[scatology and
"coprophagy"]

The following excerpts were taken from chapter four ["'Cagar é uma
Licença Poética'": The Anti-Aesthetic Aesthete and 'Turd World' Poetics
in Glauco Mattoso"] of Butterman's thesis [1], focusing on "Manifesto
Coprofágico" and other scatological poems.



ORIGINAL FRONT COVER (1981) and RE-EDITION BY ILUMINURAS (2001)


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(a) "MANIFESTO COPROFÁGICO"

The poem begins with a pseudo-epigraph, "pseudo" because it consists of
a subverted poetic verse appropriated by one of Mattoso's own
heteronyms, the flamboyant Garcia Loca: "Mierda que te quiero mierda."
The verse was excerpted, digested, and wasted from Garcia Lorca's famous
"Romance Sonámbulo," "Verde que te quiero verde." [2] An analysis of the
last three letters of each verse reveals the repetition of "-ina," which
resembles closely the word "rima," therefore satirizing an age-old
convention of poetry. [3] This poem exemplifies a natural progression, a
"movement," so to speak, from the specific to the more general. The
"Manifesto Coprofágico," quoted in its entirety, appears below:

(JORNAL DOBRABIL 11)


The initial setting occurs in a dirty bathroom in a neighborhood bar or
pub. The poem is a factory of olfactory sensation, for the waste
deposited there contains the smells that are metaphorically associated
with the identities of those who have left their mark, so to speak. For
example, the scent of "botina" (boot) may represent a member of the
Military Police, or perhaps some other uniformed public official;
"rotina" may be indicative of a nine-to-five worker; "sabatina," or
schoolwork, implies that a diligent student has been to this dirty bar
and left a "piece" of herself; "serpentina," carnival decoration, is
evidence that a "malandro" or a "carnavalesco" has contributed to the
mass of cultural production. In other words, one may infer that a dirty
public bathroom in a bar is an internationally democratic "melting-pot,"
one of the few places in the world where true diversity is upheld!
Repugnantly, the poetic voice becomes more specific: "Bosta com vitamina
/ cocô com cocaína" – the well-nourished, the drug-addict; "Merda de
gente fina" – the rich and beautiful. The process of generalization
becomes more evident at this point, as the reader's journey continues
out of the bar and onto an ordinary street, then a neighborhood, then a
marginalized city (Teresina, the capital of Piauí, a geographically
large but politically marginalized state in the Northeast); then,
another often-neglected state; and, finally, any country in Latin
America (in the case of the poem, Argentina is selected, if for no other
reason than to maintain the integrity of the simple and – in stark
contrast to the grotesque content within – rather childlike musical
rhyme). The dirty bathroom in an average bar defeats artificial borders
and barriers, becoming a cross-cultural point of exchange for an entire
continent. "Merda comunitária cosmopolita e clandestina" is a rather
unconventional description of a city like São Paulo. On a macrocosmic
level, and in cultural terms, São Paulo may be defined as just another
dirty bathroom in a bar because the enormous concrete jungle is also a
great melting-pot of races and immigrants, some of whom are illegal
residents or living in exile from their native countries.

We finally arrive, then, at Mattoso's meta- (or shall we say merda-)
poetic contention: "merda métrica palindrômica alexandrina." "Why
palindromic?" I asked the author during one of our interviews. His
response was as follows: "Ué, porque o formato de um cocô começa
pontudo, aumenta, e depois termina pontudo. Ou seja, de trás para
frente, e de frente para trás, ele é um palíndromo." In the final
verses, the poem's configuration seems to be transformed into somewhat
of an ode. The poet pays tribute to the turd, glorifying its life-giving
properties: "Ó merda com teu mar de urina / com teu céu de fedentina /
tu és meu continente terra fecunda onde germina." Any farmer would
agree, with little or no contention, that manure is indeed the best
fertilizer for the earth. What is also born from this life-giving
magical substance called "merda" is the very personal (and perhaps
collective as well) "minha independência minha indisciplina," alluding
to the frustration and rebelliousness of the poetic voice – there is no
"high" or "elite" culture being devoured in these verses. This manifesto
seems rather utopian in its democracy and egalitarianism. Shit has the
same worth, regardless of the maker's class, race, social status, or
whatever other defining characteristic. Interestingly, Mattoso recited
this poem, in a solemn and patriotic tone, at the Sixth Annual Poetry
Contest, hosted by the journal ESCRITA, in 1979, and while it generated
considerable controversy, ended up winning first place.

