Sentiu Garrett o fascínio do Dândi?

Abstract

In this short article the author intends to detect the existence of possible traces inherent to the figure of the dandy in Almeida Garretts novelistic works. The texts analyscd are Helena and Viagens na Minha Terra. Using as a starting point for the study works such as Byron's Don Juan, Stendhal's Le Rouge et le Noir or Balzac's Illusions Perdues, the author attempts to demonstrate the extent to which Garret's heroes may or may not be included within the vast gallery of the figure of the European dandy. The characteristics of Carlos or of the (merely glimpsed) Fernando, point, in many ways, to this type of figure, which, in the intellectual milieu of the time, assumed a position of some importance. It is not difficult to see a correspondence between the both undeceived and disillusioned end of Joaninha's cousin and either Victurnien's marriage of self-interest in Balzac's Le Cabinet desAntiques or the way in which Lucien is willing to abdicate from freedom of conscience, in Illusions Perdues, by becoming the secretary to a priest and Spanish diplomat. By accepting the barony, Carlos distances himself from the typical end foreseen for the romantic hero and assumes the role of a modem, cynical, ironic and dispassionate character.