Labrando la Tierra Prometida: estudio de las representaciones de la naturaleza y el espacio en Los gauchos judíos de Alberto Gerchunoff

Abstract

The purpose of this article is a study of the different representations of Nature (the vegetal world in particular) and the space in Alberto Gerchunoff’s novel Los gauchos judios. The novel describes the arrival of a Jewish community in the Province of Entre Rios at the end of 19th Century, escaping from the tsarist Russia where they were victims of harassment by Cossacks. The importance of the land is key to the Jewish immigrants and it is revealed by the initial headings of the book: “The stronger and greatest Jewish men work the land; when the chosen people fell into captivity, they went into vile and dangerous trades, losing the grace of God.” The proposed theoretical framework is a recent approach for the Literary Theory: the convergence between the ecocriticism and the spatial turn in Humanities. A critical position with one foot in literature and another in the land, a negotiation between the human and the non-human. For these Jewish settlers, the work of the land and its fruits provides them not only with food and sustenance, but also a dignification, the divine grace. But nature will demand something of them in return. This is what Michael Pollan and Stefano Mancuso propose, the existence of a reciprocity in the human-plant relationship is unavoidable. In line with Sarmiento’s thinking, Gerchunoff is going to raise the issue of space and outline a map that divides the jewish community from the surrounding desert. A space occupied by the unknown and hostile that –like in Facundo– will be inhabited by the gaucho. A kind of alterity from which they will not be able to escape because they need the gaucho in order to learn about the pastoral work. The story will not be exempt from this tension and Los gauchos judios owns its title to it.