Jaguanhém (Jaguar Speech/ Homage to Juma)

 

Picture taken by A/Z in December 2014, Museo de Arte Isaac Fernandez

(Grandes Maestros del Arte Popular);
Mestre Vitalino, Onças Atacando (década de 60)
(Museu da Casa do Pontal & M. A. dos Santos Mascelani,
O mundo da arte popular brasileira, 2009);
Samico, Luzia entre Feras (1968);
Francisco Brennand, Diana Caçadora (1980);
Nelson Leirner, Sem Título (da série “Assim é... se lhe parece” 5), 2003;
Nelson Leirner, Bala Perdida (São Sebastião) (2002);
Eli Heil, O sonho animal (1993);
From Ezra Pound's Canto XCIII;

Tezcatlipoca + Itztlacoliuhqui-Ixquimilli + hill of the jaguar (Codex Fejérváry-Mayer, Codex Borbonicus, Codex Vindobonensis p. 9/ Mesoamerican Heritage Institute, Bibliothèque de l'Assemblée  Nationale & The British Museum);

Rafucko, Olympic Anti-Souvenirs;

Midnight Oil's Beds are Burning & The Dead Heart [Rio Olympics/ Australia team building];

"A operação metafísica que se liga ao rito antropofágico é a da transformação do tabu em totem."

O. A. (A Crise da Filosofia Messiânica)

"... parece que não sei quem é mais a criatura, se eu ou o bicho."

Clarice Lispector (Água Viva)

"... te he visto entrar de noche en el Monte Barreto, sin zapatos y con los pies llenos de hormigas, como si estuvieses adormecido, y acariciar a los gatos salvajes como si tuvieses para ellos una contraseña..."

Lezama Lima, Paradiso

"C'est dans cette baguette tendue et repliée que repose l'action curative de ce rite, tellement complexe, tellement reculé, et qu'il faut poursuivre comme un bête dans la forêt."

A. Artaud (D'un voyage au pays des Tarahumaras)

"Aos poucos... sonhava com gatos bebendo leite vermelho em pires de ouro."

Clarice Lispector (Perto do Coração)

"And the bites of panther and hyena..."

"There are tiger kisses, you can kiss like a hyena or a wolf..."

Scriabin/Faubion Bowers

"Tu, teu criado, e tuas filhas, não são entes da espécie humana. São malditas feras que aqui habitam para flagelar-me!"

Malherbe (Qorpo Santo, As Relações Naturais)  

"Amigo! Vancê creia: o coração às vezes, trepa, dentro da gente, o mesmo que jaguatirica por uma árvore acima!..."

Simões Lopes Neto

"Pero no solo de maíz vive el hombre; también de agua. Y ahí nomás se la pedía al racionero que me contestaba con toda corrección: 'La tenés en el bebedero, a tu derecha.'"

Mauricio Rosencof

"Para que te servem essas unhas longas? Para te arranhar de morte e para arrancar os teus espinhos mortais, responde o lobo do homem. Para que te serve essa cruel boca de fome?"

Clarice Lispector (Os Desastres de Sofia)

"Parmi les nombreux épithètes de Dionysos figure celui de Bromios, le 'Rugissant', car il était 'le dieu tareau, le dieu lion, le dieu tremblement de terre."

Gilbert Rouget

"... on my approach he gnashed at me, and foamed like a mad dog... I did not feel as if I were in the company of my own species..."

"His hair and clothes were whitened with snow, and his sharp cannibal teeth, revealed by cold and wrath, gleamed through the dark."

"He exerted preter-human self-denial in abstaining from finishing him completely..."

Nelly (Wuthering Heights)

"If pets have unseen connections with people, what about connections between people and wild animals, taken for granted in shamanic traditions for milenia?"

Rupert Sheldrake, Seven Experiments

"Le jaguar aussi c'est une personne, mais c'est un tueur solitaire: il ne respecte rien. Nous les 'personnes completes', nous devons respecter ceux que nous tuons dans la forêt car ils sont pour nous comme des parents par alliance. Ils vivent entre eux avec leur propre parentèle: ils ne font pas les choses au hasard; ils se parlent entre eux; ils écoutent ce que nous disons; ils s'épousent comme il convient."

