Abstract
This article intends to analyse Un viaje a la India by Gonçalo M. Tavares, an epic text published in 2010. The work is initially contextualized by succinctly relating it to another epic, its hypertext: Los Lusiadas (1572) by Luís de Camões. It is argued that Western civilization is a machine, either subtle or violent, that produces powerlessness, and Bloom, the protagonist of Tavares’ work, a representative puppet of that circumstance. A problematization will be made around the act of poetic creation, emphasizing its inoperability, its unpredictability, because it’s based on the free association of words. Literary writing will be compared with dreams since both human activities configure escapes from the world. Finally, the article takes up the issue of disenchantment in a realistic century and it debates the hypothesis according to which it is currently unthinkable the existence of policies for happiness.