A trace of a drive’s Object in Ariana’s Ode to Dionysus, by Hilda Hilst (1974/2018)

Abstract

The article aims to highlight the richness of the interface between psychoanalysis and literature and points out the possibility that a literary work has to clarify concepts and elucidate clinical issues, something that did not escape Freud, who used poems, novels and works of art when science did not offer him the tools to explain subjective phenomena. Following this logic, the present discussion revolves around the concept of object, drive and Self, taking as its theme the songs of Ariana for Dionysus taken from the poetic work by Hilda Hilst called Ode Discontinuous and Remote for Flute and Oboe: From Ariana for Dionysus (1974), where the presence-absence game of the beloved suggests an object investment that allows us to trace a central discussion around the relationship between Ariana’s song/cry for Dionysus and the trail of psychic work that the drive investment traces as a symptomatic longing for the presence-absence of an object of desire. In this scenario, in the face of human ordinariness and the celestial greatness of an object from the Olympus of Brazilian writers, an interpretative possibility was reached that Dionysus, Hilda Hilst’s supporting character (1974), constitutes a drive’s object.