Chumpi (Philippe Descola, Par-delà nature et culture)

"À la fois accoucheurs et prototypes de la réalité sociale et physique, ces êtres du Rêve sont le plus souvent présentés comme des hybrides d'humains et de non-humains déjà répartis en groupes totémiques au moment de leur venue... [Pour les aborigènes] le Rêve n'est donc ni un passé remémoré ni un présent rétroactif, mais une expression de l'éternité avérée dans l'espace, un cadre invisible du cosmos garantissant la pérennité de ses subdivisions ontologiques."

Philippe Descola

**************************************************************

Juma is the name of the jaguar shamefully sot during disastrous Olympic torch ceremony in Amazonia.
"'Meu Tio, o Iauaretê'... represents the most advanced stage" of Guimarães Rosa’s experiment with prose (a Joycean heritage): "not the story yelding to language, but language itself coming to the fore and giving shape to character and action—unloading the story” [não é a história que cede o primeiro plano à palavra, mas a palavra que, ao irromper em primeiro plano, configura a personagem e a ação, devolvendo a história] (Haroldo de Campos, "A Linguagem do Iauaretê," Metalinguagem e outras Metas, p. 58-59).
**************************************************************

Manuel Bandeira (Libertinagem)
Lenda Brasileira
A moita buliu. Bentinho Jararaca levou a arma à cara: o
que saiu do mato foi o Veado Branco! Bentinho ficou pregado
no chão. Quis puxar o gatilho e não pôde.
— Deus me perdoe!
Mas o Cussaruim veio vindo, veio vindo, parou junto do
caçador e começou a comer devagarinho o cano da espingarda.

**************************************************************

Nahual & tonal (Mesoamerican concepts): 

"A common word in the ethnographic literature of Mexico, nahual derives from the Nahuatl term naualli, signifying a formchanging sorcerer or witch. To the early Colonial priests, these form-changers were not considered simply to be baseless superstition, but were a source of concern... Although the concept of nahual recalls European concepts of witchcraft, it is clearly of native origin and is closely tied to the native concepts of shamanic power and transformation. Tezcatlipoca, the sorcerer par excellence of Late Postclassic Central Mexico, was believed to be able to transform himself into a jaguar. The concept of jaguar form-changers also appears among the Formative Olmecs in the form of 'transformation figures,' stone sculptures that display a kneeling man being turned into a jaguar. Along with the animal alter-egos, the nahual could be transformed into a natural force, such as lightning. Although nahual sorcerers were frequently feared for their ability to commit malignant acts, they could also serve as protectors of the community. The nahual is generally  identical to the Maya concept of the uay."

"Whereas nahual generally signifies a form-changer, frequently in the form of an animal, tonal is used to refer to a spirit-familiar or soul. Among contemporary Mesoamerican peoples, the tonal is generally synonymous with the concept of the 'shadow' spirit of an individual. Among contemporary Mesoamerican peoples, the tonal of an individual is discovered soon after birth, frequently by contact with a particular animal. The term tonal derives from the Nahuatl tonalli, a word bearing such connotations as solar heat, day, day name, destiny, and soul or spirit."

"The term  shaman is not native to Mesoamerica but rather derives from the Tungus language of Siberia. Nonetheless, many of the traits observed in Siberian shamanism, such as ecstatic trance, supernatural flight, and animal spirit companions, are also present in much of the New World."

"Whereas a priest tends to communicate with the divine through offerings and prayer, the shaman becomes an actual vehicle for the supernatural... priests are part of an established religious bureaucracy, shamans tend to be more independent... [But] the distinction is not hard and fast... many priestly offices [common in complex urban societies of Postclassic Mesoamerica] suggest an older substratum of shamanic belief and practice."

[***quotations from Mary Miller & Karl Taube's An Illustrated Dictionary of The Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya (Thames & Hudson, 1997/2015)]

See also: 

- Poetry & the Avant-Garde tradition; 

- Modern Literature & esotericism; 

- Concretos &/ou Brazilian Inteligentsia;

- Eduardo Viveiros de Castro: Brazilian Perspectivism?!
- Sur les premiers chapitres d'Ésthetique théorie du roman;

- Écriture/Violence (Blanchot); 

- Pau Brasil (Oswald de Andrade);
- Mario de Andrade, tel que je l'imagine (bricolage & fragments);

- Amat Escalante (& Werner Herzog): Basilisk's Cinema;