Rather than discounting the metaphor of coprophagy as merely humorous
and in bad taste, I would like to explore philosophical and then
psychoanalytic interpretations of fecality as they are relevant to a
postmodern conception of literary production. In his illuminating
article called, "The Metamorphosis of Shit," Martin Pops brilliantly
traces the symbolism and archetype of defecation in Western philosophy
and literature, from Sade to James Joyce to Freud to Baudelaire to Swift
to Jean Genet, and many others. There are two statements from this
article which bear quoting, since, re-thought or applied to a universal
context of repression – and, more specifically, Brazilian culture and
society during military dictatorship – they loom significant: (1).
"Shitting is the bodily archetype of spiritual rebirth insofar as it
LIBERATES THE BODY FROM ITSELF." (29; emphasis added). In the context of
self-censorship and self-hatred (such as internalized homophobia), the
metaphors of blockage and release are relevant. W.H. Auden in "Greatness
Finding Itself" states: "Excretion is both the primal creative act –
every child is the mother of its own feces – and the primal act of
revolt and repudiation of the past – what was once good food has become
bad dirt and must be got rid of." (30). Robert Coover goes so far as to
claim that the real reason we look back to examine our own turds is to
admire our own creative production – he writes, "it's the closest we
ever come to being at one with the gods." (135).

While James Joyce identifies excretion as the "chamber music" of
creativity (Pops 36), the Marquis de Sade, in THE HUNDRED AND TWENTY
DAYS OF SODOM, goes so far as to revere it: "THE 120 DAYS OF SODOM is an
extraordinary exercise in coprophilia. Sadean libertines are
connoisseurs of shit. They chew and savor and wallow in shit [...] They
are 'worshippers' of shit who make a chapel into a privy, a rump into an
altar, and the asshole of a victim the depository of a consecrated
wafer" (Pops 39).

Evaluating the performative subjectivity exemplified in the poetry of
Glauco Mattoso reflects a striking similarity with Sigmund Freud's
definition of the "anal character" that appears in CIVILIZATION AND ITS
DISCONTENTS as well as Freud's 1908 essay on "Character and Anal
Erotism," a disposition whose rebelliousness and eccentricity are the
key traits that allow such a character to disrupt the social order of a
repressive society that would otherwise seek to destroy his
nonconformist personality. In CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS, Freud
conceives anal retention as "a most remarkable strategy for the
sublimation of a particular kind of subjectivity, that is, an original
personality, which is still untamed by civilization and may thus become
the basis [...] of hostility to civilization" (43). Obstinacy,
orderliness, and parsimony are specific characteristics that Freudian
analysis attributes to this character type. It is interesting but not
surprising to note that this document itself, now among Freud's most
commonly cited presentations, "aroused considerable astonishment and
indignation when it first appeared," according to Peter Gay, editor of
THE FREUD READER.

