PREÂMBULO

We short-circuit Tiradentes and the Constitution to make memory flicker: despite the same old soothing rhetoric, writing ourselves into being as a mature nation still means passing through the violent preamble that structures us. Joaquim José, poor man, is a tragicomic caricature of this: body and soul humiliated by the very apparatus that would later canonize him and keep humiliating conselheiros, herzogs, amarildos, an Ágatha a day. The aim here is critical rumination. Pedro Américo in the gut. The rest is poetry.