Trançando as linhas de um território ─ tramas de uma Bahia imaginária na poesia de Myriam Fraga

Abstract

The thesis Weaving the Lines of a Territory ─ Webs of an Imaginary Bahia in Myriam Fraga’s Poetry proposes itself to analyze and understand the constitution of a subjective body/territory that’s particularized by the verses of the Bahia-born poet Myriam Fraga, which is also connected to her homeland. Structured in four chapters, the thesis has as a main object of investigation the book Poesia Reunida (“Collected Poetry”), an outline that contains the sections “Sesmaria”, “Pescadores de Mar Grande” (“Fishermen from the Great Sea”), “Marinhas” (“Marines”), “A Ilha” (“The Island”), “O risco na pele” (“The Risk on the Skin”) and “Femina”. The aim of this study was to think about the way that Fraga’s poetry reconstructs and reinvents an idea of Bahia, an imaginary territory erected by the relationships of the involved subjects with their places of belonging in the poems, and by the connections of the subjects and places with the sea. That territory is in the names of the locals of the historic characters who were recreated in verses, as well as in the description of the spots of the simple characters who inhabit or are part of those places, rewriting an image of a consecrated Bahia by the literature and the music, as a traditional and historic space: Salvador city and its surroundings. In the same way, the relations of the subjects with themselves, the sea and the islands were investigated, also reflecting upon an inscribed territory as an insular site, sea-build (subjects and places): a still trapped locus to an idea of a Bahia’s seashore in verses. Thus, we’d have a sort of a built territory as a route, a pendulous connection which goes from the subjects’ bodies to the touched sites in verses and to the sea, so that the sea seems to perform an important role in the constitution of that territory of lands, people and water. The sea infiltrates and modifies all the existing relationships there.