Roland Barthes and Carlito Azevedo at the Edges of Writing

Abstract

Roland Barthes collects fragments of the days in Mourning Diary (2009), because he was affected by the pain caused by the death of his mother, in 1977. Through writing, he not only finds a way to deal with the suffering, but also rescues the subject of fraying caused by that loss. Language dramatizes the tearing of the individual and, thus, reconfigures the instances of discourse in which he reconstructs himself. Carlito Azevedo, in the poem “H.”, from Monodrama (2009), also addresses the mother’s death. In this case, the lyrical subject engages in the arrows of pain through poetic language, which reconstructs and mobilizes the references of the poet’s formation in the face of the loss of those who generated it. Therefore, this article aims to compare and discuss modes and tensions in Roland Barthes and Carlito Azevedo’s texts so as not to succumb in the face of pain and remain at the edges of writing, which genres and gestures are dissolved.