The Course of Resignation: Semiotic Reading of the poem “Fenomenologia da resignação”, by Jose Paulo Paes

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to propose a semiotic reading of José Paulo Paes’ poem “Fenomenologia daresignação”. The present text is divided into three parts. We start with approaching enunciation and isotopies, atthe discursive level. Then, we consider the course of the “I”. And, finally, we examine modalization and passionas well as being and being like. Finally, we present a brief conclusion, stressing phenomenological aspects ofperception which range from exclusion to participation. This paper focuses on the course of resignation, whichgoes from subjectivity to otherness. To undertake this reading we have referred to French semiotics . We preferthe term “reading” to “analysis” since the latter consists of a broader topic of study. For Hjelmslev (1975, p. 27),analyses are to be exhaustive, task which is more appropriate to a deep investigation, what doesn’t configuratethe scope of this paper. Based on the reading of José Paulo Paes’ poem, and we verify how this poetic text beomesa semiotic object (Greimas; Courtés, 1989, p. 313). By dealing with resignation, the individual notices that eventshave a course, whose continuum holds tonicities and atonicities, pauses and continuations, peaks and decays, asMário de Andrade (1987, p. 71) says in “Prefácio interessantíssimo” in Pauliceia desvairada: “Decays do not comeafter apogees. An apogee is already a decay, since being stagnation it cannot comprise any progress in itself, anyascensional evolution.” The resignated individual would then be the one who “knows” that events, when theyreach their apogee of tonicity, cannot go beyond this “more of more”, and start then their course to “less of more”,towards atonicity.