Rendering the Formless: Language and Style in 'Fausto'

Abstract

To use Fausto’s metaphors, the absence of any “forma” grounded in, or grounding, the intrinsic nature of things entails a situation in which all—mind, matter, self, world—is “informe” (Pessoa, 2018: 181). Pessoa’s struggle—and it is in this, I argue, that the drama of Fausto consists—is thus to find forms for the formlessness of the self and the world. The goal of this article is to investigate this paradox at the level of language and style. The ways in which words are used in Fausto to in-form the informe constitute, paradoxically, Pessoa’s grand style.

Keywords

• Pessoa, Fernando
• Fausto
• Verse drama, Portuguese
• Faust (Legendary character)
• Literary style
• Literary form
• Milton, John
• Shakespeare, William
• Beckett, Samuel
• Bataille, Georges
• Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm
• Flaubert, Gustave
• Eliot, T. S. (Thomas Stearns)