A Maneira Trágica de Eugénio de Castro

A persona/gem feminina entre Belkiss e Oaristos

Abstract

Eugénio de Castro's nineteenth-century work is ambiguously related to the dramatic genre, in interesting affinity and in tune with the interior dimension’s tragic, theorized and practiced by the best authors of the French-speaking symbolist mêlée. Privileging the work with the verbal material, crossing boundaries between literary and expression modes, with a unique refusal of extra-artistic dictates, Castro's tragic way launches stimulating challenges and promises to the symbolist theater that emerges and unfolds in the Portuguese literary field throughout the 20th century. I am interested in this article to delve into this sui speciei tragic configuration, both in the Belkiss’s dramatic poem by and in the lyric fiction of Oaristos, whose heroines reflect the fundamental aesthetic and ethical non-conformity of the Poet. Because neither artistic individualism nor eclecticism are enough to overcome the deepest enigma of existence.