A Amazônia acreana de Abguar Bastos

Abstract

The main objective of this paper is to develop a reflection on the “look” that the writer Abguar Bastos Damasceno (1902-1995) builds upon the reality of the State of Acre, in the Brazilian Amazon region, depicted in the novel “Certos caminhos do mundo” (1936). In the novel, the city of Rio Branco appears divided by the Rio Acre, on two opposing sides: on one side of the river is Empresa, on the other side, Penápolis. Empresa is characterized as a place of vice and Penápolis is the place of virtue. In this idealized scenario of Rio Branco city, the State of Acre and the Amazon region, dreamed by the author, set the stories of Solon, son of Colonel João Gonçalves, and Rubina, a black prostitute. It is also between vice and virtue that Abguar Bastos narrates the stories of other characters who were marked, physically and morally, by the “chorus of failed and suffering”: the Acrean region. From a deterministic view, such characters appear in the eyes of the readers subjectivities as degraded beings and condemned to suffer in “the deep realm of solitude”.

Keywords

• literature
• acrean amazon
• discourse
• identity