Stela do Patrocínio and the poetics of closure

Abstract

This article reads the poetic speech of Stela do Patrocínio, diagnosed as a schizophrenic and kept in institutional confinement between 1962 and 1992, as a literary object. We base our study on the book Reino dos bichos e dos animais é o meu nome, in which the philosopher Viviane Mosé transcribes the speeches of Stela into verses. Stela's speeches were recorded because of her resistance to dealing with paint and paper in a project developed by the visual artist Neli Gutmacher. The article is divided into two sections. The first is devoted to the biography of Stela and her confinement as the origin of her poetic speech. The second section approaches Stela's speeches as texts so as to reflect on the encounter between madness and poetry. The poetry that emerges from a voice marginalized by the institution surprises and challenges us in how it aesthetically organizes the poet's perception of herself as an object within medical discourse.