Poetry and truth: a dialogue between Ferreira Gullar and H.-G. Gadamer

Abstract

This paper aims to perform an introductory dialogue between the German philosopher H.-G. Gadamer and the Brazilian poet Ferreira Gullar. Even though both of them have different initial paths, they share a common theme which is very important in respect of the human phenomenon: the artistic experience as an experience of the truth. It is an authentic defensive movement against some bad effects from the technization of the world. In this sense, to think poetry as truth makes possible to renew its voice for us, inasmuch as it reveals that, beyond being an aesthetic object, art in general is – as literature too – a re-presentation [Darstellung] of Being, as Gadamer says, and its language is the very possibility for us to recreate the linguistically structured world. In this same path, we are also changed by art – its practical utterance. From Ferreira Gullar’s side, we see a categorical testimony in his poetry, which is not only socially engaged, but also and first of all poetically engaged – dealing in an original manner with everything we can call “world”. His maximum moment is the famous Poema sujo [Dirty poem], which will serve for us as the poetical space of play for us to think and experience how can we truly live art in our days.