Between woods and shores

a poetics of imagination and enchantment

Abstract

This article aims to reflect on the attribute of imagery, enchantment and water as a central element in two narratives: Orphans of Eldorado, by Milton Hatoum, and The Third Bank of the River, by João Guimarães Rosa. Texts that, like waters that meet and mix, although different - the narrative in the novelistic genre and the narrative in the short story, which is not the object of our reflection - converge and flow into a navigation through river-narratives - water - that conduct stories, lives in transit, subalternized, marginalized and excluded subjects, from the corners of the Amazon to the depths of the Sertão. The theoretical roadmap starts with a reflection on the Amazonian imaginary and its poetics, by João Jesus de Paes Loureiro (2015) and Leandro Tocantins (1988), and includes studies by Gaston Bachelard (2018), Neide Gondim (2019), Ana Pizarro (2012) and others who contribute to the issues raised in this work. The waters carry their enchantments, they join the discourse of the sertanejo, the caboclo, the ribeirinho and the native in the construction of their memory and identity, they are enchanted waters that bathe the banks, irrigate the forests and evoke belonging.