Rock e Literatura: diálogos notáveis - Titãs/Torquato Neto, Metallica/ Ernest Hemingway

Abstract

Among the series of cultural, political and social phenomena that occur between the artistic-literary Modernity, and the Post Modernity, especially the historical avant-garde, we highlight those related to the encounters between literature and rock from the middle of the 20th century. In literature, the Beat Generation rises with the fundamental perspective of Cultural Studies and other currents of thoughts that mobilized the 1950s, and take the poetic and fictional texts to the streets while making the happenings. In the following decade, young people take on stage those issues raised after the II World War, and reverberate its ideals by the sound of guitars, making rock the soundtrack of counterculture. In order to unveil the time, place and moods of the encounter between rock and literature, we observe the work of the band Titans in search of its approach to Brazilian political and social issues, and also the language employed in the verses of their songs, especially the encounter with the poet Torquato Neto, a central figure in the dissemination of rock culture in Brazil. We also observe the work of the band Metallica privileging the relations of the album realized under the aegis of Ernest Hemingway’s romance For whom the bell tools (1940), what gave us the opportunity to realize the figurations of speed, death, and language in post-modern scene. While the counterculture and literature meet themselves in music, rock music becomes a global phenomenon, contributing to the globalization of culture. Therefore, at the crossroads of major cities, the body comes back to the social stage, regains sexuality, death imagery, and tribal welcome, in a performance that remarks between repulsive and spectacular, sometimes rescuing modernist ideals, others adding without distinctions or hierarchies everything as a thorough and vigorous example of post-modernist art.