On the most impure invention: an Orpheus montage by Herberto Helder

Abstract

This article draws on the myth of Orpheus as a topic repeatedly recovered in modern poetry to analyze two possibilities for reading the Thracian poet in the work of the poet Herbeto Helder. The central hypothesis is that, although distinct, both hold the implication of metamorphosis and finitude engendered by metaphor in the design of the continuous poem, in view of writing as a paradoxical procedure of inscription and erasure articulated by image and sound in the enunciation lyric. Therefore, the obscurity inscribed in the authorial gesture will be examined from the point of cut in cinematographic montage, considering the filmic feature of Helder’s poetry the way in which it appropriates the myth of Orpheus from the poetic recitation as a force that operates in the perspective of a radical alterity, founder of a specific language, in which origin and end simultaneously condition interdiction and openness to meaning.