Scatological analysis has also played an important role in contemporary
feminism, figuring prominently in works of writers like Julia Kristeva,
Judith Butler, and Iris M. Young. In THE POWERS OF HORROR: AN ESSAY ON
ABJECTION, Julia Kristeva conceptualizes excrement – or that which has
been discharged from the body – as indicative of the body's boundaries;
that is, the body's definition of internal and external elements. The
discharge comes to represent, then, the construction of an "Other."
(3-4; 71). Yet it is important to realize, as Judith Butler points out
in GENDER TROUBLE: FEMINISM AND THE SUBVERSION OF IDENTITY, that the
contents that have been ejected from the body are undergoing a process
of transformation that reconceives "something originally part of
identity into a defiling otherness" (133). As such, elements at one time
incorporated and imbued with subjective identification have become
alienated from the subject's perception of itself. Iris M. Young, in THE
POLITICS OF DIFFERENCE, applies Kristeva's theories of abjection in an
attempt to study notions of sexism, homophobia, and racism, viewing the
rejection of the body's sex, sexuality, or color as an element to be
ejected and then, once differentiated and therefore autonomous from the
subject's bodily boundary, these expelled identities can be conceived
with disgust. While Young portrays the repulsed viewer as owning a
hegemonic identity, I believe this process may also be
psychoanalytically extended to encompass a projection of the self in its
denunciation and therefore compulsion to expel its own "abject"
qualities. Internalized homophobia, or self-censorship on a more general
level, may be examples that portray the self's perhaps unconscious role
in its own detachment from characteristics that define it, aspects that
society has labeled as foreign to the cleanliness of the body and
therefore conceived as undesirable.

Judith Butler concisely summarizes this notion of bodily boundaries that
establish acceptable elements of identity and exclude, for the ultimate
purpose of domination, facets deemed to be alien:


[What constitutes through division the 'inner' and 'outer' worlds of the
subject is a border and boundary tenuously maintained for the purposes
of social regulation and control. The boundary between the inner and
outer is confounded by those excremental passages in which the inner
effectively becomes outer, and this excreting function becomes, as it
were, the model by which other forms of identity-differentiation are
accomplished. In effect, this is the mode by which Others become shit.
For inner and outer worlds to remain utterly distinct, the entire
surface of the body would have to achieve an impossible impermeability.
This sealing of its surfaces would constitute the seamless boundary of
the subject; but this enclosure would invariably be exploded by
precisely that excremental filth that it fears.] (Butler, GENDER
TROUBLE, 134)


Ultimately, in this perspective, the threat of contamination by
difference or "Otherness" is not only a powerful one but a reality that
transcends any of the subject's vain attempts to construct a boundary to
prevent their reincorporation into its subjectivity. The security of a
cleansed "inner" world that has temporarily succeeded in expelling
abject qualities is a false one that will not be able to permanently
uphold its artificial borders and will have to ultimately accept the
difference that terrifies it, or, to reiterate Butler's metaphor, risk
destruction by explosion. Mattoso's insistence on eating the "cagada" is
enhanced by his acknowledgment that the supposedly rejected remnants
have the potential to provide a feast of difference, a veritable banquet
of societally-rejected truths with which the author is attempting to
re-nourish Brazilian, and by extension, post-modern consciousness.


(b) OTHER SCATOLOGICAL POEMS

Whether feces are viewed with spiritual ecstasy, or whether society
degrades this substance, conferring a status of filth and waste that
contaminates, we cannot deny, in scatological literature, its deep
connection with humor. As Martin Pops states: "Comic relief (so called)
'takes a load off our minds' (it relieves us) as shitting takes a load
from our bodies (we relieve ourselves). Laughter and shitting lighten us
and confer buoyancy." (51). In closing this discussion of Glauco
Mattoso's most central manifesto, it is imperative to consider one of
the author's humorous and rather theatrical poems: "Dulce Salgado de
Azevedo Camargo." What seems like the name of a rather aristocratic
Brazilian or Portuguese woman is actually a combination of the four
human taste buds: o "doce" – the sweet; o "salgado" – the salty; o
"azedo", the sour; and o "amargo," the bitter. The reader is then
treated to an epigraph from Manuel Maria Barbosa du Bocage (1765-1805),
a Portuguese poet, technically writing among the second generation of
Neo-classicists, but as many critics have affirmed, with an "alma
romântica." [4] As examined in chapter two, Bocage was known for his
violent satire and for his bohemian and rebellious approach to life,
many of his sonnets revealing a glorification of the virtues of the
ideal woman in accordance with Neo-Classical standards of beauty: she
possesses virtue, is well-proportioned physically and well-balanced
emotionally. Once again, Mattoso picks up where Bocage left off,
portraying this beautiful woman during her most natural and yet
uncivilized act: "cagando." As the epigraph reads: "Cagando estava a
dama mais formosa ..."

