Free Waters/ As águas livres
These are notebooks that mirror one another, in some way autonomous, though interconnected. They come from different times, circumstances and places (as was already the case in Notebooks I – The Shimmering Umbrellas); they can fit inside each other like matryoshkas, or scatter in every direction like sparks.
Will they eventually, in the end, form a constellation? I have no certainty at all. All the more so because I will never be able to call them finished; they will always be an interrupted continuum, loose sheets of paper blown about by the wind, not obeying me and refusing to let themselves be pinned down.
Fragments of the world I stumble over as if tripping on stones, which have no meaning other than to exist: pure happening, in its raw state.
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As Águas Livres is highlighted as an exemplary work of fluid, symbolic, and reflective textuality, in which the writing—“beyond thresholds… finds its most expressive image in the liquid: the free waters, loose, flowing, or thin and insinuating.” The book is read not only as narrative, but almost as a laboratory of fiction and metaphor, carrying a strong symbolic and poetic charge.
ANNABELA RITA, O essencial sobre Teolinda Gersão
Teolinda Gersão plays with time, and we take great pleasure in that game. One feels the fascination of time’s construction: events follow one another, from small episodes—simple and everyday—to considerations of ethics and values. The notebooks mirror one another, autonomous and interconnected. We stumble upon “pieces of the world,” pure happening… And what are life and its relationship with art, if not this act of binding oneself to details? These notebooks—and those yet to come, as an interleaving method—have a deliberately ambiguous character. They are hard to classify. They are fragments which the seasoned novelist, as proven time and again, uses masterfully.
GUILHERME D’OLIVEIRA MARTINS, E.CULTURA
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As águas livres
São Cadernos espelhados uns nos outros, de algum modo autónomos, embora estejam interligados. Vêm de vários tempos, circunstâncias e lugares (como já acontecia em CADERNOS I - Os guarda-chuvas cintilantes), podem encaixar-se como matrioscas ou fugir em todas as direcções como fagulhas. Formarão, eventualmente, no fim, uma constelação? Não tenho nenhuma certeza. Até porque nunca os poderei dar por terminados, serão sempre um contínuo interrompido, folhas de papel à solta, voando ao sabor do vento, que não me obedecem nem se deixam prender por mim. Pedaços de mundo em que tropeço como se tropeçasse em pedras, que não têm outro sentido para além de existirem, puro acontecer, em estado bruto.