Melancholy as a place of encounter and loss in Maria do Rosário Pedreira

Abstract

From an early age, melancholy was understood as a harmful state to both body and mind. A sweet deadly web that would condemn its bearer to a dragging, dormant, aching experience. Melancholy was pointed as the cause of sadness, which irreparably would bring harmful consequences to its bearers. These, the epithet “the damned,” were accompanied by depression, painful reflection, the warm pain of a sweet poison. From the Greek μέλας-melas, black and χολή - cholé, bile, black bile, melancholy promised little to life but a drag of the physical body. And the mind, it would be wandering between vagueness and oblivion of the pleasures of life. But what if melancholy is a space? A place of comfort for sentimental expression, for the pain of love, for the dry tear of the morning? What if, contrary to the norms of common sense, the poetic subject seeks this space, where she lives and wants to suffer, and which, in a way, she promotes? Is it possible to revisit the concept of melancholy as a sought place/space? This is our proposal, having as object of study the poetry of Maria do Rosário Pedreira. The poet's verses reveal a deep complicity between the poetic, feminine subject and melancholy. Moreover, it proves to be a desired place to, in consciousness, rest from an affliction of the soul. It is in this space that one finds oneself in solitude interspersed with brief stays of love. Deceived is the improvident who feels regret for the woman the poet portrays - there is evidence of pain, but there is also evidence that melancholy is the sentimental space that serves her. In MRP, the woman doesn't cry for anything except for a space where she feels complete after being lost. So be it, melancholy.