Figuration of a certain animal thought in Carlos de Oliveira and Carlos Drummond de Andrade

Abstract

The aim of this article is to make a comparative reading of chronicles from Boca de Luar (1984) and poems from Claro Enigma (1951), by Carlos Drummond de Andrade, and texts by Carlos Oliveira, especially Sobre o lado esquerdo (1968) and Finisterra-paisagem e povoamento (1978). The reading also aims to identify similarities between the two poetics in terms of a certain idea of modernity that runs through the work of both writers. An idea that is refractory to the euphoric, positive and positivist modern project that became dominant at the end of the 19th century un­til the middle of the 20th century. Viewed critically, the late modernity appears in the two modernist poets as a crisis symptom of disenchant­ment and helplessness of the unfulfilled promises of socio-economic and techno-scientific progress announced since the 18th century. Ghosts emerge from the enlightenment reason in broad daylight. Our reading hypothesis shows, through the construction of possible alterities in the figuration of an animal thought, another elaboration – or perlaboration – of an untimely reading of modernity in the texts of the two Carlos: de Oliveira and Drummond de Andrade. The critical-theoretical support comes from Jacques Derrida’s seminal essay Animal que logo sou and the book Literatura e animalidade by Maria Esther Maciel, a pioneer in stud­ies on literature and animality in Brazil.