Uma poética do sono em Álvaro de Campos

Abstract

This research has the objective to conduct an analysis of Álvaro de Campos’s poetic work, a heteronym of Fernando Pessoa, presenting the phenomenon of sleep as a fundamental element. Taking into consideration the verses of a poet who is repeatedly tired and drowsy—commonly referred to as the "last Campos"—we believe it is possible to distill an artistic stance that engages with the thematic axis of this subset of poems. This involves considering the possibility of outlining the threads a potential sleep poetry. The goal is to grasp a sketch capable of unfolding, at the window to theoretical understanding, a new reading key operated under the assumption that Campos' poetic discourse seems to reconnect with a state of drowsiness inherent in poetic creation, akin to an unavoidable deep sleep, with its resonance accomplishing a task. In this context, we will depart from the essay "Considerações de um poeta dormindo" (1941), in which the poet João Cabral de Melo Neto raises the suspicion that, figuratively, poetry is a work born of sleep, that is, "sleep as the source of the poem." The poet from Pernambuco suggests that it is possible to identify, in the reading of works, the trace of a writer's silencing, an intense kinship between the physical and mental manifestations of sleep, and a fertile state for poetry and the arts. Thus, through the analysis of poems and the theoretical contributions of part of Pessoa's critical fortune, we delimit the crafting "in the midst of sleep" intended by a poet who carries the promise of becoming a "somnambulistic poet." The research focuses on the textual analysis of the poem "O sono que desce sobre mim," surrounded by the entire Camposian poetic oeuvre, as a possible metonymy to understand the poetic effects obtained by the use of the sign "sleep" and to establish in sleep an allegory of poetic creation and consequently, a return to the primal silence of language, nature