Amazon 1 / Contextualizing Remarks

The basic situation. Two men are standing in front of the Teatro Amazonas in Manaus. (Refer to http://www.internext.com.br/demasi/index2.html -- I have downloaded in case the site gets taken down) or in the foyer of the "Noble Room," or somewhere else in the building or on the grounds as Lynn pleases. The Teatro, in my view, is an absurd imposition of European culture and bogus 19th century mythology on the indigenous populations-all made possible by the transitory wealth of the rubber barons, the rubber tree seeds soon stolen by the British and used to start huge plantations in Indonesia and elsewhere. The absurdity is aptly dramatized in Werner Herzog's film FITZCARRALDO, about which there is a film-making documentary. But take a look at the dome. Does it catch something of the true color of the real place? Maybe not. And note that there are, so far as I can see, no explicitly Christian symbols, but all ersatz pagan stuff.

Anyway, as I see it, the Teatro is a remarkable historical curio but an absolutely impossible place to BE, especially as the millenium ends. Consequently, the two characters must decide where to go. For one of them the decision is already made. The Reverend Smiley, an evangelical Christian missionary, will return to the tribal people upstream whom he has converted, and will try to convert more. Rev. Smiley is intelligent and well-meaning. He has thought about the true role of Christianity with the indigenous peoples. Unless they are converted and led to acculturation they will surely be wiped out by the dominant European culture, he believes. He is not a save-the-soul never mind the body missionary-misery today jam tomorrow in heaven. He is a true incarnationist who believes in the sanctity of all creation. Hence the ravages of the indigenous people are an agony for him.

The other character is Aaron Rothman, an anthropologist and a non-observant Jew. He has virtually decided to go upstream with an indigenous woman, Essella, to her tribe, which is near the people Rev. Smiley has been working with, but is not converted. Rothman will be Essella's consort as she struggles to create a new music, a new myth/ritual for the survival of her people. This creation is new but incorporates the traditional arts of the tribe. Smiley wants to dissuade Rothman. He believes that Essella's enterprise, noble though it is, is doomed. True salvational innovations come from God, not man. And even if Essella did miraculously succeed, Rothman does not belong with her. He is not and can never become a tribal being. He is already irrevocably western. And finally the union of a tribal woman and a white man will excite murderous resentment among the indigenous people, as it always has.

As I envision it, these seven screens almost exactly mirror the first seven screens of the Vienna sequence (in which Bettina tries to dissuade Eva from marrying Jakob).