Trips and autobiographical discourse in Nísia Floresta

Abstract

In the books in which she registered her trips through Europe, Nísia Floresta also registered, together with reflections on new cultures, important evidences of her own life. In fact, practically everything known of the author was found in her books, no matter whether they were poems, novels, chronicles or essays, such was the autobiographic character of her work. In this essay, I shall deal with one of her travel books: O itinerário de uma viagem à Alemanha, written in French and published in Paris, in 1857. In her report, Nísia Floresta highlights not the history of the city she is visiting, but her own subjectivity, or to put it better, the emotions that are released by the sight of the objects and the places. Through memory, she searches for the remains of her childhood, or goes in direction of distant relatives, whether they are alive or dead, as a means to relive moments of bliss. The narrator positions herself in the center of her writing, in a state of romantic self-contemplation, and everything seems to gravitate around herself.