To say and to autograph oneself: evoking Mário Cesariny

Abstract

In many of his poems, the surrealist Mário Cesariny employs metalinguistic structures common in what we call “ars poeticas” seeking to reflect upon the different representations of the poet and the power of the poetic verb. The poems seem to fold over themselves, installing a dynamic in which the poetic voice simultaneously has and has not its origin in the poet himself. This article focuses on three poems by Cesariny that have either “self-addressing” or “self-description” as their main theme, in dialog with texts by T. S. Eliot, Éric Benoit and Dominique Combe that focus on the poetic voice’s origin.