Ester Nelly Abuter Ananías - Fachbereich Philosophie und ...

Tânia Dias ( Fundação Casa de Rui Barbosa, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil )
Overlapping temporalities : the diary writings of Hipólito da Costa
During a visit to the United States around 1798, Hipólito da Costa, who would later become
the publisher and reporter of the newspaper Correio Braziliense, wrote lett ers and a
memoir. He has noted everything he saw during his travels in his Diario de min ha via gem
a Filadelfi a ( Journal of my journey to Philadelphia ) as well as in a few “observa tion notebooks”
where, according to his own testimony, he immediately re corded what he observed
in the form of drawings. Th is Journal is a mix of various kinds of information, oft en
confusing and incomplete, unevenly distributed on the page, oft en covering the margins.
It seems to be the fi rst and only record of the narrative voices appearing in his later
texts.
Th is careful record of what he had seen, said, or read, though oft en writt en in a hurry,
deserves to be analysed in its var i ous textual layers : for instance, the page lay-out with its
marginal notes, with text added between the lines and in the form of endnotes relating
to information about a certain month ; the incorporation of texts from sources like
articles in newspapers, scientifi c papers, personal lett ers, bureaucratic forms, travellers’
journals, lectures in universities, conversations with experts on various subjects ; as well
as mem oirs, trans lations and other printed material which could provide information
related to the data Hipolito da Costa was collecting for his Journal.
It is indeed this quality of unfi nished work which allows us to consider the Diario de
minha viagem a Filadelfi a as the generative matrix of other texts by the same author. As
we are dealing with texts the purpose of which was strictly private, writt en without the
intention of publicity, it is my intention to analyse some of the issues related to Costa’s
process of writing, for these elements can help us, for instance, rethink the notion of an
unique temporality which would be characteristic of the travel journal as a genre, in the
sense defi ned by Louis Hay ( La litt érature des écrivains, Paris, Corti 2002 ). I intend to
study these diff erent temporalities and to relate them with the facts of writing, as opposed
to the temporality relating to an internal, subjective time, announced in some of
the notes about the sea journey registered in this Journal, when immobility imposed by
the trip forces Hipolito da Costa to a movement of self-analysis.
Email taniasdias@uol.com.br
Section Travels Between Europe and Latin America ( 15th through 21st centuries )
Panel 92
Date July 31
Time 15 :00
Location l 116