Abstract
In 2020, the Portuguese poet Luís Quintais published
Regressarás à leveza do ver. Uma viagem no Japão
, in which he reflects, through prose fragments, on this journey documented through Polaroid photos. Thus, we explore how this physical journey transforms into a lyrical reflection on observed reality and its metamorphosis into poetic language, stemming from the condition of foreignness or otherness. In examining this encounter – amidst cultural and linguistic differences – the poet draws explicitly on the thought of Roland Barthes, who also wrote about Japan, and engages in a dialogue with Wittgenstein in the field of the philosophy of language.