O útero da casa:

home, inheritances and heroes

Abstract

From the book O útero da casa, by Conceição Lima, a São Tomé and Principe poet, it is possible to observe the beginning of a poetic project of individual, collective, national reconstruction, which permeates, like an obsession, the entire work, and grows into desire to each verse. In the heart (or womb) of the house, one can inhabit a room that metaphorizes the struggle, the square, one can move around the work, without obstacles, on the flat, round path. However, such a house is also and still dreamed of, high, sacred, narrated thread by thread and, as one might expect, unfinished - “Sonho ainda o pilar - / uma rectidão de torre, de altar/(...)/ E reinvento em cada rosto fio/a fio/as linhas inacabadas do projecto” (idem, p. 20, my emphasis). What Conceição Lima accomplishes in her work seems to me to be an innovative trajectory for the context of the literary arts of São Tomé and Príncipe. She seeks to project, in verse, on the ground of language, the dreamed land of São Tomé and Príncipe as if seeking to rediscover her own Home. Or face your own identity and affection. This trajectory may be the result of a historical framework – which drove intellectuals from the former colonies into exile (although it was not “forced”, in the case of the poet) – and, from an ontological perspective – which imposes on the subject the job of remain and, at the same time, leave their original land.