“É difícil o contacto entre mim e o meu ser”: figurações do topos do “inimigo de mim” na lírica de Nauro Machado.

Abstract

This study intends to investigate the presence of the “myself enemy” literary topos from the 20th century poetry, mainly in Nauro Machado’s lyric. Its origin traces back to the 15th century with the Spanish poet Jorge Manrique, but it has been consolidated by Sá de Miranda with the famous “Comigo me desavim” poem. In the Cancioneiro Geral de Garcia de Resende, according to the mapping led by Geraldo Augusto Fernandes (2020), there are about 30 poems about the topic. Nevertheless, it is possible to see in some of them a self-centering turn - a more existential subject split. This innovative aspect of the theme explains the time leap of this study corpus, as it is envisioned that it related to the theme of the divided self in the 20th century. The selection of Nauro Machado’s work is explained by the constant presence of topics related to a subject in conflict. Therefore, it is proposed a comparative reading of Sá de Miranda’s poem and its variations on the 16th, 20th and 21st centuries and on Nauro Machado’s lyric, through the topic investigation of the “myself enemy”, in order to check its new meanings, shifting, movements, changes and impressions that can be a reframing of the topos, besides establishing connections with the divided self. The theoretical framework consists of the works of Antonio Donizeti Pires (2007) about the literary topic investigation; Marcia Arruda Franco (2018) and Geraldo Augusto Fernandes (2020) regarding the reception of Sá de Miranda’s poem in the 16th and the 20th centuries; and Carlos Felipe Moisés (2001), Hauser (2007) and Cassirer (2001) to identify the historical and philosophical context of post-Renaissance and the mannerism perspective on the issue. Regarding Nauro Machado’s corpus, there was a review of his commentators, mainly the ones who studied the subject issue in Nauro Machado’s poetry, such as Ricardo Leão (2020) and Antonio Ailton (2020). Therefore, it is aimed to trace a brief overview of the topos and its relations with the divided self theme in Portuguese language poetry, with the analysis of the 1500s (Sá de Miranda, Camões, Bernardim Ribeiro, Baltazar Estácio, among others), modern (Fernando Pessoa’s orthonymous, Sá-Carneiro) and contemporary (Geraldo Carneiro, Ferreira Gullar and Nauro Machado) corpus.