Unfolding of authorships: creator(s) & creature(s) in Fantoches by Érico Veríssimo

criador(s) e criatura(s) em Fantoches, de Erico Verissimo

Abstract

This study aims to present some reflections on the creative process behind the short stories in Fantoches, written by Erico Veríssimo. Something remained unsaid in the first edition of Fantoches (1936), later addressed in the 1972 reprint—an element that sheds light on the genesis of Veríssimo’s creative process, one that extends beyond the composition of Fantoches itself. In the marginalia, Veríssimo’s handwritten interventions constitute a parallel text that, in a metafictional gesture, reveals the critical-creative stance of the reader-author in dialogue with his own work. The reprint incorporates into the marginal notes a distinctive and revealing layer of potentially inventive writing. In rereading his short stories, Veríssimo comments on his compositional process and establishes intertextual connections between his works. Initially placed “on the margins” of his novels, the short stories from Fantoches undergo a process of deterritorialization within his literary series—provoking, through recent critical studies, a new reterritorialization that brings to light silenced voices within what was once considered a fragmented collection but now emerges as a mosaic of the human condition.