CLARICE LISPECTOR E ELIZABETH BISHOP

RAÇA, VIOLÊNCIA E SILÊNCIO EM “MINEIRINHO” E “THE BURGLAR OF BABYLON”

Abstract

The indignation for the execution, with thirteen shots, of the notorious criminal named Mineirinho in an operation of Rio de Janeiro police department in 1961 motivated the editors of the magazine Senhor to commission Clarice Lispector the task of writing “Mineirinho”, a text in which she reflects upon ethics and justice, having the police violence and the neglect of the state towards the most vulnerable citizens as a starting point. About a year later, the American poet Elizabeth Bishop uses the same topic to write the poem “The burglar of Babylon”. Similarly motivated by the violent death of another famous outlaw––Micuçu, Bishop finds formal and thematic inspiration in the social poetry of João Cabral de Melo Neto; nonetheless, between Clarice’s and Bishop’s text, there is an intertextual relation derived from the coincident topos and their search for the origins of violence. To this end, Clarice undertakes an individual quest, whereas Bishop uses space-time parameters to approach violence as a socio-political phenomenon. Both authors inquire about the level of implication and the interests that society as a whole could have in the genesis and extermination of individuals like Mineirinho and Micuçu. That said, there is, however, a detail that neither the media nor the authors mention: the fact that both executed men were black. Such information endows the study of these texts with new dimensions as the implications of questions of race are taken into account. Besides, they also shed light on the racial relations in Brazil in present times. This article aims to use what the texts say and what they silence to try to understand why, despite statistical evidence, discussions on the racialization of violence are still evaded in Brazil.