Rosean maxims

In a translation considered as flawed by critics and scholars, The Devil to Pay in the Backlands was a very quotable book, abounding in surprising turns of phrases. The post below first appeared in a slightly different and shorter form (with lesser quotes) in A Missing Book as part of a contest to submit "anything concerning João Guimarães Rosa". I am reviving it here since the original post was taken down.



The Devil to Pay in the Backlands, translated by James L. Taylor and Harriet de Onís, was more than a story of bandit wars and loves. It was also a novel of ideas as the humble narrator philosophizes on various topics: love and friendship, good and evil, life and death. The book could even resemble a treatise on leadership, politics, and power, how to seize it, how to wield it. It was a reluctant hero's book of philosophy, filled with double-edged aphorisms. Everything was filtered through the consciousness of its protagonist, Riobaldo, who meditates on his cruel experiences like a failed student of Master Yoda.

As the novel's structure is confessional, the narration constantly verged on self-examination. The novel condensed a unique way of thinking, a worldview, a "jagunço code." Its humble insights were dispensed randomly, perfectly timed, in moments of deep reflection. The book was less like a manual on the art of fighting wars in the sertão than a guide to natural stoicism, a paradoxical take on living as "a dangerous business."

The following listed some of the aphorisms in the book. The majority of the quotes were taken mainly from the second half of the book, from page 300 onward, when I started paying attention to them. The double meanings of some of the aphorisms may have been lost as the context in which they are situated was not mentioned. Out of context, they were tweets from a world of infinite uncertainty.

The truth is not in the setting out nor in the arriving: it comes to us in the middle of the journey. (52)

In real life, things end less neatly, or don’t end at all. To strive for exactitude makes one blunder. One shouldn’t seek it. (70)

He lies little who tells the whole truth. (299)

The world is like a stage: one in the royal box, the others trained to keep quiet. (299)

Fear is something that grows inside a person, something planted there; at times it stirs and shakes, and we think it is for some reason, because of this or that, when these things are only holding a mirror up to ourselves. The purpose of life is to destroy these bitter dregs of fear. (301)

The sertão is not to be subdued by force; on the contrary, little by little, it does the subduing. All who ride high and handsome in the sertão hold the reins for a short time only: they find they are riding a tiger. (307)

We only know well that which we do not understand. (310)

Always fear a man who has no power and no money! I’ll say more: it is best never to mix with people too different from ourselves. Even when they have no avowed evil intentions, their lives are bounded by their habits, and being an outsider, you run subtle dangers. There are many places and many kinds of people. I learned about it from old-timers. The wise thing is to flee from everything to which we do not belong. Keep the good far from the bad, the healthy far from the sick, the living far from the dead, the cold far from the hot, the rich far from the poor. Don’t neglect this rule, and hold on to the reins with both hands. Put gold in one hand and silver in the other, then close them tight so no one will see. (318)

As long as there is one fearful soul in the world, or a frightened child, everyone is in danger—fear is contagious. No one has the right to instill fear in another, no one. My greatest right, the one I cherish most, is that no one is entitled to make me afraid! (322-323)

The sum total of life is a mingling of the lives of all, and life follows a pattern, with little variation. When anyone near you, for example is afraid, his fear reaches out to touch you; but if you stand firm and refuse to be afraid under any conditions, your courage amazingly doubles and redoubles. (327)

I am telling you everything, as I said. I don’t like to forget anything. To me, forgetting is almost like losing money. (332-333)

One does not hate a boa, for though a boa squeezes it has no poison. (339)

A crazy idea is one that doesn’t work. But you won’t know it’s crazy until you’ve tried it. (347)

The first thing a person who wants to rise in life must learn is to override the envy of others. (351)

There was only enough manioc and jerky left for three days? Nonsense. Every steer grazes daily as long as it lives. Common sense and beans can be replenished every day. Let there be no shortage of courage and there would be plenty of burití pulp and wild steer meat. (364-365)

If I were to get cautious, I would develop fear right at the start. Courage comes from other practices. You have to believe in the impossible—just that. (365)

Another can take our place, but we should never take the place of another: it’s not wise. (374)

Life is full of surprises! You start something, without knowing why, and then you lose control; life is like a stew, stirred and seasoned by everybody. (375)

The things in this world that change the quickest are the direction of the wind, the trail of the tapir in September and October, and a person’s feelings. (375)

It is only when the river is deep, or has deep holes in it, that you build a bridge across it. (376)

Ah, the advice of a friend is welcome only when it is gentle, like an afternoon breeze riffling the water. But love turns its back on all reproof. (380)

God turns His back on my prayers but He cocks an ear. (393)

Look: all that is not prayer is madness. (394)

Life is a motley confusion. Write it in your notebook, sir: seven pages. (406)

