Da paixão ao abandono : uma leitura das Cartas Portuguesas e das litografias de Henri Matisse

Abstract

In the Portuguese Literature, the passion theme as the love disillusion, the unachievable melancholy, the loss of hope narrowness, the pain of the time, among other themes, have revealed soul states of Sóror Mariana Alcoforado, in the Cartas Portuguesas. Written by a self that confess itself as nun and driven by a French soldier, Chevalier de Chamilly, the five letters reveal a disillusion sense and a deep pain caused by the loved being absence, passion drama essence that was already found before in the friend odes. Henri Matisse (1869-1954), painter, sculptor, graphic artist and French projector also was a reader of the Cartas Portuguesas. In the year 1945, 73 years old, reads the Cartas while recovers him of a delicate surgery. Enraptured, in the next year, proposes to the Tériade Editor, in Paris, an illustrated edition of the Cartas. The 2004 edition is composed by imaginary pictures of Mariana, plus fifteen lithographies that follow the text and synthesize the several states of the religious soul, from purity to passion and from disillusion to bitterness. Yonder the lithographies, Matisse illustrates the pages with flowers vignettes, fruit and plants from the south countries that confirm the passion and the desire expressed in the text. The objective dissertation presents a reading of the Cartas Portuguesas considering them as a human, literary and confession document, from the reading reception of Henri Matisse in the lithographies and vignettes of the special edition of 2004. The reading reception, as per Wolfgang Iser, constitutes a theoretical support to the reading and text interpretation of the Cartas. The theoretical concepts of Praz (1982), Souriau (1983), Ferrara (1986), Joly (1996), among others, were essential to the interpretation of the images. Researching the data base, the existing works do not contemplate the reading of the non verbal of the Cartas, and this is the reason why the present work contributes to the extensive critical fortune of the Cartas Portuguesas, of Sóror Mariana Alcoforado.