Mirada ao abismo: uma experiência de leitura em Murilo Rubião e Maurits Cornelis Escher

Abstract

Murilo Rubião blurs the boundaries between the real, the imaginary, and the uncanny in his short stories, unsettling the characters and creating a threatening space on the edge of the abyss. His heroes are fictional entities that navigate in strange lands, exploring the absurd as a way of being-in-the-world, much like Sisyphus in Camus (2020). Maurits Cornelis Escher, in turn, turns his visual and graphic compositions into an exploratory movement of the limits of representation by creating reflections of an absurd condition of the image. In this dissertation, we aim to present an experimental reading of Murilo Rubião's work in connection with the work of Maurits Escher, using what we term "gazing into the abyss" as a strategy for approaching theartistic-literary object and as a dissonant direction. To do so, the work is organized into eight sections that are not presented as "chapters" in the traditional sense of the term but rather as "plateaus" (Deleuze; Guattari, 2011). These plateaus are operationalized in the dissertation as a non-hierarchical and rhizomatic approach to the production of scientific knowledge, which is not intended for ends but rather for multiplicities. In our work, we expand the reflection on contemporary criticism of the aesthetic object, which questions hermeneutic practices in a movement that seeks to operate a trajectory that moves away from interpretation and representation (Sontag, 2020). Furthermore, we explore the relationship between the technical revolution of art and new forms of visuality, considering a broader process of reading images and, consequently, art objects. In this sense, the concept of the rhizome (Deleuze; Guattari, 2011) presents itself as an approach that challenges traditional linear structures and allows us to expand the understanding of comparativism in the artistic-literary field (Garramuño, 2014; Krauss, 1979). In this work, the "abyss" as a rhizomatic image acts as a center of intensities that challenges our conception of being and experiencing the world and art, connecting to the works of Rubião and Escher and exploring the multiplicity of meanings of the term. The mirrored narrative of mise en abyme (Dostál, 1990; Dällenbach, 1977; Hutcheon, 1988) and the absurd condition (Camus, 2020), in rhizomatic connection, are essential elements for understanding the abyss as a turning point that allows us to map the unknown and experience the non-sense. The experimentation we propose with Murilo Rubião's literary work, focusing on stories like "Marina a Intangível," “O ex-mágico da Taberna Minhota," "Teleco o coelhinho," “O edifício," and “O bloqueio," in relation to the graphic and diverse work of Maurits Escher, occurs here from an anti-mimetic and post-representational perspective, seeking to expand the limits of the artistic-literary field through experimentation. Therefore, this research proposes an approach ofcollective agencement and a proliferation of meanings without exhausting them inany sense. The goal is to open new horizons of understanding and imagination, acting in a fertile space for artistic and critical expression.