Relations between nature and society in Poesias, by Dante Milano

Abstract

This paper proposes a reflection about the relations between nature and society from the reading of selected poems from Poesias, by Dante Milano (1979), especially the poem ‘Public garden’ (Jardim público). Based on the criticism of modern rationality formulated by Adorno and Horkheimer (1985), according to which the enlightened reason sought to disenchant the world, dominating and subjugating the supposedly threatening natural world, it seeks to meditate how in a work produced by a Brazilian modern/modernist poet (of an incomplete and peripheral modernity) this criticism is particularized. To this end, in addition to the authors of Critical Theory, the study is based on authors such as Ulpiano Meneses, Octavio Paz, Jeanne Marie Gagnebin, and Paul Ricoeur, among others. The reading of the poems, according to the perspective assumed, indicates that one of the strengths of Milano's work is the problematization of the relationship between man and nature. It was noticed that the tensions resulting from the split between man and nature do not hide the tragic consequences of this process and often point to the assumption of a critical voice that bursts into the animism of nature and the denunciation of the reification of man. This study, structured in three parts entitled ‘Of images and landscapes’ (Das imagens e das paisagens), ‘The garden as a cultural landscape’ (O jardim como paisagem cultural) and ‘A 'garden' of memories’ (Um ‘jardim’ de memórias), also points to the conservation of elements of the empirical world in the poems' making.