THE WRITING OF THE BODY AND THE BODY OF THE WRITING

REFLECTIONS ON CORPORAL FORMS OF ARTISTIC EXPRESSION IN LITERATURE AND CINEMA

Abstract

This article seeks to reflect on the presence of the body in literature, with some reverberations in cinema. In general, we do not ask ourselves about the participation of the body in the creative act of writing. Writing tends to be perceived as a reflexive and even spiritual act, still leaving in the shadows what writing can have of sensorial, organic flow rather than mental matter. In a first moment, we establish the dichotomy between expression via logical thought or via pulsional body in two characters: the musician Johnny, from the short story The Stalker, by Cortázar, and the stray son André, from Raduan's Lavoura Arcaica. These fictional bodies serve us as analogies for the same dichotomy subsumed in the act of writing. Thus, we bring two authors who have thought about this issue: Gilles Deleuze and José Gil. We intend that this article may suggest paths to be explored and, who knows, imagine new forms of writing.