Travel, poetry and death in Age de Carvalho

Abstract

Analysis of two poems by Age de Carvalho (in Ainda: em viagem, 2015): “Atravessando” and “Ele, o rico-de-sombras”, under the light of the topos of travel as an experience of being in the threshold of two different worlds, and how it connects to the experience of death ando f wrting poetry. The aim is to discuss the tragic truth that inhabits poetry: that knowing is perishing and that the poetic phenomenon manifests itself as a fragile threshold between two borders. The paper will also pass through the representation of Odysseus as a literary sign that emerges in Homer's Odyssey and opens up to the systems of signs that each literary period will confer on him, from the perspective of the Italian critic Piero Boitani.