Utopian and dystopian images of the desert and rainforest in Euclides da Cunha

Abstract

This essay focuses on two important questions in the works of Euclides da Cunha. The first question addresses the utopian and dystopian images that Euclides creates to describe and to narrate the Amazonian rainforest; the second one, also related to his writings on Amazonia, refers to Euclides‘s linguistic matrices of duplication used in Rebellion in the Backlands and also À margem da história. Delving into the meaning of his incomplete and unpublished book, Um paraíso perdido [A Lost Paradise], the present study seeks to demonstrate the difficulties that, as a scientist, Euclides is confronted with in his critical observation of the complexity of the Amazonian ecosystem in its relation with its inhabitants. From the artist‘s perspective, Euclides‘s hesitation and oscillation between a favorable and unfavorable representation of Amazonia is also closely examined in this essay. As an unfinished project, Um paraíso perdido replicates similar lines of thought and language styles he had utilized in Rebellion in the Backlands. So much desired, but abruptly and unknowingly aborted, Um paraíso perdido signals in principle the same strong aspiration found in Rebellion in the Backlands. Again, according to him the new unfinished book had to be avenging. Such social commitment on the part of Euclides gives more weight to his already high stature as a man of sciences and letters. Always adjusted to a classical and unusual diction of his unique language, both of his texts, Rebellion in the Backlands and À margem da história, share a common characteristic. In them, Euclides uses linguistics formulas that repeat themselves, revealing his mode of thinking and writing, which approximates, culturally and artistically, two geographic regions that are generally considered contradictory, the desert and the forest.