From the critical angle to the spontaneous pose: study of “O poema anterior” (2011), by Victor Heringer

Abstract

Victor Heringer's “O poema anterior” opens his first book of poems: Automatógrafo (2011). According to Rafael Belúzio (2019), by choosing a poem to begin his work, the author gives the text a certain tone that prefaces all his subsequent production, allowing for a critical reading that reveals fundamental characteristics of his poetics. Conducting such a reading is the objective of this study, supported, for this purpose, by Heringer’s own work, considering other poems and essays he has produced and placing them here in dialogue with diverse works, ranging from the theoretical insights of Leda Maria Martins, Rafael Belúzio, and Roland Barthes, through lexicographical and symbolic dictionaries, to the literary reflections of Aristotle and Rainer Maria Rilke. By means of this approach, it is concluded that Victor Heringer’s “opening poem” contains elements that resonate directly and indirectly in his writing style and enable an understanding of Heringerian poetry.