together in a symbolism that is synthesized by intercourse, a moment in which the subject can rediscover the welcoming environment.
The ideas about the search and the hallucinatory and symbolic encounter with the maternal womb, provided by the sexual act, led Ferenczi to reflect on the life and death drives, dialoguing directly with Freud's proposals, launched a few years earlier in Beyond the pleasure principle ([1920]1996). However, for Ferenczi, the sexual act represents a compulsion to repeat that can heal, as it is not limited to just reliving the trauma, as Freud claimed, but also to overcoming it, structuring the individual. The anxiety at birth is accompanied by the happy outcome of having survived one's own birth, adapting successfully to the new environment. In the sexual act, the goal of satisfaction converts anxiety into intense pleasure.
The desire for thalassic regression arises from the movement in search of the other, which is also a search for life. As an individual life drive, the other is the maternal body, where the subject seeks to find the absolute pleasure of omnipotence, prior to the trauma of birth. As a life drive of the species, the other is the return to the primordial marine state, before the drying up of the oceans. The “desire to return to the abandoned ocean of primitive times” (Ferenczi, 1990, p. 66) is a drive force that resurfaces and continues in the genitals.
In both cases, ontogenetically and phylogenetically, there is a desire to return from where one was expelled, to overcome the catastrophe, to overcome the trauma and to return to the welcoming, cozy environment, where needs did not exist, because they were satisfied even before they were felt.
However, the desire for regression is not just a search for life, for Ferenczi (1990, p. 78), “orgasm is not only the expression of intrauterine stillness and a pleasurable existence in a more welcoming environment, but also of that tranquility that preceded the appearance of life, the dead stillness of inorganic existence”.
The tranquility of orgasm and the psychic states of sleep and intrauterine existence would be close to an existence prior to the emergence of life, since, as a Latin proverb states, “sleep is the brother of death” (Ferenczi, 1990, p. 101), or even, as explicitly stated in Greek mythology, Hypnos, sleep, is the twin brother of Thanatos, death. In the words of Ferenczi (1990, p. 106), coitus followed by orgasm would represent a “tendency towards rest that is much more archaic and primitive, the instinctual desire for inorganic peace, the death drive”.
Going beyond Freud and getting closer to Nietzsche, for Ferenczi (1990, p. 118-119), there is no total opposition between the death drive and the life drive, “even matter considered ‘dead’, therefore inorganic, contains a ‘germ of life’. (…) imagine the entire organic and inorganic universe as a perpetual oscillation between life drives and death drives, in which both life and death would never be able to establish their hegemony”. All experiences lived by people, including the sexual act, would be an alternation between life drive and death drive.
It is no coincidence that in French slang, orgasm is called the petite death, in German of little one and in English the little death, that is, the little death. The expression refers to the refractory period that occurs immediately after orgasm, referring to the momentary loss of consciousness or the sleep that accompanies it.
In 1957, in the eroticism, Georges Bataille (1988, p. 211), who believed that there was a close relationship between death and sexual excitement, wrote about this small erotic death, the moment in which one crosses the line of the impossible: “it is undoubtedly the desire to die, but it is, at the same time, the desire to live within the limits of the possible and the impossible, with an ever greater intensity. It is the desire to live by ceasing to live or to die without ceasing to live, the desire for an extreme state that perhaps only Saint Teresa described with such force, when she said: “I die of not dying!”[xiii] But the death of not dying is not precisely death, it is the extreme state of life; if I die of not dying, it is on the condition of living: it is the death that, living, I experience, continuing to live.”
It is exactly this intense limit between the life and death drives that Lívia and Guma experience every time they face the sea and meet for love.
The sea and its miracles: Livia under the influence of Eros
As a good saveirista, aware of the laws of the dock and his commitment to help any vessel, even on stormy days, Guma accepts the challenge of guiding the ship Canavieiras into the bay. At the dock, everyone knows the danger of such an undertaking, which could lead to the saveirista's death. But Guma is not afraid, because he believes that his destiny is already set: to die in the arms of Iemanjá, on a dark stormy night, the happiest moment for a man who lives from the sea.
