Reflections on the poetic authorship of women in “Nada, esta espuma”, by Ana Cristina Cesar

Abstract

In Cenas de Abril (1979), Ana Cristina Cesar comes to innovate the poetic discourse made by women. Her sphinx-like writing contributes for the contemplations of being a woman in relation to the desire that surrounds the act of writing. In the poem selected for analysis “Nada, esta espuma”, Ana Cristina Cesar reveals a voice that insists on the “evilness of writing” by personifying, through the figures of the goddess and the mermaid, the silencing or liberation of poetry as a way of expression: figures of the ambivalences that permeate the lyrical self speech of the poem. Thus, this present article will analyze the displacements of women through writing, based on the reading of O riso da medusa (2022), by the author Hélène Cixous. In order to analyze the meanings of the figures presented in the text, such as the goddess who “punishes” and the mermaid who has a free breast, this work will approach the theoretical readings of Um é o outro (1986), by Elisabeth Badinter and “Sereias: sedução e saber” (2020), by Adelia Bezerra de Menezes.