Historia no natural: La subjetividad humana y la “Naturaleza” en Historia Natural por Alfredo Veiravé

Abstract

The poetic sensibilities of the infrequently-studied Argentine poet and academic Alfredo Veiravé (1928-1991) evolved throughout his career from neoromanticism to his own mode of antipoesía. Constant in the development of his poetic voice, however, is how the natural and artificial worlds—and how the sciences and the humanities view these worlds—inspired and confounded him. He came to see the interconnections amongst all things, and his poetry reflects this point of view. Specifically, his 1980 book of poetry, Historia Natural, demonstrates the irony of how the sciences and humanities view the natural world. Through a parodic structure, his speaker catalogs a disparate variety of subjects and objects and layers what he refers to as “asociaciones interminables” with them in a sort of enmeshed palimpsest. With his poetry, Veiravé posits that an overarching authoritative discourse representing the natural world, as it is, does not exist. In this way, Historia natural provides a pivotal example of the post-environmental turn in Latin American ecological thought. It acknowledges and problematizes the role of human subjectivity in the fate of environments, landscapes, and territories.