Ways and senses of exile in the poetry of Ferreira Gullar

Abstract

Exile is a universal issue and can be lived in our own home or community – here called existential, intimate or interior exile – and/or lived outside it as is the case with the displacements that occur throughout history, highlighting the tragic migration in the twenty-first century. Commonly associated with the situation arising from geographical displacement, exile also occurs in non-geographic places/spaces, inside the individual. This individual is banned from his social group because he does not adhere to the values shared by everybody and because of that, he becomes an exiled. On the literary dimension, there is an exile poems tradition. In this article,
Ferreira Gullar´s poems are analyzed, a Brazilian poet who is heir to this tradition. To determine the selection and analysis of poems called by “exile”, in the poetic scene the following aspects were considered: the exiled is away from home, he has exile awareness, he is a lonely being, and he wants a paradise and has lived a previous experience of exile. We can observe in the chosen poems an intimate exile, which is the result of a geographical displacement. It is also possible to see in these poems that to be a poet is to bring a discordant voice, and a strategy to survive the exile and cultivate the lost language. In these poems stands the question of return as an attempt to seek paradise in the text. The analyzed poems are especially guided by the theoretical reflections of Edward Said, Homi K. Bhabha, Jacques Derrida, Paul Ilie and Paul Tabori.