Horizontes de ausência: a melancolia em Maria Ângela Alvim

Abstract

This Master's thesis proposes the study of the poetry of Maria Ângela Alvim (1926-1959), especially her sonnets, based on an investigation into the theme of melancholy. If, in her personal and professional life, the poet was engaged and involved with the circumstances of her time, in poetry she established her apartment, shaping a voice that draws its strength from the conflict with the world. For her, the sonnet was the most important space in which to problematize and explore this conflict, in which self-consciousness and melancholic sentiment flourish. Also through this fixed form, she attests to her detachment from life and ordinary earthly contacts, sometimes engaging in dialogue with absent or dead interlocutors. The classic scheme, although often experimental, conveys some of the most important aspects of melancholy in her poetics, such as the identification with loss, the difficulty of responding to the present time, accepting it as an agent of change, and the longing for a liberating death, as well as the constant feeling of strangeness and loneliness.