For such bravery, Guma became known throughout the pier. Just as Uncle Francisco smiled with pride and Rosa Palmeirão's eyes shone with love (Amado, 2008, p. 71), everyone on the pier said that Iemanjá had also admired Guma's courage and that, from then on, he was her favorite.
Guma lives at sea, without fear of death: it is from there that he earns his living, it is from there that he loves his women and it is there that he builds his family and friendship relationships. Until he meets Lívia. From then on, Guma's thoughts about love and death oscillate and become confused in the same anguish: he does not know if he wants to die to love Iemanjá or if he wants to live to love Lívia. The best thing a seafarer could do was not to get married, so that when Iemanjá called him, he would go without leaving anyone in misery. His wife would not have to submit to degrading working conditions or prostitute herself to support the family.
It would be better to have love by chance, that way no one would suffer. But, for Lívia, almost a girl, still innocent and inexperienced, “without ABC and without history”, the most beautiful woman on the pier, who came to meet him at a party for Iemanjá (perhaps sent by her), “with eyes as clear as water, red lips and her breasts still budding” (Amado, 2008, p. 88-89), Guma forgets all the suffering that love can bring, he only thinks about loving her, about drowning in her waters. Altruistically, Guma does not want to sacrifice Lívia’s life, because he knows that one day he will die at sea, but he also does not want to die without experiencing this love.
Faced with this impasse, which immobilizes Guma, Lívia, as the subject of her desires, takes the lead role. She also wants to drown in the waters of love, she wants to fulfill her “thalassic desire” and Guma is her chosen one. She is the one who seeks him out at the Iemanjá party, she is the one who runs away from her uncles’ house (to force them to accept her marriage) and she is the one who invites him to love, before the strong winds and the storm destroy the saveiro and kill them both.
Pressing herself against Guma’s body, Lívia begs: “If you see that we are going to die, come and be with me right away. It’s better.” (Amado, 2008, p. 140). On that dark night, when there was not a single star in the sky, when the winds, lightning and thunder were intense and constant, Lívia and Guma love each other, because on that night that could be their last, love is in a hurry. They need to unite, they need to experience the intensity of the androgynous encounter, they need to surrender to their life impulses, “so they would die after having belonged to each other, after their flesh had met, after their desires had been appeased. So they could die in peace” (Amado, 2008, p. 140).
This mix of sea, love and death accompanies Lívia and Guma in their wedding celebrations and is presented in the verses sung by Maria Clara, accustomed and resigned to the difficult life on the pier.[xiv]. Lulled by the verses “it is sweet to die at sea” and “he went to drown”, Lívia wonders why songs that speak of death and misfortune are sung on a day that should be happy and thinks about her sad fate, seeing her husband “drowning daily in the green waves of the sea” (Amado, 2008, p. 153).
Not understanding or accepting the laws of the docks, and unable to live with the imminence and inevitability of death, Lívia devises plans to choose another destiny: she would convince Guma to move to the wild lands of the backlands, escaping the fascination of the sea, or else she would always go with him, become a seafarer too, get to know all the stones and all the mysteries of the sea, and on the day that Iemanjá called Guma, she would go with him. At dawn, amidst the “cries of love” (Amado, 2008, p. 154), while Lívia swears that her son will not be a seafarer, will live on dry land and have a calm life, Guma thinks that his son will be his heir and will master a saveiro better than he, because the sea is a sweet friend.
After the birth of their son, Lívia and Guma began to dream of a life in Cidade Alta, far from the sea, its dangers and mysteries. But before they could make their plan a reality, Iemanjá imposed her wish and called her chosen one to live with her. In this aspect, Amado dialogues, with the same ease, with the idea of history and cyclical time, as well as of transgression and rupture. Guma believes that his future was mapped out at birth. Being the son and nephew of men of the sea, his destiny would be the same, there would be no escape.
