Abstract:
The critics of José Paulo Paes have recognized a minimalist aspect in his work. This paper looks at the notion of aspect as a tool to explain such perception. Beyond the size of poems and verses, the content also builds a minimalist universe. By imprinting boundaries and relief, an observer comes into play: a point of view, that will offer the minimal measure of the objects called forth. The minimal aspect in two poems in Prosas seguidas de Odes mínimas is founded in time – which houses the traditional linguistic aspect – as well as in the categories of space and person. The reliefs created are progressively attenuated and the figures are brought to the scale of the subject, building thus the key to the minimalist reading, and ultimately triggering a meta-linguistic reading of the poems. Finally, and in addition to the exploration of the semiotic procedures underlying the poetics of Paes, our analytic exercise shows how one may operate with the discursive extensions of the notion of aspect to the categories of person, time and space.
Keywords:
Semiotics; Poetics; Aspect; Discursive categories