Extracted from An Essay By Socorro Santiago, trans. by Alice Clemente.

That attachment of men to the river was what led us to intuit that the Amazon River has a special place in the literary production of Amazonia, as an enriching source of themes and of poetic imagery, most particularly in lyrical works, understood here as a genre opposed to epic, narrative or drama.

Any literary analysis applied to an Amazonian text, which wishes to go beyond the limits of the State, requires a historical synopsis of the development of culture in the North, still unknown to the majority of Brazilians. A history of Amazonian literature is just now being produced by Professor Mario Ypiranga Monteiro. Thus, a critical review of that literature remains to be written. A few essays and scattered lectures are efforts to propagate the memory of that production that, though rich and varied, can appear to be empty and superficial, simply for lack of more profound studies.

As is the rule in Brazilian literature, the first texts produced in the Amazonian region were travelers' accounts like that of Frei Gaspar de Carvajal, chronicler of the expedition led by Francisco Orellana, author of the birth certificate of the vast Amazonian world, since it was Orellana who gave the great river the name of Amazon in the face of the warlike reception given them by supposed Indian women warriors who inhabited the mouth of the Nhamunda River. In addition to this work, we have "Philosophic Journey Through Grao-Para, Rio Negro, Mato Grosso and Cuiaba" and "Diary of the Philosophic Voyage Through Sao Jose do Rio Negro" by Alexandre Rodrigues Ferreira (1756 to 1815). From that same period (1873) are the sonnets attributed to Francisco Vitro Jose da Silveira, in which the author exalts the beauty and presence in those regions of Maria Luiza, wife of the Spanish commissioner, Francisco Requena, commander of the expedition charged with studying the boundaries between Portugal and Spain and who arrived at Tabatinga after a difficult voyage.

The first poetic effort, considered to be of the region, is the heroic poem "Muhraida or the Conversion and Reconciliation of the Gentiles - Muhra" authored by the soldier Henrique Joao Wilkens, written in the Muhra language, translated later into Renaissance verse by the Portuguese priest, Cipriano Pereira Alho, and published in Lisbon in 1819. All of this notwithstanding, the initial point of Amazonian literary activity is taken to be 1850, the date of publication of "Works of the Amazonian Writer Bento de Figueiredo Tenreiro Aranha", first Amazonian writer, born in Barcelos in 1769. He was poet and playwright. In accordance with a practice common in that period, he chose to link his work to a style that he had learned about, Neoclassicism, although in more advanced areas Romanticism had already taken hold.

An affirmation that is often made about the arts in Amazonia is that new ideas that would affect local production were always late in arriving. Changes of an aesthetic nature, like those that took place after World War I and that were to result in the Semana de Arte Moderna (Modern Art Week) of 1922, though they found some isolated followers, had no significant impact, since what was sought was a reconciliation between the established Parnassian canon and a regionalism that was no more than ecological setting, a background for poetic creation. Jorge Tufic said in that respect, in a lecture published in "Livornal", Year I #2, May, 1978 - "In the decade of the 50's, in the case of works scattered through periodicals and journals in the capital, usually literary transcriptions, there can be found in our region no efforts to join with or interpret Brazilian modernism." Why is that? We can provide a two-fold answer: the first, a reflection on the historical moment known as the "rubber cycle" and its consequences, which, in the words of Mario Souza, brought Amazonia "the most oppressive cultural erosion". The period of euphoria, dissipation and easy money did not bring with it artistic and intellectual growth, though it left us Teatro Amazonas as a legacy. The European influence that arrived abruptly could not join harmoniously with the sly spirit of the caboclo still tied to primitive life. In that atmosphere, those responsible for development, in their perplexity, tended only to the production and acquisition of property and let themselves live under the sign of the economic system, initiated by an extractive culture, which they never expected would be as ephemeral as it was. The second answer, which does not negate the first, is a very evident conclusion: the isolation of the region, the distance from the great centers that propagate culture and the absence, until recently, of a university.