Lutar com o verbo nunca foi apenas lamento: a poesia elegíaca de Paulo Plínio Abreu

Abstract

This thesis examines the work of Paulo Plínio Abreu (1921-1959), a poet from Pará, Brazil, developed in the 1940s and 1950s, when he published poems and translations in local journals like Terra Imatura, Novidade, Encontro, and Norte, and the newspapers O Estado do Pará and Folha do Norte. By the initiative of Francisco Paulo Mendes (1910-1999), this literary production took the form of a book, edited and published in 1978, nearly 20 years after the poet's early death. The editor named the book Poesia (1978/2008). It entails the poetic material published in the press, including poems and portions of poems, but also the unpublished translation of one of the main German poetic productions of the 20th century: The Duino Elegies, by Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926). This thesis reviews traces of such literary production to highlight factors of fragmentation and incompleteness of a literary project left open due to the poet's unexpected death. The editorial decisions towards the book were imperative to avoid the work falling into oblivion. In addition, editorial investments positively impacted the literalness of the production. This issue of sedimentation when collecting the production in the form of a book prompted the inevitable questioning regarding commonplaces of a literary work, such as the author, the work itself, and the reader. Such questioning is conceivable for the condition of possibility founded in the theoretical-methodological bibliography, that includes (ANTELO, 2016), (ISER, 1996), (ECO, 1991), (FOUCAULT, 2001), (CHARTIER, 1999), (BARTHES, 2004), (GENETTE, 2009), and foremost (BENJAMIN, 2018). These authors provided the framework of the thesis’ argument and therefore guided its analysis, which is organized into five main sections. The thesis discusses the itinerary taken by the poems and translations, underlining the Zeitgeist that imprinted a ‘melancholic’ identity into the production. It facilitates the understanding of Poesia as a forged object read by the following generations. Therefore, this thesis is one more instrument to elucidate the work of Paulo Plínio Abreu.