The extreme calligraphy of the world in the poetry of Herberto Helder

Abstract

The poetry of Herberto Helder assumes the writing as an “extreme calligraphy of the world”, as he presents in Photomaton & Vox. On one hand, his poetry merges poem, body, and world, fabricating in the poem an original metaphor of the world and the body. On the other hand, this extreme calligraphy is also rooted in a Dionysian nature. This idiom destroys the conventional syntaxes, without losing the musical rhythm of the pulsation of the heart and the earth. His poetry is a body full of secrets and taboos working on the transmutations of substances, matters and sensations. Therefore, the presence of the alchemical thought and the Dionysian principle are strong lines in this investigation, which leads us to an innovative poetic form, and, consequently, to a new world. This article will aim to describe how the poetry of Herberto Helder builds an extreme calligraphy through the body, reinforcing the correspondence between it and the world and the transmutation of the poetic matter. Thinking about the alchemical process and the Dionysian power, the article demonstrates how the poet destabilises the limits of language, in a movement of destruction and reconstruction of poetic matter.