Wanderlino
Arruda
Only
the
divine
can
be
more
important
and
have
more
worth
than
man
and
the
earth
on
which
he
lives.
Beneath
the
divine,
rests
the
power
of
creation,
great
in
itself…cosmic
plasticity
and
telluric
mortar.
But
of
even
greater
worth
than
the
transcendental
and
divine…is
the
poet!
Only
he
is
able
to
discern
and
make
clear,
completely
new
viewpoints
on
life.
So
great
are
poets,
that
Benedeto
Croce
suggests
that
they
are
not
just
interpreters
of
their
time
or
country,
but
to
quite
the
contrary,
are
critics
of
their
age
and
surroundings,
always
in
ferocious
discord
with
the
accepted
standards
and
common
mentality,
as
were
Dante
Alighieri,
Miguel
Cervantes
and
Johan
Wolfgang
Goethe.
That
is
also
how
Euclides
da
Cunha
stood.
He
was
the
eternal
inconformist,
perpetually
transubstantiating
the
miserable
human
condition
of
that
time
in
pure
art,
both
social
and
literary.
Euclides
da
Cunha,
the
great
poet
of
“The
Sertões”,
never
surrendered.
He
was
a
man
of
the
earth,
a
humane,
but
fighting
man.
He
was
a
scholar
and
an
able
cartographer;
dissecting
the
parched,
destitute
lives
of
the
impoverished
in
northeastern
Brazil.
An
implacable
witness
of
strength
and
weakness,
geologist
and
geographer
of
the
arid
desert
land
and
souls
of
its
inhabitants.
He
was
a
genial
magician,
hypnotizing
us
with
his
words,
a
far-west
explorer
of
the
mysteries
and
mysticism
of
Canudos
and
of
the
medieval
spirit
of
Antônio
Conselheiro.
Euclides
da
Cunha
was
a
harsh
man
belonging
to
a
harsh
land,
to
the
fauna,
flora
and
desert
of
his
long
suffering
hinterland.
Euclides,
denizen
of
that
barbarous,
inhuman
land,
personified
both
hope
of
rain
and
the
despair
of
implacable
droughts.
Euclides
was
the
ethnologist,
the
sociologist,
the
historian,
the
eternal
traveler,
devourer
of
horizons.
He
was
at
the
same
time,
worst
enemy
of
the
hated
military
soldiers
and
the
greatest
ally
of
the
northeastern
desert
bandits.
In
“The
Sertões,”
the
earth
is
an
analysis,
a
panoramic
view
of
the
northeastern
region,
in
the
saddest
part
of
the
state
of
Bahia,
graphic
upside-down
funnel
formed
by
the
dry
soil
of
Pernambuco,
Alagoas
and
Sergipe,
a
dried,
and
cracked
stretch
of
Vasa
Barris.
Canudo
is
an
unknown
land,
entrance
to
the
forbidden
hinterland,
a
hell
of
dryness
of
the
land
and
of
the
men,
a
secular
martyrdom
of
hunger
and
ignorance.
The
cracked
surface
of
the
scalding
clay
carries
the
same
biblical
mark
that
with
the
years
of
life
and
work
marked
the
faces
of
the
Hebrew
slaves
of
the
Egyptian
deserts
with;
the
eternal
traces
of
purgatory
suffering
of
human
existence.
It’s
the
land
of
the
convulsion
of
the
rough,
of
the
sharpest,
cutting
angles,
of
the
most
aggressive
landscape,
of
the
jagged,
splintered
edges
of
rocks:
the
gravel,
the
nude
stone,
the
rocky
escarps,
the
towering
cactuses,
the
spines
and
daggers,
the
tree
trunks,
twisted
by
unending
thirst,
the
rending
hardship,
and
finally…the
dust.
There
are
clay
walled
huts,
the
houses
made
of
mud
and
lathe,
humble
straw
serving
both
as
roof
and
as
shelter.
In
the
interior
of
the
terrible
land,…man:
the
mulato,
the
bandit,
and
the
cowboy.
Inside
the
man
in
his
soul
and
in
his
flesh,
rest
his
superstitions.
There
is
slavery,
and
mystic
madness,
driven
even
madder
by
the
ascetic
madness
of
Antonio
Conselheiro,
rude
preacher
of
the
desert
wilderness.
There
exist
no
adjectives
with
which
one
can
qualify
the
war
of
Canudos,
just
as
there
are
no
adjectives
to
describe
the
works
of
Euclides
da
Cunha.
In
Euclides
there
are
no
sweet
words
or
domesticated
phrases.
Everything
in
him
comes
straight
up
to
the
boiling
point
at
white
heat,
everything
merging
together
in
the
tremendous
force
of
violent
emotions,
the
heat
of
effervescent
tragedy.
Only
in
Euclides,
does
the
impossible,
become
reality.
Canudos
did
not
surrender.
It
was
struck
down
while
standing.
The
“Sertões”
of
Euclides
da
Cunha
will
never
fall,
to
the
contrary,
they
will
live
forever!
