The image of Water seems to be a major component among the elements that compose the Cantares de perda e predileção [Songs of loss and predilection] (1983), by Hilda Hilst. Whether as a central component of the poem metaphor or a splash of discreet presence, the Water element makes the book a wealth of meanings. We extract from this book for analysis the treatments granted to Desire and Time. In the first case, we see an opaque water, gleaming anguish and loneliness in a song that is predestined to stop its search in the case of a successfully accomplishment. Although the specificity of each poem, the Water element receives nuances of vertigo common to individuals focused on water, as stated by Bachelard (1942). In the second case, we have a stream doomed to finitude, a condition that is one of the reasons for the thickness of Desire. Some songs show the despair of being-toward-death of Heidegger (1927), according to whom only the (potentially eternal) temporality of poetry seems to save, as says Alfredo Bosi (1977) commenting on the intersection of times (of the poetry and ours). At the confluence of these two analytic matrices - Desire and Temporality - we demonstrate how the plasticity promoted by the Water image recurrence favors the production of emotions in the reader, since, according to Octavio Paz (1956), Image is responsible both for recreating real contradictions and for destabilizing the alleged structural rationalism of our daily lives. For this, we especially use the concepts of perception and look of Merleau-Ponty (1960) and Georges Didi-Huberman (1992), respectively, to demonstrate how, in the act of reading, Language enables our perception to remain on the text and at the same time is changed by it, making completely unattainable to critical discourse the inexplicable subjectivity inherent to the aesthetic experience. / A imagem da água parece ser um dos principais componentes da matéria-prima de que se tecem os Cantares de perda e predileção (1983), de Hilda Hilst. Seja como elemento central da metáfora do poema, seja como respingo de presença discreta, o elemento aquático faz do livro um manancial de significações. Dele, extraímos para análise os tratamentos conferidos ao desejo e ao tempo. No primeiro caso, vemos uma água opaca, a reluzir angústia e solidão num canto predestinado a cessar caso a busca se sacie. Apesar das particularidades de cada poema, o elemento aquático ganha nuances da vertigem comum aos indivíduos voltados à água, como afirma Bachelard (1942). No segundo caso, temos um fluxo fadado à finitude, condição que é uma das razões da espessura do desejo. Alguns cantares dão a ver o desespero do ser-para-a-morte de Heidegger (1927), a quem apenas a temporalidade da poesia (potencialmente eterna) parece salvar, a exemplo do que afirma Alfredo Bosi (1977) ao comentar o encontro dos tempos (o dela e o nosso). Na confluência dessas duas matrizes analíticas – o desejo e a temporalidade – buscamos demonstrar como a plasticidade promovida pela recorrência da imagem da água favorece a produção de afetos no leitor, uma vez que o elemento imagético é, segundo Octavio Paz (1956), um poço de contradições recriadoras do real e responsáveis por desestabilizar o racionalismo pretensamente estruturante de nosso dia a dia. Para isso, recorremos principalmente aos conceitos de percepção e de olhar de Merleau-Ponty (1960) e de Georges Didi-Huberman (1992), respectivamente, para demonstrar como, no ato de leitura, o estatuto da linguagem ali movimentada possibilita que a nossa percepção se incruste no texto e ao mesmo tempo seja por ele alterada, tornando inalcançável de todo ao discurso crítico a inexplicável subjetividade inerente à experiência estética.

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This thesis focuses on a transformational but disregarded period in New Zealand’s twentieth century history, the era from the arrival of the Marines in 1942 to the arrival of Rock Around the Clock in 1956. It examines one of the chief agents in this metamorphosis: the impact of American culture. During this era the crucial conduits of that culture were movies, music and comics. The aims of my thesis are threefold: to explore how New Zealanders responded to this cultural trinity, determine the key features of their reactions and assess their significance. The perceived modernity and alterity of Hollywood movies, musical genres such as swing, and the content and presentation of American comics and ‘pulps’, became the sources of heated debate during the midcentury. Many New Zealanders admired what they perceived as the exuberance, variety and style of such American media. They also applauded the willingness of the cultural triptych to appropriate visual, textual and musical forms and styles without respect for the traditional classifications of cultural merit. Such perceived standards were based on the privileged judgements of cultural arbiters drawn from members of New Zealand’s educational and civic elites. Key figures within these elites insisted that American culture was ‘low’, inferior and commodified, threatening the dominance of a sacrosanct, traditional ‘high’culture. Many of them also maintained that these American cultural imports endangered both the traditionally British nature of our cultural heritage, and New Zealand’s distinctively ‘British’ identity. Many of these complaints enfolded deeper objections to American movies, music and literary forms exemplified by comics and pulps. Significant intellectual and civic figures portrayed these cultural modes as pernicious and malignant, because they were allegedly the product of malignant African-American, Jewish and capitalist sources, which threatened to poison the cultural and social values of New Zealanders, especially the young. In order to justify such attitudes, these influential cultural guardians portrayed the general public as an essentially immature, susceptible, unthinking and puritanical mass. Accordingly, this public, supposedly ignorant of the dangers posed by American culture, required the intervention and protection of members of this elite. Responses to these potent expressions of American culture provide focal points which both illuminate and reflect wider social, political and ideological controversies within midcentury New Zealand. Not only were these reactions part of a process of comprehension and negotiation of new aesthetic styles and media modes. They also represent an arena of public and intellectual contention whose significance has been neglected or under-valued. New Zealanders’ attitudes towards the new cinematic, literary and musical elements of American culture occurred within a rich and revealing socio-political and ideological context. When we comment on that culture we reveal significant features of our own national and cultural selves.