Book, Potomak, O[LS]

Language: Brazilian Portuguese. One hundred years after its first publication, O Potomak reveals itself to Portuguese-speaking readers as a treasure trove. In this book, we find renowned maxims by Jean Cocteau and an extraordinary literary avant-garde, in which text and image together compose the narrative of a novel dedicated to Igor Stravinsky, that is, to music, but created from an enchantment with dance , more precisely with Serge Diaghilev’s Russian Ballet. When, one night in 1912, Diaghilev said to Cocteau: “Surprise me”, he could not have given him a better answer: The Potomak. In this perfectly coctalian universe, the narrator takes us with him on his visits to an aquarium located underground in Place de la Madeleine, in Paris, where the Potomak, a gelatinous aquatic monster that inspires poetry, is on display. In addition to these poetic and philosophical tours, we are invited to take a designed journey, aboard a ship, in the company of the peaceful Mortimar and Eugenes, cannibal beings. Mário de Andrade was not indifferent to this work either: the Brazilian modernist kept the French editions of 1919 and 1924 in his library. The time has come for you too to be surprised. Wellington Júnio Costa