To Mattoso's delight, even Bocage admitted that "gente fina" also
defecate. The entire poem juxtaposes images of foods and feces, mixing
deliciousness and repulsion:


DULCE SALGADO DE AZEVEDO CAMARGO [1.5] [1975]

"Cagando estava a dama mais formosa..." (BOCAGE)

airosa, maneirosa, delicada Dulce,
vestida de vestal no campo de tulipas,
a suspirar descreve um gesto espiralado
e arranca da platéia aplausos calorosos.
o etéreo gás que faz com que seu peito pulse
emana forte de sanguinolentas tripas:
é o repelente odor de sangue coagulado,
que à donzela sabe a méis apetitosos.

airosa, maneirosa, delicada Dulce,
a memória paira do opíparo acepipe
nas lisas pupilas e nas lindas papilas,
casta, constipada, crispada no bispote.
com que nojo as fezes expulsa do seu ventre!
com que entojo às vezes expira doces ventos!
com que pejo as vestes a cobrem dos spots!
que despejo deixa no bojo do bispote!

(JORNAL DOBRABIL 11)


The first verse pays tribute to Dulce's beauty: "airosa, maneirosa,
delicada Dulce." Simultaneously, through vocabulary as well as syntax,
Mattoso successfully attempts to linguistically imitate continental
Portuguese as representative of the homeland of Bocage, the poet whose
work he has appropriated. "Sabe a méis" for example, may be considered
awkward in contemporary Brazilian usage – it means to have a flavor of
honey. "Bispote" in Portugal translates to "penico" in Brazilian
Portuguese or "chamber-pot" in English. In this poem, a constipated
Dulce, as if on a toilet seat placed in the middle of a stage for all to
see, is recalling with great delight a delicious snack she has recently
consumed. She is simultaneously re-membering and un-loading. Mattoso
exploits the performative value of such an intensely grotesque scene:
"Com que nojo as fezes expulsa do seu ventre!" As she defecates, she is
feeling repulsed by her own feces. "Com que entojo às vezes expira doces
ventos!" – quite a euphemism for flatulence. The pornography in this
poem is entirely scatological rather than erotic in nature, for her
"vestimentas" are covering her nakedness from the spotlight that
welcomes her observers. And finally: "Que despejo deixa no bojo do
bispote!" – how can such a delicate and beautiful woman be the creator
of such virile and voluminous fecal matter?! The poem is highly sensory,
almost dionysian: images of taste buds, scents, flowers, and dance. As
we finally leave the bathroom to contemplate three other central
manifestos, the reader may wish to consider the words of Pedro o Podre,
who leaves his repulsed audience with some unsolicited advice when he
writes, in the JORNAL DOBRABIL: "Seja um leitor coprofágico e assimile
como puder. Mas depressa. Coma antes que esfrie." (20). Surely, the rich
knowledge that abounds in the minerals of the waste deposit, still warm
from its recent release, is more nurturing if it is consumed and
assimilated before becoming stagnant and cold. Roberto Dainotto, in his
article "The Excremental Sublime: The Postmodern Literature of Blockage
and Release," views the transformation of imposed culturally collective
elements into fecal signs as a coping mechanism for the survival of
individual subjectivities: "For the voracious postmodern individual,
blockage is the real threat, and survival coincides with some sort of
'digestive capability' – the power to actively transform authorities
and traditions into . . . wastes from which the subject has to separate
in order to constitute itself as a subject. It is the ability of forcing
apart, separating one's individuality" (147). Such a necessity for
individuation would seem amplified in a subject like "Pedro o Podre,"
who so openly proclaims both a minority sexual identity and alternative
sexual practices that are deemed deviant by the culture from which he is
speaking. Dainotto further asserts that "All writing [...] engages in
some sort of coprophiliac activity. Yet the process – the movement from
retention to release structures the intensity of postmodern narrative –
a process of old and mythical structures that will indefinitely defer
the production of an ultimate (fecal) meaning" (161).

