CHILDHOOD HOUSES IN VISGO DA TERRA, BY ASTRID CABRAL

Abstract

The objective of this article is to analyze how the poet Astrid Cabral recreates the childhood homes in the book Visgo da terra (2005), published for the first time in 1986. The main theoretical basis for analyzing the poems is “poetics of space”, by Gaston Bachelard, especially with regard to reflections on the relationship between human beings and their living spaces. We use, with Bachelard, the concept of topoanalysis to understand the representations of houses recreated by the woman who undertakes a lyrical visit to the spaces of her childhood. The study seeks to show that the home is much more than a living center, because it is truly a center of dreams. Daydreaming took shelter, in the past, in each of its strongholds, and these strongholds particularized the daydreams, experienced by the child in many moments of their inaugural experiences in the world. Thus, the dream house is the echo of the natal house. It is the stone house turned into a house of thought, through the mediation of poetry. Writing Visgo da terra, Astrid produced a monumental book to exercise this mediation.