A palavra e o nada: silêncio, cidade e memória na poesia de Marina Tsvetáeva

Abstract

This study proposes a research on the silence in some poems by Marina Tsvetaeva. From the structural and social perspective, the study seeks, more specifically, to discuss how poetic silencing is manifested in the poems, as well as to verify if there is any resonance between the historical prism of the States of Exception and Marina Tsvetaeva‘s literary practice, considering some key factors such as the conciseness of the Russian language and the presence of other formal and social elements in the poetic text. From the theoretical point of view, the dissertation consists of two critical paths (or chapters) that are greatly accentuated in the work of the poet: the city and the memory. The first one takes into account the relationship between Marina Tsvetaeva‘s childhood Moscow and the pre-revolutionary city of the second decade of the twentieth century. The first section has as references the works of Hamburger (2007), Agamben (2004), Ehrenburg (1964) and Gomes (2008). The second theoretical direction makes use of memory, this time not only of the city of Moscow, but also of other multiple mnemonic relationships that the collected poems explore through their triggers and vestiges, highlighting themes such as birth, predestination, childhood and family relationship, dear to Tsvetaeva as a whole. In the second chapter, the studies of Halbwachs (1968), Lopes (2012), Seligmann-Silva (1999) and Nora (1993) have been used as a theoretical basis. Finally, the dissertation presents the third and final chapter that argues the response to Russian literature in the West (more specifically in France) and analyzes how Marina Tsvetaeva was and continues to be widely read through the seal of her tragic biography. This final chapter discusses, based on the works of Gomide (2004), Feiler (1994) and Butler (2016), the influence of literary marketing in the response to literary works, the central role of gender, and the effect of tragedy on the biography of suicidal writers.