Poesia, experiência, infância: um estudo sobre o acontecer infantil na poética de Manoel de Barros

Abstract

This paper researched the lyric poetry looking forward to comprehend how the “Infantile happening” (Acontecer infantil) is designed in Manoel de Barros‟ literary production as well as to investigate how poetry, infancy and experience are interlaced in this author‟s poems, specifically the compounds which structure the piece Memórias Inventadas – As Infâncias by Manoel de Barros (2010). To provide such discussion, this paper is especially based on theoretical texts by authors like Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari (1997, 2007), Philippe Ariès (2012), Walter Benjamin (2012), Giorgio Agamben (2012) and Gaston Bachelard (2009) which cover different conceptions of infancy, uncovering how poetic language can evidence a picture of permanent childhood. We began the research with critical reflections on the late acknowledgment of the author by the literary criticism, pointing the sources responsible for promoting the poet‟s production. Yet we present some contributions by the academic criticism about his works, establishing a possible place for the author in the Brazilian literature. Then, we center the studies in the distinct conceptions of infancy, essentially, the studies concerned to the comprehension of this stage of life. We intended to evidence the family feelings regarding infancy in traditional societies and the place reached by the child and his/her family in industrial societies, allowing us to discuss about the relationship between infancy and experience, pointed in Manoel de Barros‟ poems through a child language and a language in the childhood. Gradually, the research went around infancy and its continuous and creative transformation, thus subverting the idea of infancy as a time of lack of autonomy, an imperfect, incapable and fragile being. Therefore, we observe which Manoel de Barros‟ poetry overrise the enlacement between infancy and experience which unbalances the idea of time as an antidote against the “lack of experience”.