Between Contemplation and Trauma: Pastoral Visions in Aurelio Arturo and Fernando Charry Lara

Abstract: This article explores how Aurelio Arturo and Fernando Charry Lara appropriate the conventions of the Western pastoral tradition to tackle the histories of unequal land ownership and violence in the Colombian countryside. The article demonstrates that Arturo infuses his monumental poem "Morada al Sur" with pastoral tropes to naturalize an order of relationships between rural laborers and wealthy landowners. This order is mirrored in the mental powers Arturo attributes to these social types during moments of idleness: the workers remain intellectually inactive, while the landowners are shown to be engaged in keen mental activity. In making this distinction, Arturo's poem casts meditation on the rural landscape as a privilege of the landowners, thus mobilizing aesthetic contemplation to reproduce deep social hierarchies. The article also claims that Charry Lara's poem "Llanura de Tuluá" turns upside down the pastoral trope of the locus amoenus by reworking several poetic models, particularly Rimbaud's poem "Le Dormeur du val." The article shows that Charry Lara rewrites pastoral to criticize urban misconceptions about the Colombian countryside and stage how trauma renders an experience inaccessible to consciousness. In doing so, Charry Lara reclaims landscape as a space of oblivion where human violence is inscribed and ultimately erased.