The journey as pilgrimage and asceticism in Dalila Pereira da Costa

Abstract

The text analyses the theme of the journey in the work of Dalila Pereira da Costa, taking as its corpus writings published between 1974 and 1999: Duas Epopéias das Américas (1974), A Nova Atlântida (1977), the article “A ‘Peregrinação’: uma ascese portuguesa” (1979) and Dos mundos contíguos (1999). It shows how, in these works, the crossing of the world appears as a metaphor of the inner journey. It examines the author's reading of Fernão Mendes Pinto's Peregrinação, in which shipwrecks and the loss of material goods are construed as an experience of detachment, remission of sins and salvation of the soul, and the analogy between the crossing of the sertão in Grande Sertão: Veredas and the sea voyage of Odysseus. It follows the approximation between the civilising action of the ancient Greeks and the Iberian navigations, the commentary on Os Lusíadas, in which India stands as a metaphor of transcendence and of sacred space, and the connections with Sebastianism, the Fifth Empire and the Portuguese Renaissance. It records the comparative study of Greek, Celtic, Christian and Sufi myths in the light of the Neoplatonic tradition and the author's stay in Brazil between 1959 and 1965.