The only thing I can swear to, that I know, is that a toucan has a craw! (407)

Courage is what makes the heart beat; without it, the beat is not true. (408)

An egg is something that can be smashed. Thoroughly, too. To conquer, you must give no thought to the enemy, just do what you have to do. I was turning my back on the snake and going after its nest. (410)

Didn’t the old-timers themselves know that the day would come when you could lie in your hammock or bed, and the hoes would go out alone to chop weeds, and the scythes to reap by themselves, and the cart to fetch the harvest—that everything that is not man himself belongs to him and is subject to his will? (411)

I suffered agonies to think that one’s hand is capable of action before thought has time to intervene. (416)

A bird that flies away leaves the nest unguarded. (417)

“The sertão is neither mean nor kind, son; it takes away or gives, it pleases or embitters you, according as you treat it.” (423)

Just as in heaven there is splendor, so here there is woman’s beauty, for which we thirst. (429)

There may have been no harm in it, but to ask for advice is to have no trust in oneself; and that could be harmful. (432)

And we arrived! Where? The place you arrive at is wherever the enemy also wishes to arrive. The devil watches; what the devil wants is to see. (442)

What fights is the animal in us, not the man. (446)

The jagunços say they do not know themselves if they are afraid, but none of them thought about dying. You curse and swear but it is for the other fellow’s blood. (447)

I know: one who loves is always a slave, but he never truly obeys. (447)

To command is just that: to remain still and have greater courage. (449)

The fact is, courage is something you can always absorb more of—like air: you can take more and more of it into your lungs, no matter how full, by breathing deeper. (449)

Man exists like the tapir: he lives life. A tapir is the most stupid of animals. (452)

Hatred displaces fear, just as fear comes from hatred. (464)

Beauty—what is it? Beauty, the shape of a person’s face, a person who may be destined for another, is a matter which Fate decides. (467)

Prayer is the life of the soul. When I pray I am clean of all filth, apart from all madness. Or is it the awakening of the soul? (490)

It is the future that matters. To buy or to sell, sometimes, is almost the same thing. (492)

João Guimarães Rosa's windmills

"An American reader must learn Portuguese, too, if he is to experience fully Rosa's poetic power and wit", said Barbara Shelby in her preface to her translation of Primeiras Estórias (1962) as The Third Bank of the River and Other Stories (1968). The statement was obviously meant for readers of other nationalities. It's just that Shelby's American perspective was more pronounced in her presentation of the Brazilian master, evident in her comparison of João Guimarães Rosa to American masters. If Alison Entrekin's translation (or "reconstruction") of Grande Sertão: Veredas would ever see the light of day, then that could be another glimpse at the poetic power and wit of JGR. Meanwhile, the short stories and sketches in The Third Bank of the River could also reveal flashes of linguistic genius and panache. It could possibly tide over the infinite patience of a fan waiting for three to five years for a more reckless and disruptive translation of the masterpiece.

I was only just four stories in to the collection and already I could say that Shelby tried her best to render in English JGR's supposedly pyrotechnical prose full of notorious neologisms and word plays. It had the same confidence as the more recent Englishing of JGR's stories in The Jaguar (2001) by David Treece. I counted a half dozen overlapping stories between The Jaguar and The Third Bank. Perhaps I would make a side by side reading of them; that would make for a more enriching reading. In any case, an encounter with the first four stories in this collection already validated for me JGR's abiding interest in the dark and quirky sides of men and women and how they could be represented in complex and surreal and madcap words and formulations. The epiphanies and revelations of human nature and deep feelings were as sublime as Joyce's.

When they got home he no longer wanted to go outside. The yard held a lost nostalgia, a vague remorse; he hardly knew what. The childish thoughts in his little head were still in the hieroglyphic stage. Nevertheless he went out after supper. And saw it—the unostentatious, sweetly unexpected surprise. The turkey was there! Oh, no, it wasn't. Not the same one. It was smaller, much less turkey. It had the coral color, the sumptuous train, the ruff, and the gurgling gobble, but its painful elegance lacked the hauteur, the rotundity, the taut, globular beauty of the other. Even so, its coming and its presence were some consolation.

Everything was softened by melancholy, even the day; that is, the coming of twilight. Nightfall is sorrowful everywhere. The stillness stole out from where it was kept. The boy was soothed in a half-frightened way by his own despair; some inner force was working in him, putting down roots to strengthen his soul.

The turkey advanced to the edge of the forest. There it caught sight of—what was it? He could hardly make it out, it was getting so dark. Well, if it wasn't the other turkey's cut-off head, thrown on the trash heap! The boy felt pity and ecstasy. [from "The Thin Edge of Happiness"]

"O, there’s a . . . fib!" Imagine a child's disappointment after witnessing a live turkey and a beheaded one.