Finally, John R. Clark, in THE MODERN SATIRIC GROTESQUE AND ITS
TRADITIONS, argues that scatological and bathroom humor [5] is a
fundamental strategy used by the satirist to target hypocrisy and
gentility in matters of religion, politics, and sexuality:


[Society is vulnerable to the satirist, who, more often than not, will
plunge us up to our nostrils in curiously questionable and unpleasant
fecal matter. He may have to pay for his aggressiveness by being
slandered and misunderstood, but he nonetheless achieves several of his
purposes – to rivet the attention, to shock, and to move his audience.
The satirist may offend, but it is worth it.] (117-18)


[...]

It would be a serious flaw to conclude this chapter without an analysis
of one of Mattoso's earlier poems, one that defies classification but
can perhaps be described as a (para-) concrete poem combined with a
grammatical exercise in Portuguese subject-verb conjugation. As we shall
see, "Defectivo," written in 1977, concisely synthesizes Mattoso's
anti-aesthetic principles, offering a summary of the exaltation of
coprophagy as well as a not-so-veiled political denunciation of the
effects of military dictatorship:


DEFECTIVO [5.19] [1977]

eu mordo
tu mastigas
ele engole
nós digerimos
vós cagais
eles policiam

(JORNAL DOBRABIL 4)


It is important to mention, before beginning to analyze the contents of
the poem, that the title itself alludes, once again, to Mattoso's
post-anthropophagical / coprophagical project, for the adjective is
deliberately broken down into the three syllables that constitute it:
"DE / FEC / TIVO." "-Fec," of course, phonetically resonates with feces
or fecality, and with the verb, to defecate. Morphologically, it also
resonates with "to defect" (in a political sense).

Grammatically, "defective" refers to a verb which cannot sustain
conjugation in all of its corresponding subjects, such as "adequar,"
which cannot correctly take the subject "eu." In other words, "eu
adequo," because of its phonetic awkwardness, is generally not
conjugated in the first person. However, its status as a defective verb
is itself unstable. "Adequar" does not qualify as a "true" defective
verb, whereas verbs like "chover" and "nevar" are genuinely defective
since, for example, "eu chovo" ("I rain") does not exist. In this poem,
which clearly describes the sequence of the digestive act, the verb that
is "defective" with its corresponding subject is the final one:
"policiam." The subject "eles" is the only one that is removed from
personal investment; in essence, it defines the "Others" or perhaps the
alien forces that are attempting to disrupt one of the most natural
human bodily processes. Written during the military dictatorship, the
poem emphasizes the role "they" have been assigned to perform and
criticizes its defective nature: to control, to repress, to inhibit one
of the most basic and banal human activities – the act of eating. In
other words, with "eles policiam," all of the remaining subjects find
their preceding activities to be stifled or impeded by the oppressive
presence of external forces.

In addition to its political dimension, to its denunciation of the
restriction of social justice and human liberty, the poem can be read in
at least two other ways, a hallmark of Mattosian plurisignification that
occurs in some of the author's most well-constructed poems.

