Funeral praises, tombstones, mute dreams: literary circles and ritual reinvention among Brazilian poets (XIX-XX)

Abstract

The essay explores the recurrence among Brazilian poets of texts that refer to the practice of funeral eulogy, or that recover in a more or less explicit way the species tombeau, in dialogue with French poems of the late nineteenth century. Assuming, with Maulpoix, a primary collective character for the lyric poem (the root of lyricism based on the celebration), we analyze the commemorative discourse (high, laudatory, addressed) discernible in the poems approached as the bearer of something that is not solved in the expression of an “I”, but that seems to indicate a collective operation of constitution of audience, communication, contact, sharing. The poem, gesture of interlocution, is dedicated, in this sense, to an illustrious poet disappeared, but also dedicates itself to the establishment of a network of affinities and conceptions of writing that presuppose the establishment of a community.

Keywords

• elogio fúnebre
• tombeau
• comunidade.