Registrar a fenda: o silêncio na poesia de Ana Cristina Cesar e Hilda Hilst

Abstract

This dissertation aims to understand why silence has become an alternative for modern poets, using the poetics of Hilda Hilst and Ana Cristina Cesar as compelling examples. These contemporary poets illustrate the evolution of a theoretical discussion that has long intrigued literary scholars. We begin with a discussion on the reification of language through technique and trauma (Friedrich, 1978), and interpret poetry based on silence as a form of resistance (Bosi, 1977) to this process. In this context, notions of silence are explored through the concept of the repudiation of words (Steiner, 1998) as an impulse towards another language that seeks poetic expression in silence, aligning with Blanchot's aesthetic conception of the modern poet’s tendency to pursue the absolute in the void. Here, the word is understood as a gaping space that, in naming, always reveals its inability to represent an empty and elusive anteriority, which we call silence. By offering a comparative analysis of Ana C. and Hilst, we test the hypothesis that silence structures Hilst’s poetry with hesitant images and ellipses that seek recollection in the void, whereas in Ana C., the recurrence of ambiguities, omissions, and the displacement of names and fragmentary cuts underpin the lacunar form of dialogues that unfold in a secretive writing.