This study focuses on the images of melancholy that emerge in the context of coloniality in two
of its Brazilian expressions: indigenous and Amazonian sadness. The so-called peripheral
sadnesses are represented by the books Metade cara, metade máscara (2004), by Eliane
Potiguara, and Repertório Selvagem (1998), by Olga Savary, which make up the corpus of this
research. The aim is to identify allegorized melancholy as a fundamental theme in the poetics of
Eliane Potiguara's Metade cara, metade máscara and Olga Savary's Repertório selvagem.
Furthermore, the specific objectives are to discuss some relationships between the coloniality of
knowledge and the silencing of peripheral, non-canonical, Brazilian and Amazonian sadness; to
identify indigenous melancholy, metonymized in Eliane Potiguara's work; and to investigate
images of melancholy in the shadow of the Amazonian forest in Olga Savary's book. The work
recalls canonical authors of studies on melancholy, such as Sigmund Freud (2013), Julia Kristeva
(1989), Giorgio Agamben (2007), Susan Sontag (2022), Jean Starobinski (2016), Susana Kampff
Lages (2007), Luiz Costa Lima (2017), Maria Rita Kehl (2015), among others; dialogues with the
decolonial perspective of thinkers such as Aníbal Quijano (2005), Enrique Dussel (2005), Walter
Mignolo (2017), María Lugones (2014); with scholars of Amazonian issues, such as Neide
Gondim (1994), Ana Pizarro (2012),Carlos Walter Porto Gonçalves (2023), Eidorfe Moreira
(1958) and João de Jesus Paes Loureiro (2001); and with indigenous thinkers such as Graça
Graúna (2013), Trudruá Dorrico (2017), Davi Kopenawa (2015), Jaider Esbell (2020), Ely
Makuxi (2018), Ailton Krenak (2022), Olívio Jekupé (2019), Daniel Munduruku (2012), among
others. Thus, there is a need for a more specific debate on the Brazilian experience of malaise,
which is crossed by coloniality and therefore differs from Eurocentric understandings of sadness
and its literary representations. In this sense, based on the interpretative path of the poems, it is
recognized that the indigenous literature of Eliane Potiguara and the omnipresence of the Amazon
rainforest in the work of Olga Savary, place other characters and territories in the repertoire of
melancholy studies in contemporary times, outside the hegemonic melancholy of large European
cities. The authors' poetic contributions are fundamental to making peripheral sadness visible,
creating a counter-narrative that challenges the coloniality of knowledge about melancholy. In
Savary's poetics, the Amazons, in terms of their phytogeographic concept (MOREIRA, 1958), are
inscribed under the sign of loss; as well as in Eliane Potiguara's poetic testimony, it is revealed
that coloniality cannot be thought of without the reign of sadness.
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