Amazonian Ecopoetics: Paes Loureiro’s Shamanic Zoophytography

ABSTRACT

In this article, I discuss the notion of Amazonian ecopoetry. Given that poetry from the Amazon expresses Amazonian culture and that culture from the region is marked by an indistinction between nature and culture, between human and non-human cultures and societies, I argue that Amazonian poetry is necessarily an ecopoetry. I subsequently reflect upon the concept of Amazonian perspectivism, developed, among others, by anthropologist Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, as an entry-point into the interpretation of the multiple metamorphoses that characterize Amazonian literature, broadly understood to include folktales, legends, and so on. I draw a comparison between the Indigenous, shamanic goal of translating between non-human and human perspectives, and Amazonian ecopoetics that allows plants and animals to find self-expression within human literature. In the final section of the essay, I analyze the writings of Amazonian-born poet João de Jesus Paes Loureiro (1939-) as an example of Amazonian shamanic ecopoetry. In his texts, legendary and actual Amazonian entities speak in the first person to express the convergences as well as the equivocations that punctuate the myriad interaction between human and non-human beings.

KEYWORDS:

• Amazonian writing
• ecopoetry
• perspectivism
• João de Jesus Paes Loureiro

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. As Uriarte and Martínez-Pinzón point out, ‘[a]t the beginning of this century, more than twenty-three million people lived in the Amazon region. Today, hundreds of languages — indigenous and European, some of the former threatened with extinction — are spoken there’ (2019, 1).

2. As Gilcrest puts it, ‘[n]o other attribute better distinguishes ecological poetry than its presumption of environmental fragility and looming disintegration’ (2002, 21).

3. In this respect, see, for instance, Lima 1996, 35–37.

4. These and all other quotes from a Portuguese original are rendered in my translation. The page numbers refer to books in the original listed in the Works Cited. In the case of primary sources, the quotes in the original are reproduced in the Notes.

5. ‘os homens ainda não se separaram da natureza’.

6. ‘errar pelos rios, tatear no escuro das noites da floresta, procurar os vestígios e os sinais perdidos pela várzea’.

7. ‘cobiças da riqueza da terra, agravada nas últimas décadas’; ‘conflitos resultantes no extermínio ou dizimação de tribos, […] poluição dos rios, […] grandes extensões de florestas irremediavelmente queimadas’..

8. ‘gosto de barro de meus versos’; ‘gosto de limo/entre os dentes das sílabas grudado’.

9. ‘o cipoal entranhado em consoantes/a farta piracema das metáforas’; ‘recolho nas tarrafas/de som e de sentido’.

10. ‘relação funcional entre o homem e a natureza’.

11. ‘pensar na vida’.

12. For a detailed analysis of myths surrounding river dolphins in the Amazon, see Slater 1994.

13. ‘O que fizeram de mim?/Um fálus insaciável’.

14. ‘de tanto caminhar/e guardar a floresta’; ‘caminhos de folhas/por onde caminhar’.

15. ‘celebrada/a mais bela/das flores flutuantes’.

16. ‘aquilo que não sou./Só vê minha aparência’; ‘a essência do que sou’.

17. ‘eu me vejo’; ‘apenas uma árvore de finos galhos/que tem jasmins, espinhos e perfume./E é feliz em ser somente o que é’.

18. The plant was initially called Victoria regia, whence its Brazilian common name originated, and it was only in the twentieth century that the scientific name, Victoria amazonica became widely used.

Additional information

Funding

This article is part of the project ECO, funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program [grant agreement no. 101002359]. For more information, check: eco.ces.uc.pt.

Notes on contributors

Patrícia Vieira

Patrícia Vieira is Research Professor at the Center for Social Studies (CES) of the University of Coimbra in Portugal. Her fields of expertise are Latin American and Iberian Literature and Cinema, Utopian Studies and the Environmental Humanities. Her most recent book is States of Grace: Utopia in Brazilian Culture (SUNY UP, 2018) and her most recent co-edited book is The Mind of Plants: Narratives of Vegetal Intelligence (Synergetic, 2021). She is the recipient of a European Research Council Consolidator Grant to work on a project titled “ECO – Animals and Plants in Cultural Productions about the Amazon River Basin.” For more information check: www.patriciavieira.net.