Engaging with Nature: Essays on the Natural World in Medieval and Early Modern Europe

Chapter 7: Human Nature, Observing Dutch Brazil

chapter seven Human Nature Observing Dutch Brazil Julie Berger Hochstrasser This essay is not so much about nature itself, as it is about the observation of nature, or more precisely, about certain depictions of observation of nature—and in the end, it will also be about what we learn of human nature from these remarkable depictions. We begin with a picture—a curious one indeed. The journal of a German soldier employed by the Dutch West India Company in Brazil between 1642 and 1645 contains an illustration that stops one short (fig. 1). With that curious bearded face and the hint of a smile, is it some sort of a wild man? With those grotesque claws and stump of a tail, is it a monster? Seemingly floating downward, with wisps of vegetation that look like seaweed on either side, is it diving underwater? And what is the significance of the musical score below? The accompanying text is little help: the soldier labels the subject a Leugart, but this word does not appear in modern German dictionaries , and sources on seventeenth-century German merely suggest the possible translation of “lion-like.”1 The author offers an alternate term, Haut, which he says is Brazilian, but by this he does not mean 155 Portuguese Brazilian (many of his entries provide Portuguese labels, identified as such, as well as German), but rather an Amerindian dialect , for which there is no dictionary in which to seek its meaning. The carefully penned notes of explanation compound the curiosity: It is reported of this HAUT that it intones the six musical notes, (ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la—la, sol, fa, mi, re, ut), correctly ascending and descending—and between each sound, pauses with a “ha” in a pause of a breath or half beat, which is perhaps why the Brazilians call it a Haut.2 156 Julie Berger Hochstrasser Figure 1. Caspar Schmalkalden, Haut. Pen and ink with wash, 20 x 17 cm, from Die Wundersamen Reisen des Caspar Schmalkalden nach West- und Ostindien, 1642–1652, 110. Forschungsbibliothek Gotha, Chart B533. Only when we compare this illustration with the preceding entry in the journal (fig. 2) does it become apparent that this is a(nother) kind of sloth, actually meant to be pictured dragging itself across the ground, and the musical score records the remarkable sounds the creature reportedly utters. What looks at first like a relic of some wildly imaginary medieval travel description by the legendary John Mandeville proves to be reasonably careful empiricism. Awkward, unschooled, and even bizarre as the whole entry may first appear—what an extraordinary piece of observation of nature is this! The journal was recorded by one Caspar Schmalkalden of Gotha, Germany (near Dresden), where his manuscript resides today in the Landesbibliothek. In 1642 Schmalkalden had sailed aboard the “Elephant ” from the island of Texel in The Netherlands to Pernambuco in Brazil. He arrived on December 11 after a month-long journey to the Dutch colony, then under the administration of Johan Maurits, count and later prince of Nassau-Siegen (1604–79). Schmalkalden’s Reisebuch is but one of a truly marvelous (if occasionally perplexing) array of nature studies originating from Dutch Brazil under the reign of Maurits, which together constitute the focus of this essay.3 Human Nature 157 Figure 2. Caspar Schmalkalden, Ai (Sloth). Pen and ink, 20 x 17 cm, from Wundersamen Reisen, 109. Forschungsbibliothek Gotha, Chart B533. In what follows, one might find a lesson from early modern European history on the difference that is made by who does the looking— what a profound impact this has on what is seen, and especially, on how it is understood. This study of the transfer of information by visual means within the history of natural science offers an extraordinary demonstration of what I shall call the “whisper-down-the-lane” effect—to borrow a metaphor from the parlor game in which something is whispered from player to player, until what was first said is compared with how it comes out at the far end of the line. The array of nature studies from seventeenth-century Dutch Brazil generated such interest among Europeans that an overwhelming tangle of copies after copies issued forth, with so many variations on themes that authenticity becomes a bewildering parlor game in itself, and the authority of the “eyewitness” image is called seriously into question. Svetlana Alpers and David...