eLyra, the electronic journal edited by the international research network LyraCompoetics will focus on the topic of “poetry and the end of the world” for its fifth volume.
In a poem from Peregrinatio ad Loca Infecta, “Temptations of the Apocalypse”, Jorge de Sena writes: “Let the suns collapse. The stars die. / Let all restart from when the Light / Was still to be parted from the darkness / Of space without matter. / Nor was there a spirit / Lazily strolling over the calm waters/ That could lie to itself gazing upon Creation. / (Safest however, is not to restart at all.)” A tragic performative, calling for the end of times, but so as to think a renewal of everything – or nor even that: an end without new beginning, end of the end, nothingness.
What relation is there between poetry and the end of all – invocation, exorcism, desire or fear? How can a poem say the ends – Auschwitz, Vietnam, Kosovo – and claim the resistance of hope? Between the culmination of time in St. John’s Apocalypse and the dissolution of speech in Paul Celan, how does one enunciate the end of the world?
Article proposals can be submitted until 31 March 2015.
For more information please consult the journal’s site at http://www.elyra.org/index.php/elyra.
Pedro Eiras (University of Porto)
Paulo de Medeiros (University of Warwick)