Perceived as an aesthetic commentary on the poetic process itself, in
which ideas or opinions are manifested similarly to the process of
consumption and digestion, chewing, for example, may represent
contemplation or reflection and shitting the ultimate ex-pulsion of the
idea and therefore the completion of the cycle that characterizes the
creative process. Another alternate reading would enter into the sexual
realm, in which two or more individuals (most likely of homosexual
orientation) are engaged in a sexual encounter which is being vigilantly
patrolled by the powers-that-be. In this interpretation, the verbs
"morder," "engolir," and "cagar," may all signify an orgy of sexual acts
that are suffering from censorship. In any potential reading of this
poem, whether it be the banal act of human consumption and digestion, a
meta-poetic commentary, or a treatise against sexual repression, one
thing remains unchanged: any action undertaken by any subject is being
censored by outside elements. In this sense, a paronomastic link between
"defectivo" and "detetive" may also be established.


[NOTES]

[1] See [SOURCES]. For Butterman's introduction and contents, see
[A TRANSGRESSOR AS CASE STUDY].

[2] Other scatological (and anti-aesthetic) poems, by Mattoso's
heteronym Garcia Loca, are quoted below. They were selected from the
collection GALERIA ALEGRIA. Click: [PERFORMATIVE SADOMASOCHISM AND
FETISHISM] and see "The Performative Value of Repetition." Click also
[PORNOGRAPHY AND HOMOEROTICISM] (note #4).



9.5.3 [1977]

Cagar lo espiritual
hasta hacerlo palpable.
Espiritualizar la mierda
hasta hacerla invisible.
Ése es todo
el secreto del arte.


9.5.5 [1977]

Lo que se caga
sin esfuerzo
se lee de ordinario
sin gusto.


9.5.7 [1977]

Repetir mierdas ya cagadas
y hacer creer a las gentes
que las huele por primera vez:
en esto consiste el arte
de escribir.


9.5.8 [1977]

Uno de los males
de nuestra literatura
es que nuestros letrados
escriben para las bibliotecas
y nuestros lectores deletrean
en las letrinas.


9.5.9 [1977]

Para cagar en prosa
es absolutamente indispensable
tener algo que comer.
Para peer en verso no es preciso.
Para leer las heces o los hedores
tiene que faltar sentido.


9.5.10 [1977]

Tal vez nadie pueda ser poeta
sin un cierto flujo de vientre,
ni aun gozar de la poesía
sin un cierto desequilibrio mental.


9.5.11 [1977]

Mientras vive el poeta
juzgamos de sus tripas
por su obra más fétida.
Una vez muerto, juzgámoslas
por su cagajón menos putrefacto.


9.5.12 [1979]

La prosa es una página en blanco
sobre la que podemos cagar.
La poesía, por el contrario,
es una página ya cagada
que primeramente hay que borrar.


9.5.14 [1980]

Hay en nosotros
una boca, un culo, un pene
dos manos, cinco dedos en cada mano
y una relación
con la mierda.


9.5.15 [1980]

Todos los hombres se parecen
por sus excrementos;
solamente las defecaciones
evidencian que no son iguales.


9.5.18 [1980]

Lo que tiene su origen
en el cerebro
lleva impreso siempre el matiz
del sitio de donde procede
y lo que sale del culo
trae consigo
el calor y el color
del lugar de su nacimiento.


9.5.26 [1980]

La sabiduría de la prosa
es siempre más purgativa y empalagosa
que la sabiduría vacía de la bacía.


9.5.27 [1980]

Si no existiera una ley santa inviolable,
no creada por los hombres,
¿qué norma tendríamos para juzgar
si un excremento
es fedoriento o perfumoso,
maloliente u oloroso?


9.5.28 [1980]

Poca religión
aparta de la mierda.
Mucha, conduce a ella.


9.5.29 [1980]

Si hay un Dios
¿de dónde procede
el Arte?
Y si no existe
¿de dónde se origina
la Mierda?


9.5.30 [1980]

Bueno es llamar a las cosas
por sus nombres
pero es mejor
hallar para la mierda
nombres bellos.


9.5.32 [1980]

El Arte no es un camino
sino
un intestino.


9.5.34 [1980]

El arte existe como objeto
del colo y no del seso,
del culo y no del tieso.
Así, hablar del arte
poniendo a contribución la inteligencia
no es más que verborrea,
por así decirlo.


