“Agora não se fala mais”: the paradox between language and the unspeakable in Torquato Neto
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5433/1678-2054.2026vol46n1p41Keywords:
Torquato Neto, language, unspeakable, poetry, dictatorshipAbstract
Insistently related to the act of naming, language seems to have been strained and obliterated by regimes of exception. Several writings produced by poets during the civil-military dictatorship in Brazil between 1964 and 1985 reveal an insufficiency of the sign, when speech was interrupted and words, tainted by history, were invaded by emptiness and a lack of precision. In the case of the poet Torquato Neto, metalanguage was a resource mobilized to denounce the paradox between language and the unspeakable. In this study, we analyze, in the author’s diaries, lyrics, and poems, the discursive strategies that Torquato employed in the face of the need to speak and, at the same time, the impossibility of writing, such as the use of indeterminate pronouns, the semantic field of a shattered subjectivity, and silencing. The theoretical contribution was provided by Paulo Andrade (2000), Viviana Bosi (2021), André Bueno (2005), Michel Collot (2005), Jeanne Marie Gagnebin (2000), among others.
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Copyright (c) 2026 Gabriel Alves Fernandes, Marcelo Ferraz de Paula
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