Belchior and the carnival sense of the world: from reminiscences to an aporia

Abstract

In the set of theses that made the name of Mikhail M. Bakhtin famous, we can certainly count his discussion around carnivalization, elaborated from a broad study of the work of François Rabelais. However, there is a problem: attempts to see carnivalization beyond Rabelais have often engendered a certain reductionism in the concept. Therefore, in this study, we intend to present the terms of the carnavalization, such as Bakhtin presents it in his Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, published in 1963, and, above all, in Rabelais and His World, published in 1965. Based on Bakhtin's considerations, we reflect on the work of the Brazilian composer and singer Antônio Carlos Belchior. Faced with the impossibility of scrutinizing Belchior's extensive work here, our reflection focuses on the album Elogio da loucura (In Praise of Folly), release in 1988. Similarly, as it is not possible here to discuss all the songs on the album in detail, we chose to make occasional observations about some songs and, then, deal in more detail with the song that closes the album, namely, “Arte Final”. As a whole, the reflection proposed in the present study aims to support the hypothesis that, in Belchior's work, reminiscences of the carnival sense of the world are underlying and, with them, an aporia.