He lives in a cyclical time of conformity and domination, since destiny presents itself as something insurmountable and unquestionable. Guma naturalizes the difficult life on the docks, believing that it cannot be changed. Lívia, on the other hand, has difficulty accepting the impositions of the sea and believes that the future is actively constructed, being directly related to her choices.
Cyclical time is confirmed: death came to Guma at sea and his body was not found. He died at sea saving other people, in a synthesis of the pulse of life and death. This is the attitude that Iemanjá admires the most, which is why, for the people of the docks, Guma is now with her, in the lands of Aiocá. Faced with this fatality, Lívia once again assumes the leading role and authorship of her story. In an unexpected and unprecedented way for a woman, she decides to sail the saveiro, transporting goods on the sea of Baía de Todos os Santos, creating another, more dignified alternative for all the women of the docks.
Lívia represents the overcoming of women's resignation in the face of tragic destiny, becoming the provider of the family's means of subsistence and existence. Driven by a strong drive for life, she creates subversive forces that feed the hope of transformation and the creation of a new, more just social order. With this attitude, the miracle (expected and desired by Professor Dulce) leaves the sphere of the divine and becomes human, being articulated and carried out by Lívia.
Guma is in the sea, he drowned in the waters of Iemanjá, just as he had previously drowned in the waters of love with Lívia. To continue living with dignity, Lívia chooses to face death and the mysteries of the sea.
*Soleni Biscouto Fressato holds a PhD in social sciences from the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA). She is the author, among other books, of Soap operas: magic mirror of life (when reality is confused with the spectacle) (Perspective).
Reference
George Loved. Dead Sea. São Paulo, Companhia das Letras, 2008, 288 pages. [https://amzn.to/4gKXPvH]
REFERENCES
George Loved. Sand captains🇧🇷 Rio de Janeiro: José Olympio, 1937.
BARTHES, Roland (1968). The death of the author. In: the sound of the tongue. New York: Routledge, 2004, p. 57-64.
_____ (1973). The pleasure of the text. São Paulo: Perspective, 1987.
_____ (1975). From reading. In: the sound of the tongue. New York: Routledge, 2004a, p. 30-42.
_____ (1977). Fragments of a loving discourse. Rio de Janeiro: Francisco Alves, 1981.
BATAILLE, Georges (1957). the eroticism. Lisbon: Antigone, 1988.
CAMARA, Leonardo Cardoso Portela; HERZOG, Regina. An imaginary preface for Thalassa. In: Studies and research in psychology, v. 18, n. 1, Jan/Apr 2018, p. 244-260. Available at:.
FERENCZI, Sándor (1913). The development of the sense of reality and its stages. In: Psychoanalysis II. New York: Routledge, 2011, p. 45-62.
_____ (1915). The Ice Age of Dangers. In: Psychoanalysis II. New York: Routledge, 2011, p. 283-284.
_____ (1919). Phenomena of hysterical materialization. In: Psychoanalysis III. New York: Routledge, 1993, p. 41-54.
_____ (1924). Thalassa: essay on the theory of genitality. São Paulo: Martins Fontes, 1990.
_____ (1926). The problem of affirming displeasure. In: Psychoanalysis III. New York: Routledge, 1993, p. 393-404.
_____ (1926). Gulliverian fantasies. In: Psychoanalysis III. New York: Routledge, 1993, p. 415-432.
_____ (1929). Masculine and feminine. In: Psychoanalysis IV. New York: Routledge, 1992, p. 37-46.
_____ (1929). The poorly welcomed child and his death drive. In: Psychoanalysis IV. New York: Routledge, 1992, p. 47-52.
FREUD, Sigmund (1905). Three essays on the theory of sexuality. In: Standard Brazilian Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (vol. VII). New York: Routledge, 1996, p. 118-230.
_____ (1920). Beyond the pleasure principle. In: Standard Brazilian Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (vol. XVIII). New York: Routledge, 1996, p. 17-90.
