UMA ARTISTA NEGRA DO SÉCULO XIX: O LITERÁRIO E O MUSICAL EM MARIA FIRMINA DOS REIS

Abstract

The choice to envision the literary project, as well as to study the relationship between poetry and music from Cantos à Beira-Mar, by Maria Firmina dos Reis, is justified by the understanding that the artist had a purpose with her literature and, even , due to the lack of investigation into the unregistered music by the singer from Maranhão. Nowadays, it has become necessary to understand what has generated so much exclusion disseminated by instances of power around the art produced by black women. Thus, both his literary production in prose and poetry and the musicality contained in his verses were excluded from contact with the public for many decades, which is understood in this research as memoricide (BÁEZ, 2010; DUARTE, 2019). To designate this concept, we reflected on the process of oppression and denial of women's participation in the course of society, understanding that the space reserved for black women writers in the 19th century was not the same as that given to white women. Within intersectional cuts of exclusion, the death of the body also meant the death of art. Understanding the political choices that permeate the writing of Maria Firmina dos Reis (NASCIMENTO, 2009; 2022; SILVA, 2013; 2021; MARRA, 2020; DUARTE (2004; 2017; LOBO, 1993) enabled the construction of the writer's aesthetic profile, what spreads in her musicality. In this sense, the investigation that circumvents the literary project and the music contained in the artist's poetic verses was based on categories that explore her western classical training (OLIVEIRA, 2002; CANDIDO, 2006; PROENÇA, 1955; CAVARERO, 2011) and its Afro-Brazilian origin (GIROY, 2001; SANDRONI, 2001; SILVA, 2005). inscribes its art in the memory of the national culture and adds another layer to its artistic project, to definitively combat memoricide.