Return to spontaneous: the naturalization of the human in the short story “Demons”, by Aluísio Azevedo

Abstract

This study aims to analyze the short story "Demons", by Aluísio Azevedo, seeking to demonstrate how this narrative challenges romanticism and appropriates a markedly naturalistic aesthetic. Data suggests that the work takes up, expands, and re-signifies at least three elements identified by Antonio Candido in Azevedo’s novel O cortiço (1890): the animalization of the human being, the passage from a spontaneous organization to a directed one and the representation of the slum as an allegory of Brazil. In "Demons", these aspects are present, but with evident adaptations, since this short story depicts a more radical process of dehumanization, a return to the spontaneous condition of life and the development of a story that stands itself as an allegory of the human condition. By examining these relations between the short story and Aluísio Azevedo's novel, it becomes evident that the transition from gothic romanticism to fantastic naturalism is a striking stylistic narrative feature, revealing, through the return to the spontaneous, some acceptance of the force of nature and a skepticism about the transformative power of humanity. Therefore, for the development of this study, in addition to Candido (1993), it was also necessary to draw upon the considerations by Bosi (1994), Sá (2019), Todorov (1980), among others.