CHARLES SIMIC’S USES OF HIS-STORY

Resumo

This article consists of three sections. The first aims at presenting brief theoretical considerations on the issues of public history and autobiography. The second focuses on a synopsis of the North-American poet Charles Simic’s memoir entitled “In the Beginning...” which is part of his book Wonderful Words, Silent Truth (1994). The third explores the interplay between his private history and the collective history of this century, observing closely some key aspects, such as the use of a child’s perspective, the use of the comic to report the tragic, and the device of fragment in narrative. In doing so, I will be illustrating the fragility of boundaries between history and fiction, considering biography a fictional construction, since it is a made-up story, which does not necessarily lack truth.