_____ (1926). Inhibitions, symptoms and anxiety. In: Standard Brazilian Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (vol. XX). New York: Routledge, 1996, p. 89-106.
_____ (1933). Sándor Ferenczi (1933). In: Standard Brazilian Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (vol. XXII). New York: Routledge, 1996, p. 297-299.
GILROY, Paul. The Black Atlantic: modernity and double consciousness. São Paulo: Editora 34, 2001.
GOLDFAJN, Denise Salomão. Revisiting Ferenczi: the origin myth of the relational matrix. In: PsiRelational Journal. Relational Perspectives in Psychoanalysis, n.2, Nov. 2021, p. 95-113. Available at: .
GONÇALVES DE CASTRO, Érika. Introduction. A trauma and its consequences. In: RANK, Otto (1924). Birth trauma: and its meaning for psychoanalysis. New York: Routledge, 2016.
MACHADO, Ana Maria. The invention of Bahia (Afterword). In: AMADO, Jorge (1936). Dead Sea. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2008.
OPPENHEIM-GLUCKMAN, Hélène. Lire Sandor Ferenczi. A turbulent disciple. Paris: Campagne Première, 2014.
PRANDI, Reginald. Mythology of the orishas🇧🇷 São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2000.
RANK, Otto (1924). Birth trauma: and its meaning for psychoanalysis. New York: Routledge, 2016.
REIS, Eliana Schueler. Of bodies and affects: transferences and psychoanalytic clinic. Rio de Janeiro: Back Cover, 2004.
ROUDINESCO, Elisabeth; PLON, Michel. Dictionary of Psychoanalysis. Rio de Janeiro: Jorge Zahar, 1998.
VALLADO NETO, Antonio Armando. Iemanjá, the great African mother of Brazil: myth, rite and representation. 2000. Dissertation (Master's Degree) – University of Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, 2000.
VERGER, Pierre Fatumbi. Orishas: Yoruba gods in Africa and the New World. Salvador: Corrupio, 1981.
VILLARI, Rafael Andrès. Possible and impossible relations between psychoanalysis and literature. In: Psychology: Science and Profession, v. 20, n. 2, p. 2–7, Jun. 2000. Available at: < http://pepsic.bvsalud.org/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1414-98932000000200002>.
Notes
[I] The carnival country de 1930, Cocoa de 1933, Sweat de 1934, Jubiabá de 1935, Dead Sea from 1936 e Sand captains of 1937.
[ii] Ogã (from the Yoruba gã, meaning “superior person”, “chief”, “with influence” and from the Jeje ogã: “chief”, “leader”) is the generic name for several male functions (taking care of the altar of the saints, responsible for the sacrifice of animals, playing the atabaque, etc.) in a Candomblé temple. During all the work, the ogã remains lucid, not going into a trance, but even so, he receives spiritual instruction.
[iii] See the communication Hail Morning Star (the emancipation of women and the transgression of cyclical time in Dead Sea), presented at the III Seminar on Critical Linguistic Policies, held in June 2023. Available at: .
[iv] Except for, for example, the Egyptian pharaohs. DNA tests carried out on mummies by a team of Egyptian and German researchers revealed that in the period of the 18th Dynasty (1.550 and 1.295 BC) the practice of incest was quite common. The parents of Pharaoh Tutankhamun, who ruled between 1.336 and 1.327 BC, were brothers. Akhenaten, 1.352-1.338 BC, Tutankhamun's father, procreated with his daughters. Being considered divine creatures, the pharaohs could override the rules that governed the behavior of other people. Even in the face of many anomalies and genetic diseases that were perpetuated from one generation to the next, the pharaohs preferred to keep the royal blood restricted to a small family group, which also meant maintaining power in a single family. In: The Globe, 20 Oct. 2014. Available at: .