9.5.35 [1980]

Cuando uno quiere
realizar una obra artística
es preciso que se eleve por encima
de las disenterías
y de las constipaciones.
Cuando se tiene delante
una letrina clara y precisa
hay que empeñarse en dirigirse
hacia ella
en línea recta.


9.5.36 [1980]

Entre un pensador
un erudito
y un poeta
hay la misma diferencia
que entre un libro
un índice de materias
y un papel higiénico.


9.5.40 [1980]

La poesía es el esfuerzo continuo
para excretar el alma de la mierda,
ir más allá del cagajón bruto
y buscar el pan y las entrañas
que lo hacen existir.


9.5.41 [1980]

Casa sin biblioteca
es casa sin letrina.
Biblioteca sin poesía
es letrina sin destino.
Poesía sin forma
es rumia sin intestino.


9.5.42 [1980]

La poesía es mierda
y la mierda poesía.
Esto es todo lo que acá abajo
la crítica sabe
y necesita saber.
En cuanto a los poetas,
son aquellos que sacan la poesía
del olvido olfativo
para trasladarla al olvido visual.


9.5.43 [1980]

Ningún poeta ha celebrado
bellamente la linda mierda
de su propia mujer.
Pero todos los poetas
suelen celebrar inmodestamente
sus propias mierdas.


9.5.45 [1980]

Cuando tomo parte
en la mierda
exagero su importancia.
Cuando me aparto de ella
exagero su insignificancia.


9.5.50 [1980]

Yo no soy un admirador
de la mierda.
He dicho mil veces
que la mierda me parece sólo
un lenguaje sencillo
y espontáneo,
lo mismo en el papel
que en la boca.


9.5.51 [1980]

No sé si será
particular sentimiento mío
más casi me atrevo a decir
que tres cosas necesitan
ser excesivas para ser
apenas suficientes:
¡la mierda, la mierda y la mierda!


9.5.54 [1982]

Ante la exquisitez
del idioma francés,
es comprensible la atracción
que ejerce la palabra "merde".
Ante la bajeza
de la lengua portuguesa
es adorable la repulsa
que provoca la palabra "chulé".


9.5.57 [1982]

La medida de la grandeza de un poeta
la da su fortuna en atraer a su propia excreta
a todas las narices cien años después.
A ese le tengo yo
por el más profétido de los profetas...


9.6.1 [1977]

El arte de gobernar consiste
en el arte de malversar.
El arte de escribir consiste
en el arte de plagiar.
De lo que se deduce
que los políticos son poetas
y los escritores son ladronzuelos.


9.6.2 [1979]

Decir política
equivale a decir ciencia
de lo festivo
de lo relativo
y subversivo;
ciencia sujeta
en sus conclusiones prácticas
al circo
al palco
al camarín.


9.6.3 [1979]

El género humano
y cualquiera de sus partes
se divide en dos clases:
unos empuñan el carajo
y otros lo sufren en el culo.
No hay lubrificación, ni desproporción,
ni progreso muscular, ni testicular,
que pueda impedir el que un hombre
nacido o por nacer
no sea de aquéllos o de éstos.
No queda más que la homosexualidad
para quien pueda gozarla.
Verdad es que no todos pueden,
ni quieren, ni siempre.
Pero cuando uno de aquéllos o de éstos
no goza, el otro goza dos veces.


9.6.5 [1980]

"El ejercício de la política
en los países de mierda
puede definirse con una sola palabrita:
constipación.
Por consiguiente,
democracia significa cagalera."
(Um general da linha-dura,
discorrendo sobre a Lei do Ventre Livre
no Conselho de Segurança Nacional)


9.6.6 [1980]

La política no es asunto propio
ni de artistas ni de pederastas;
la política es el arte
de cambiar los carajos
lo mínimo posible
mientras permanecen
siempre los mismos culos.
Los artistas son inconvenientes
por su afán de cambiar
carajos y culos
a tontas y a locas;
los pederastas son sospechosos
por aceptar pasivamente
carajos antecesores y sucesores.


