The Limits of Vision in Eliot and Cabral: initial notes on the subject of prediction

Abstract

From the image of the clairvoyants Tiresias and Jerônimo de Albuquerque, this essay intends to briefly discuss the question of the voice and the incommunicable in T. S. Eliot and João Cabral de Melo Neto. In other words, despite the social content present in their works – Eliot is frequently read as a post-war poet, and João Cabral’s poetry, in its turn, is constantly seen as if referring to a specific geography –, this study wishes to demonstrate that the oral aspects carry with them certain incommunicable substance, some sort of message that cannot transcend the very spot it occupies. To sum up, the social content in Eliot and Cabral also brings with it the mark of something that is not to be entirely known, and the road to be taken (in Recife or in modern London) remains there.