Orides Fontela

out of the gathered fragments, chaos subdued in wholeness

Abstract

The work proposes a reading of the poetry of Orides Fontela, a Brazilian poet of the 20th century. It seeks to investigate, in particular, the peculiarities of her writing, marked by brevity intertwined with symbols linked to myth, mysticism, philosophy, and religion. The text focuses, therefore, on the possibility of interpreting the words, in their imagetic extension, “arabesque” and “rosacea” within her poetics. Such terms, on the one hand, shape an enigmatic writing – intricate and fragmented in its form and meanings, which ties to the notion of conciseness – and, on the other hand, allude to what is mystical and mysterious, as well as permeated by a certain philosophical-religious thought. Along the intended path, different discourses are confronted in order to reach the magnetic core of the study: the contextualization and discussion of poems from the book Rosácea (1986), here integrated into the author’s Poesia completa (2015). Regarding the results of the investigation, it is fitting to affirm that Fontela’s writing follows an almost unalterable poetic project, keeping her distant from a certain generational hypothesis forged around her. Moreover, it can be pointed out that the poet stands out particularly for her erudition, reflected in her ability to unite elements from diverse times and cultures with an almost unavoidable coherence in the construction of her poems.