Poesia, tecnologia e catástrofe: notas sobre o conto “O versificador”, de Primo Levi

Abstract

In this paper we analyze the short story “The Versifier”, by Primo Levi, in which issues related to the relationship between poetry and humanity are raised in an ironic and lucid way, focusing on a controversial technical device in the center of the text: the Versifier. In the plot, such technology produces verses automatically, and it finds direct correspondents nowadays in artistic projects developed with computers and artificial intelligence. However, at the time of the publication of the story, in the 60s, this piece fiction was already rooted in the historical world, when the first experiments were carried out with literary texts generated by machines. In our analysis, we highlight the problems related to authorship, meaning and the function of poetry when one considers the fictional hypothesis of a versifying automaton replacing the creative activity of human poets.