[v] The eighth of twelve children and his father's favorite son, Ferenczi received an education in which the cult of freedom and a taste for literature and philosophy prevailed. When he chose the medical field, he stood out in social medicine, opting to help the oppressed, listen to women's problems and help the marginalized. In 1906, he presented a courageous text to the Budapest Medical Association, where he openly defended homosexuals. Being more intuitive and inventive than Freud and other disciples, in 1908 he discovered the existence of countertransference. He accompanied Freud to the United States and Italy in defense of psychoanalysis and, in 1910, he actively participated in the founding of the IPA (International Psychoanalytic Association). In 1919, together with Otto Rank, he completely reformed psychoanalytic technique, inventing the active technique and mutual analysis (Roudinesco, Plon, 1998, p. 232-5).
[vi] O daily was written in 1932 and first published in 1969, edited by Michael Balint. In 1985, the French version, edited by Judith Dupont, appeared. According to Balint (1990), it was decided to wait more than thirty years for publication, so that the differences between Ferenczi and Freud would be attenuated and Freud's ideas would be daily were better received.
[vii] For this text, the translation of the French version was used (Thalassa, essay on the theory of genitalité, Payot, 1979), published in 1990 by Martins Fontes Editora. Thalassa It is Ferenczi's least cited text, including in books about the author; even Michael Balint, a student of Ferenczi, has reservations about it (Oppenheim, 2014, p. 97), despite having read the originals and suggested changes (Ferenczi, 1990, p. 5).
[viii] De anfi (of one and the other) and mixis (mixture): mixture of one and the other. In biology, it is the term that designates the union of male and female gametes in reproduction (Reis, 2004, p. 59).
[ix] Em The banquet, a work written by Plato in 380 BC, the guests discuss the theme of love and its Platonic conception, which goes beyond the physical dimension, since the beauty of the soul is privileged, that is, love is conceived as a feeling that is possible for everyone. Aristophanes contributes to the discussion, narrating the myth of the androgyne, about the eternal search for the half that completes the human being, which would explain the mystery of universal attraction. In the beginning of time, there were three sexes: the feminine, the masculine and the androgyne, complete and perfect couples with both sexes. The androgynes were strong and intelligent beings who, due to these characteristics, threatened the power of the gods. In order to subdue them, Zeus decided to divide them, because this would make them disoriented and weak. Since then, the separated halves have eternally searched for their complementary half.
[X] Ferenczi (1990, p. 44) mentions that since his first communications, probably referring to the Wednesday meetings, Freud defended one of his fundamental theses, that anxiety neurosis and coital emotions are of the same nature, systematized in Inhibitions, symptoms and distressOf 1926.
[xi] The desire to return to the maternal womb is the center of Ferenczi's theory of genitality (1990, p. 54) and, as he himself recognized, practically an “obstinacy”, emerging at various moments in his reflection, before and after the writing of Thalassa. Among the precursor texts we can mention, The development of the sense of reality and its stages (1913) The Ice Age of Dangers (1915) and Phenomena of hysterical materialization (1919). After Thalassa, the same theme accompanied Ferenczi on at least four more occasions: The problem of affirming displeasure e Gulliverian fantasies, both from 1926, The poorly welcomed child and his death drive e Male and female, both from 1929.
[xii] In the introduction to the German version, Ferenczi thanks Rank by name for his research. In the Hungarian translation, which was used for the French and later Portuguese versions, Rank's name is not mentioned, being replaced generically by "other researchers." However, Rank is mentioned by name throughout the work.
[xiii] Bataille refers to the poem Aspirations for eternal life of Saint Teresa of Avila (1515-1582), also known as Gloss.
[xiv] Maria Clara (a fisherman's daughter) and the master of the saveiro Manuel are recurring characters in Amado's works. They first appeared in Jubiabá (1935), followed by Dead Sea (1936) The death and death of Quincas Berro d'Água (1959) The shepherds of the night (1964) and Teresa Batista tired of war (1972). The reader can follow the aging of these captivating characters, who did not meet their deaths at sea.
the earth is round there is thanks to our readers and supporters.
Help us keep this idea going.
CONTRIBUTE
