HERACLITO’S TEARS: THE CREATIVE UNITY OF SENTIMENT AND THOUGHT IN THE WORK OF PADRE ANTÓNIO VIEIRA

Abstract

Reflecting on human emotiveness in literary work, this paper examines some questions motivated by the text “Lágrimas de Heraclito”, written by the Portuguese Padre António Vieira. This literary text deals with laughter and weeping, expressing the existential paradox of emotions. The new paradigms of knowledge, as described by the Indian researcher Amit Goswami, provide us with the integrative approach that conceives consciousness as being the unity of life, gathering together thoughts and feelings. In approaching the emotiveness phenomena, the idea of consciousness primacy helps us to elucidate the moral and ethical questions implied in poetic creativeness. Considering that the integrative paradigm amasses multiple spaces for humanities studies, this reading is an attempt to answer how the intuitive and symbolic expressions of emotional creativity appear in literary artwork.