By ZENIR CAMPOS REIS*
Presentation of the article by Cláudia de Arruda Campos.
“In the poem The cactus, Manuel Bandeira tells us about a cactus that, when it falls, deprives the urban environment that constrains it of comforts. And he describes the character as follows: 'he was beautiful, rough, intractable'. Thus Zenir Campos Reis – with the harsh and prickly beauty of his irony – shakes up the reader's accommodations. In the text now republished (as a reminder of the date of his death) the thorns are aimed at the conceptual and ideological incoherence that accompanies the fall of the Berlin Wall.”
After the fall
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, all cats are brown.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, quality became quantity.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, a dead dog growls again.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, dogs that bark also bite.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, “yes” and “no” will be equivalent and interchangeable, depending on the correlation of forces.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, meteorology became a social science and the so-called “social sciences” became a branch of fine arts.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the compass rose was abolished.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the harmonious ending of the fable “the wolf and the lamb” will be highlighted.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, there is an urgent need to deregulate and make the law of gravity more flexible.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, languages and grammars will only use the pronouns indispensable to the new relationships: I and he (the thing) or she (the thing).
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, children will be a heritage in the cuisine of all peoples and countries.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, “everything that the ancient muse sings ceases”.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, we sold the Wall of China.
In time: the news of the fall of the Berlin Wall reached many places before the news of the fall of the Bastille.
* Zenir Campos Reis (1944-2019) was a literary critic and professor of Brazilian Literature at FFLCH-USP. Author, among other books, of Augusto dos Anjos: poetry and prose (Attica).
Originally published in the magazine Prague no 8.
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