Loving Nature in João Guimarães Rosa: The Non-human as 'amável'

Ashley Brock

doi:10.21471/jls.v5i2.386

Abstract

In the present article, I locate an implicit environmentalism JoãoGuimarães Rosa’s writing from the 1950s and 1960s. This sensibility is easy tomiss, in part because it transposes political debates on damage inflicted in thename of development and progress onto the affective-ethical plane; however, itdoes so in a way that resists sentimentality or projecting a misplaced innocenceonto the non-human world. Focusing on emotional relationships between humansand non-humans, I read “As margens da alegria” and “Os cimos” as expressingan eco-critical discourse that was already latent in Grande sertão: veredas.Recasting the natural world as a site of both unfathomable otherness and relationsof tenderness, Guimarães Rosa presents the emotional hold that nature has onhumans and the cost of cleaving oneself from it—a cost that includes diminishingthe human capacity for delight, wonder, and eros.

Highlights

In the present article, I locate an implicit environmentalism João Guimarães Rosa’s writing from the 1950s and 1960s
Milton goes a step further, to argue that positive affective experiences in nature, those characterized by enjoyment and identification, create subjects who are inclined to extend the notion of personhood beyond the human realm
After the death of Diadorim, the natural world remains sacred for Riobaldo because it is saturated with the memory of his lost love, and, more importantly, because Diadorim taught him to observe it with affection, joy, and careful attention

Summary

Introduction

I locate an implicit environmentalism João Guimarães Rosa’s writing from the 1950s and 1960s. For Riobaldo, the narrator-protagonist of Grande sertão: veredas, the natural world is colored by and inseparable from his love for his fellow jagunço Diadorim.

Results

Conclusion