Dizer o indizível: histeria e heteronímia

Abstract

In one of his last letters, Fernando Pessoa presented a diagnosis of himself in order to explain the genesis of heteronimy, the procedure that marked his production among the poetsof his generation. Pointing hysteria as a symptom that triggered the production of his other 'selves', the poet refers the origin of heteronyms to an organic impulse for depersonalization, that would allow him to achieve a field of indiscernibility between his own personality and his simulations. From his self-classification as hysterical, in view of the intensity of its production, we investigate the relevance that elements referred to hysteria evokes to literature and art in general, approximating his perspective to the analyses made by Gilles Deleuze on Francis Bacon. Thus, heteronimy could be understood as the product of a tension imposed on the unity of the subject, which goes to falter in the face of pre-individual forces that populate it.