9.6.7 [1980]

Los poetas de verdad
son los guardianes de la gravedad.
Están siempre prontos
a reírse de todo,
pero dicen la verdad
burla burlando.
La mentira es propia de los políticos.
Éstos hablan para engañar
y callan para encubrir.
Cuando están con otros, lloran.
Cuando están a solas, se ríen
de la desgracia ajena.


9.11.11 [1977]

El deber primordial
de un poeta oscuro
es hacerse maduro.
El derecho a cometer puerilidades
es tan sólo privativo
de los poetas ya célebres.


9.11.12 [1977]

El poeta es un ladrón
de su fortuna, de su tiempo,
de su libertad, de su salud
y del pensamiento ajeno.


9.11.19 [1979]

Se dice que en política
cuanto más ésta cambia,
más es siempre la misma.
Del mismo modo se puede hablar
de la poesía:
cuanto menos ésta cambia,
más recibe nuevo bautismo.


9.11.20 [1980]

Lo que es razonable es relativo;
lo que es relativo es variable;
lo que es variable es voluble;
lo que es voluble es incierto;
lo que es incierto es inexacto;
lo que es inexacto es falto;
lo que es falto es feo;
lo que es feo es asqueroso;
lo que es asqueroso es abominable;
lo que es abominable no es razonable.


9.11.21 [1980]

El Arte necesita
de la contracultura
de la psicodelia
o de la banda del club
de los corazones solitarios
del sargento Pimienta:
es una flor roquera
que pide vientos fuertes
y terrenos duros.


In his preface to the collection GALERIA ALEGRIA, Reynaldo Jimenez
wrote:

[...] Se impone acotar, y no de paso, el hecho de que un poeta brasileño
arriesgue recopilar en forma de libro sus escritos en castellano. En
esto también se involucra su intención de abrir fronteras. A la lengua
escrita originalmente mixturada que Glauco Mattoso torna despierta en
estas paginas – bajo la forma de fugaces manifiestos como aforismos del
desafuero, sin predicar alguna verdad de perogrullo ni situándose de
todos modos al frente especifico de alguna neobarricada de escuela
literaria –, cabria asimilarla a ese río de varias corrientes de poetas
de ambos lados de la frontera, que hacen sin embargo del portuñol una
rumia devastadora de las "perfecciones paralelas" de dos idiomas que,
gracias a la poesía, pueden, por un momento, dejar de mantenerse a raya
tras las rejas de abstrusas purezas. [...]

[3] Mattoso's work bears a great debt to Brazilian Popular Music (MPB).
In the case of the "Manifesto Coprofágico," Mattoso is mimicking the
musicality and rhyme scheme of Caetano Veloso's "Cajuína" and "Baby."

[4] A collection of Bocage's pornographic sonnets (selected and
commented by Mattoso) can be consulted online at POP BOX, including the
first verse "Cagando estava a dama mais formosa" used by Mattoso as
epigraph for "Dulce Salgado de Azevedo Camargo."

[5] The reader may wish to consult a number of books written on the
development of the "tearoom" as a locus for sexual activity performed in
the space of public bathrooms. For a recent study that includes essays
on cross-cultural sexual customs, homosexual acts in highway rest areas,
and ethnographic observations of men who have sex with men in public
spaces, see William Leap's PUBLIC SEX/GAY SPACE (New York: Columbia U P,
1999). Dick Garfield's TEAROOM CASTLES (San Diego: Zorro, 1971) and Jane
Karen Gray's Ph.D. thesis, THE TEAROOM REVISITED: A STUDY OF IMPERSONAL
HOMOSEXUAL ENCOUNTERS IN A PUBLIC SETTING (Ann Arbor: Ohio State U P,
1989) also shed light on the topic.

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