A Note on the Text - The Scramble for the Amazon and the Lost Paradise of Euclides da Cunha - page 384

A Note on the Text
Fragments, Translation, and Photos
The Lost Chapters
Leandro Tocantins, one of the great Amazon analysts and himself a distinguished scholar
of da Cunha's Amazon time, pulled together many of the fragments of da Cunha's
Amazon writings for the centenary of his birth in 1966. Through this compendium many
AmazonresearchersandreadershavebeenexposedtodaCunha'sAmazoniana.Butmost
readers still know him only through the disturbing prose of Os Sertões. The rebel story
dominated his “literary life,” but his Amazon phase involved much more field time and
employed and obsessed him until the last. Even recent biographies have scanted this part
of his life. 1
The fragments of da Cunha's Amazon writing were mostly published in newspapers,
asreports,andaspartoftheposthumouscollection À margem da história . 2 Mostofthese
writings weremeditations anddraftsmeant tobecome elements ofhisunachieved project
ParaísoPerdido. Thewritingsareamixedbag:theyrepeatandrework.Insightful,beauti-
ful,sometimesranting,homesick,evenoverwritten:theyarewhatwehaveofhisAmazon
oeuvre. Some of his writings were for specialists; for example, his analysis of the Purús,
“Rio em abandono,” was initially published in the Revista de Instituto Histórico e Geo-
gráfico in 1905 and later reworked and published in the eclectic posthumous À margem
da história. The greater volume of his Amazon work, however, was part of the efforts of
awriterforhire,andhewasveryspecificallyclassifiedasan“ideologue.”Ihaveusedthe
Scramble fortheAmazon tosituate himbecause hewasthrustbyBaronRioBranco right
in the middle of it. I base my analysis not on the essays alone but also on the imperial
work and “nation narration” these texts were meant to do. I also treat his cartography as
texts. This was the logic I used in carrying out and editing my translations of his work.
This topic relies on his letters, his formal correspondence with the Baron, his explicitly
political Amazon writings from Contrastes e confrontos , his publications in newspapers,
Peru versus Bolivia , many of his letters to Rio Branco as well as friends and family,
some of his the essays from À margem da história , and his reports from the Purús ex-
pedition itself. However, these are placed in a larger context of geopolitics, travel genres,
and emerging elements ofboth natural and colonial science and ethnography.Iwanted da
Cunha to have his own say about what was transpiring, but without the unifying idea of
the Scramble for the Amazon and bitter Peru-Brazil-Bolivia controversies, much of the
writing seems a strange blend of national and naturalist lyricism, screed, and policy re-