João Cabral no museu: o poeta entre o lixo e o arquivo

Abstract

In Museu de Tudo (1975), João Cabral de Melo Neto acts as a great archivist, whether in the process of forming the book that brings together poems written over almost a decade or in the formal procedure of selecting, collecting, rewriting, organizing, and publishing. In the opening poem the poet insinuates that the book has no "vertebra", that is, it does not have a thread conductive, and that it can be both "casket of trash" and "archive". In this sense, the relationship between trash and archive and their parallels with memory is analyzed. It is also pointed out how the book is a rereading of the work itself and an exercise of control over it, especially from the figures that the poet summons to his "museum”.