À Margem da História

by Euclides da Cunha

Desbravador, consciência rebelde em conflito entre ciência e arte, entre pesquisa e denúncia, Euclides da Cunha trouxe para o primeiro plano, para o centro de sua obra, o homem do interior do Brasil. Seu interesse pela Amazônia leva-o a ser nomeado chefe da missão exploradora do Alto Purus, o que lhe ofereceu material para 'À Margem da História' (1909), publicado postumamente. O volume é a reunião de artigos publicados em revistas e jornais da época.

Genres: Brazil, History, Travel, Essays, Nonfiction, Nature, 20th Century

191 pages, ebook

First published January 1, 1909

About the author

Euclides (archaic spelling Euclydes) da Cunha (January 20, 1866 – August 15, 1909) was a Brazilian writer, sociologist and engineer. His most important work is Os Sertões (Rebellion in the backlands), a non-fictional account of the military expeditions promoted by the Brazilian government against the rebellious village of Canudos, known as the War of Canudos. This book was a favorite of Robert Lowell, who put it above Tolstoy, the Russian writer.

Euclides da Cunha was also heavily influenced by Naturalism and its Darwinian proponents. Os Sertões characterised the coast of Brazil as a chain of civilisations while the interior was more primitively influenced.

Euclides da Cunha was the basis for the character of The Journalist in Mario Vargas Llosa's The War of the End of the World.

Reviews

[Daniel Burton-Rose · Rating 3 out of 5]

This 1909 defense of colonization of the Amazon and nationalist aggression vis a vis Peru is inherently disturbing. It's a grim reminder of how long the intertwined decimation of the indigenous population and the ecology has been going on; it was an old story to da Cunha over a hundred years ago. The translation is preceded by an informative introduction. The original itself ranges from disquisitions on river hydrology to rubber harvesting, the cathartic celebrations of settler laborers to methods of hunting down and massacring natives.

[Nathalia T. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting for those that are not familiar with the local history of the amazonian jungle… yet it is still rather superfluous as is to be expected from a compilation of short essays.

[Sara Fritz]

Não é que eu escolhi ler esse livro, eu fui OBRIGADA a ler esse livro.

[Kimber · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the longest short book I've ever read. And that's not to say I didn't enjoy it – I did – but I had to work for it. The original Portuguese was translated into Victorian English, which was a good match for the author's writing style, but the resulting text is very formal and quite dry. It contains a mixture of lovely, profound observations and dense scientific jargon, and includes paragraphs such as this:

Thus has the river cast itself through the stifling Obidos narrows in total abandonment of its ancient bed, which can be glimpsed today in the immense marismatic plain of Vila Franca, gangliated with ponds. In other places it flows into its own great tributaries through the unpredictable furos, thereby, illogically becoming a tributary of its own tributaries. Ever disorganized, turbulent, vacillating, tearing down, building up, rebuilding and leveling, devastating in an hour what it spent decades building – with the eagerness, the agony, and the exasperation of a monstrous artist ever unsatisfied, taking up again, redoing, perpetually beginning anew a painting without end. Such is the river, then, and such its history: tumultuous, disorganized, incomplete.

I found myself doing a lot of reading, re-reading, and pondering throughout. In the several essays that comprise the book, the author provides information and perspective on the topography of the Amazon river and its surrounding area, the social conflict surrounding the inhabitants of the area, the affect of the climate on those who reside and those who visit, the victimization and murder of the local peoples by those in pursuit of profits through harvesting of trees for rubber and latex, and a contemplation of the progressive influence that would result from the engineering and creation of a rail system throughout the area.

The essays were written by da Cunha after he traveled to the Amazon as a member of a joint Peru-Brazil expedition to determine the border between the countries. His intent with the essays was to introduce the residents of urban southern Brazil to the tropical backlands of Brazil, as the urban population of south Brazil was mostly unfamiliar with the area. As much as possible for a small book, The Amazon is packed with information about the river, land, and peoples of the Amazon and is great food for thought.