DREAM, BODY AND ECSTASY: ELABORATIONS OF THE DIVINE IN THE WORKS OF HILDA HILST AND LENILDE FREITAS
Hilda Hilst; Lenilde Freitas; Literature and religion; Brazilian literature.
In this thesis, a study is carried out on the theme of the divine in the works of Lenilde Freitas and Hilda Hilst in three main areas: the dream, the body and the ecstasy. In relation to the dream, specific aspects of dream activity, such as torpor and insomnia, and of the dream as a project are analyzed. Carl Jung's concept of shadow is close to the personifications of the fragmented identities of the contemporary subject in the literarytext. It also discusses the voluminous naming of the divine, as well as the composition of images related to the divine body, and its implications on the ability of language to say the absolute. Physical sensations and the effect of the passage of time on the body are considered from the perspective of the accumulation of meanings that this causes, as well as the notion of apartment implicit in obscenity. From the attempt at communion with the divine, analogies with pregnancy and with cannibalism and theophagy are analyzed, resulting in a poeteophagy. About ecstasy, the mobility of the spirit and its interaction with the body are examined, resignified in literature, which also contemplates an everyday ecstasy. The alteration of meanings and the consequent remake of consented ideas are linked to the experiences of drunkenness and madness, seen as ways of accessing knowledge. And the formal procedures used to elaborate the divine in literature are echoed in the image of circularity, which allows a marked opening in the formulation of a theme that defies the limits of the word. The texts of both authors dialogue with each other and with other authors of the literary tradition, such as San Juan de la Cruz, Teresa D'Ávila, Fernando Pessoa, Kafka and Vladimir Nabokov, and theorists such as Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Michel Serres, Gaston Bachelard, Octavio Paz, George Bataille, Paul Valery and Gilbert Rouget.