Writings of the earth in two poems

Abstract

In light of the contemporary environmental crisis, this essay reflects on what the role of literary criticism would be in formulating an “environmental critique” or “ecocriticism” linked to the materiality of artistic artifacts. To this end, the text is divided into two movements: on the one hand, it evaluates the main conceptualizations of the task of “ecocritics” according to the definitions that usually inform the relationship between literature and the environment in literary criticism; on the other, it reads two poems, “Dias de dilúvio” [“Days of flood”], by Leonardo Fróes, and “E também era vazio (ainda) o útero do céu…” [“And the womb of heaven was also (still) empty”], by Sérgio Medeiros, in order to investigate the writings of the earth in these poetic exercises that are at once similar and distinct. What the essay hopes to demonstrate, finally, is that literature has its own ecosystem, albeit nonspecific, and that any contribution to the environmental issue, in the field of literary studies, goes through the moment of confrontation with the way of being of the things we name as literature.