“Isto não é Tebas, isto é Brasil”

a travessia da pandemia na poética de Alberto Pucheu

Abstract

This proposal discusses how the repertoire of the covid-19 pandemic is present in "Poema para a catástrofe do nosso tempo", published in 2020 in the book vidas rasteiras by the poet and artist Alberto Pucheu; a poem-book divided into twenty-one parts whose narrative, recently woven under the aegis of the global health crisis, prints the catastrophe that has befallen Brazil. The tragic atmosphere has been going on since 2016, when a female president was removed from office through a "theatrical coup", with repercussions in 2018, when an upside-down Midas, a political party and an authoritarian ideology of extreme brutality took power. In thinking about contemporary Brazil, Pucheu adopts a vision of the rising fall of a country to reflect on current events. Set against the backdrop of a funeral, "Poema para a catástrofe do nosso tempo" leverages images of pain, death and loss that depict the existential drama experienced by brazilians as a result of both the coronavirus and the state's inaction in the face of such health tensions.