A aranha sem cano: infância e sexualidade na trilogia "Memórias Inventadas", de Manoel de Barros

Abstract

This study analyses the representation of childhood and its relations with sexuality in the work of the poet Manoel de Barros (1916-2014), with the objective of understanding how child sexuality manifests itself in his work and how it relates to other characteristics of the author’s poetic. To do so, we have focused our analysis in the author’s Memórias Inventadas (2003; 2006; 2008) poetic trilogy, more specifically, in its poems “Obrar”, “Parrrede!”, “Circo” and “Estreante”. As theoretical framework for our analyses, we referred to the field of childhood history, with the work of authors such as Peter Stearns (2006) and Philippe Ariès (1986), and to the child sexuality theory developed in the work of the Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, more specifically, in his book Three essays on the theory of sexuality [1905]/(2016). We’ve found the repeated manifestation of child sexuality in the work of Manoel de Barros, under the sign of Freud’s polymorphic perverse sexuality, which is not limited to genitality. This restores to the representation of childhood an important element of its constitution, one that is, nonetheless, not held in account in other analyses of the poet’s work. Therefore, in his text, child sexuality is expressed in a playful, fragmented, creative way, without the reaction formation of shame and disgust and as a force of constant resignification of the world and the words, that which relates to the deautomatization of the poetic language exerted by the lyrical subject of the author’s poems.