Poesia da alteridade em Manoel de Barros: paradoxo da despalavra

Abstract

This research seeks to understand how a word becomes the other in an I-you, or poet-word relationship, specifically in Manoel de Barros’ poetic project. From the notion of otherness, which is here fundamentally clarified with the theoretical contribution of thinkers such as Emmanuel Lévinas and Martin Buber, it was possible to see how relationships occur between the self and the other, be it through poetic images, paradoxes, experiences of epiphany, be it through the paths of nature, this latter being so recurring a theme in Barros’s work. Marcel Proust, in turn, gives his contribution by proposing that the word be perceived as the other, when either the writing or the reading exercise allows the author/reader to move out of himself/herself. The search for the phonic body of the word and the possibilities it offers the poet have also generated a reflection on language in light of the thought of philosophers Michel Foucault and Emanuele Coccia, in order to establish how, over the centuries, the event of the word has enabled human beings to devise different conceptions of the world and to highlight its relevance to the construction of knowledge. The research “The Poetry of Otherness in Manoel de Barros – the paradox of the non-word” focuses on the analysis of the poems collected in his book Retrato do Artista quando Coisa [Portrait of the Artist as a Thing], published in 1998