Hamlet’s Lament - The Scramble for the Amazon and the Lost Paradise of Euclides da Cunha - page 373

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Hamlet's Lament
Fatherless, and with their mother in disgrace, the da Cunha children were sent away from
her immediately after the shootout to become the wards of various relatives and protect-
ors. Certainly life in Rio was less alluring, and quite emotionally distressing, especially
after their mother married Dilermando. The tutor of the all the boys, da Cunha's cous-
in Nestor, had nothing good to say about the domestic arrangements and the children's
apparent accommodation to it. 1 Dilermando was closer in age to the boys than to their
mother and had been a sort of an older playmate for them. The murderous eroticism that
clung to the couple, who, for obvious reasons, were socially isolated, and the enormity of
the transgression, infused the family circle. This overtly sexualized oedipal situation was
certainly immensely complicated for the teenage boys.
Solon, fifteen at the time, was placed under the care of Cândido Rondon, the great
Brazilian explorer and almost president, while Euclides II (Quidinho) became a ward of
JoséCarlosRodriguez.ManoelAfonsowasthewardofAna'ssisterAlquimena,whohad
broken all relations and communication with her.
As an older teenager, once his studies were finished, Solon soon found himself on ex-
peditions slogging through the southwestern Amazon toward Acre Territory to maintain
and repair the telegraph line between Cuiaba and points north in a famous expedition
under the direction of Rondon. 2 He was in fact actualizing a policy—telegraph
lines—suggested by his father for integrating the remote Amazon into national life. Ac-
cording to Dilermando, Solon broke off all relations with his mother and her lover from
1910 to 1915. 3 Once Solon had acquired a post in Acre he returned to Rio to collect a
few mementos of his father (like the proofs of Os Sertões ), and initially he seemed warm
and forgiving, but by the end of his stay he was cold and remote. “He departed,” said
Dilermando, “saying nothing, without even seeking his mother's blessing. He left to go
North, to his independence, and . . . to his death.” Dilermando indicated that the malign
gossip and the larger question of vengeance constantly agitated the sons and turned them
against himself and Ana. 4 The internal psychological distress created by his relationship
with their mother seems not to have occurred to him.
Perhaps it is not too surprising that Solon finally opted to stay in Amazonia, in the
Purús valley in Acre Territory, not too far from the terrain mapped and finally formally
claimed through the intercessions of da Cunha. There was probably a great deal still un-
resolved about his father in this young man's heart, and his failure to avenge him perhaps
shadowed him through his very short life. It was a time of transition in Amazonia. The