Refugios contra el desamparo: una comparación poética y etno-mitológica en torno a la meditación sobre el mundo arbóreo

Abstract

In the interplay between tradition and modernity, memory tends to select happier memories of worlds that disappear before our eyes, a meditative nostalgia that tries to capture the eternal within the framework of a transitory world. In many indigenous cultures, as the Wichí bazaneros of Northwestern Argentina, the conceptions about their forests show similarities with the conceptions of great poets, Robert Frost in this case. Both arise from a type of reasoning where perceptions and intuitions, linked to certain natural elements, give rise to worldviews that foster human empathy with natural beings. Likewise, trees, among the wichí, are associated with longevity, vitality and fertility.  We focused on those instances where humans and trees are connected and, as in Frost’s poem Birches, they can wander between the forest and the stars through their reveries that are culturally modeled. They are important, insofar as they are a source of deep emotions and joy in contexts of deprivation and malaise. They may act as havens against the decline of the sense of belonging that modernity causes.