“A step beyond my loneliness”

passage and landscapes written in Hospício é Deus, diary by Maura Lopes Cançado

Abstract

The article covers passages and landscapes from the diary by Maura Lopes (1965), Hospício é Deus, extracting from them a reflection about the community sense and, on the other hand, of loneliness and a certain exile, triggered in the writing of diaries. Based on the theorizations of Michel Foucault (2004, 2006) and Myriam Ávila (2011; 2016), we seek to interweave the signs of “passage” and “transit”, a historically privileged space for the madman, with the diasporic, fragmentary, and traveling movement perceived in the writing of diaries. Along this path, we will evaluate Maura Lopes Cançado’s sincerity project according to the authorial function that her own name assumes within the limits of an unusual literary undertaking. For in moving from the space of loneliness, exile, to diaristic writing, the author of Hospício é Deus does not fail to project the community effort out of a longing for cultural insertion.