Marginal strolling: imagery of a wandering poetic persona in “Visão 1961”, by Roberto Piva

Abstract

In this article, we discuss the poem “Visão 1961”, by Roberto Piva, an important Brazilian writer whose work is still somewhat marginal to our national canon due to its images of the nightlife, oneiric ecstasy, and delirium. We chose to analyze four of its stanzas to discuss in detail some of the oneiric images (suggested in the poem’s title) of a 20^th century flâneur from São Paulo. Theories on Psychoanalysis and Modernity support our discussions to elucidate both the poem’s possible meanings and most encrypted verses, also thinking of more general relations between poetry, the unconscious and writing as a journey into the self. As to the results from our analysis of “Visão 1961”, we highlight that the poet’s wandering, an important theme for modernity in the arts, has the effect of a journey in Piva’s writings, where departure, instant, route and arrival matter. In that lyrical movement, the flâneur physically meanders at São Paulo’s night, while he unconsciously strolls into himself. This is not walking towards a fixed destination, or by a previously defined road, though: Piva’s poetic persona invents his own path in every step he takes, seduced by the delirious and oneiric atmosphere abundant in his verses.