Book, Socratics: poems (Paes)[LS]

José Paulo Paes left this book ready. The last poem, however, was included posthumously: "There is nothing sadder/ than a dog on guard/ over its owner's corpse./ I don't have a dog./ Am I still alive?" "Doubt" was found on the poet's computer; the date of the last recording is October 8, 1998, the day before his death. In the brief preface to Socraticas, Alfredo Bosi writes: "From this dusty and noisy city, José Paulo Paes wanted and knew how to be a kind of Socrates in a minor key: the vigilant conscience that questions and bothers [...]". Irony and self-irony are forms of expression disseminated throughout his work. They are present, for example, in the poem "From the Gospel of Saint Jerome" (the saint of translators): "The translation - they say with contempt - is not the same thing as the original./ Perhaps because translator and author are not the same person./ If they were, they would have the same language, the same name, the same woman, the same dog./ [...] To avoid such monotony, the good God arranged, already on the day of Creation, that translation and original were never exactly the same thing./ Glory, then, to Him in the highest, and peace, on earth, to readers of ill will." Jabuti Award 2002 for Best Poetry Book - Special Category