Quirkiness and innocence were the order of the day: the characters were either innocent children with exploratory or adventurous consciousness (as in "The Thin Edge of Happiness") or adults suddenly let loose or unhinged ("Tantarum, My Boss"; "Much Ado"). And there was still JGR's snappy folk dialogues and aphoristic tendencies:

All eternity, all certainty, was lost; in a breath, in the glimmer of a sigh, that which is most precious is taken from us. ["The Thin Edge of Happiness"]

* * *

I did just what he said, as there wasn't any help for it; to handle a lunatic it takes a lunatic and a half. The blue of those big eyes of his went right through me; he may have been crazy, but he knew how to give orders. His beard was pointing up in the air—that crisscross tangled beard of his without a single white hair lying straight. He waved his arms around like a windmill. He was better than a free sample. ["Tantarum, My Boss"]

Like Quixote confronting windmills, JGR's old man, Tantarum, was prone to actions hard to explain for evident madness or semi-madness. They just went up and about and did things out of logic or hard to fathom.

* * *

João Guimarães Rosa was one of the literary heroes of this blog. I first encountered his novel The Devil to Pay in the Backlands in the university library, drawn to the novel's kick-ass title. Needless to say, my life of reading was never the same again, and this after reading a supposedly flawed and unfaithful translation.

In the 10 years of this blog's existence, I have written more than 10 blog posts on him, one of which was an investigation of the supposed deletion of "The Slaughter of the Ponies" section in The Devil to Pay in the Backlands (this post). After reading Gregory Rabassa's memoirs, If This Be Treason, which I acquired in 2010 via Bookmooch, I became interested in this section of Grande Sertão that Rabassa said was excluded in the translation. I had to order The Borzoi Anthology of Latin American Literature, Volume II from a bookseller-friend in the U.S. just to verify Gregory Rabassa's claim in his memoirs.


 


There was a reference to this section in "'Too Many Cooks Spoil the Broth': Mistranslating Grande Sertao: Veredas into Oblivion", a journal article by James Remington Krause (Chasqui, November 2015). The article could be found at this link (see footnote 9). Krause did not cite my 2010 blog post as a source of his 2015 article. Does referencing blog posts—examples of so-called "gray literature", write-ups that were not peer-reviewed—undermine the scholarship and rigor of academic articles? Book blogging is "dead", indeed.

A Goodreads reviewer, Nathan "N.R." Gaddis, also made the same serendipitous discovery in his review of The Devil to Pay in the Backlands, mentioning the Borzoi Anthology, Rabassa, and "the slaughter of the ponies" section. He was even inspired to type in the whole extract from the novel, in the two English versions. Found here.

I'm tempted to cite a JGR aphorism.

My next post: João Guimarães Rosa as a master aphorist.

On the telling of a tale and the singing of verses

Nowadays, when certain book reviewers and blurb-spitters describe a book as an "epic novel", more likely than not it means that the book is too long to finish in a few sittings. Say, 500 pages at the minimum, in small print. Maybe the story continues through the next installments, each book in the now-expanding series stretching the story in ridiculous directions. More likely it's a sprawling historical romance or intergenerational family saga, maybe a space opera, populated by a dozen characters (humans or aliens) whose individual stories intertwine and whose destinies collide in an extravagant, show-stopping ending.

Such "epic stories" are more or less the bestseller kind; it may even be full of sobering surprises and shattering exposés about the human condition. But ultimately devoid of richness in the telling, of a rhythmic and singing prose style. A story that was just that: without linguistic intent. The epic in epic novels has been turned into a soap-like slipperiness, predictable in its unpredictability. The epic is robbed of its essential qualities, disabused of its traditional conceptions, becoming now a genre based on page count and spine thickness. This species of the novel, if it exists, must be returned to its literal rendering. The epic has to seek its epicenter.

In an epic lecture—third in a series—called "The Telling of the Tale", Borges, again:

If we think of the novel and the epic, we are tempted to fall into thinking that the chief difference lies in the difference between verse and prose, in the difference between singing something and stating something. But I think that there is a greater difference. I think the difference lies in the fact that the important thing about the epic is a hero—a man who is a pattern for all men. While, as Mencken pointed out, the essence of most novels lies in the breaking down of a man, in the degeneration of character.

Borges believed that there are only a few patterns or finite number of metaphors in rhymed verses. From this idea he also deduced that there are only a few templates for the plot of an epic story. The first requirement is the hero, along with the well-used elements—villains, heroine, sidekick, insurmountable odds, true tests of character and strength, stupendous fight scenes. The second is the form. It is in verse, and it must be sung.

The modern hybrid "epic novel" therefore must integrate the conventional epic requirements into prose. The hero is easy to come by, but telling the tale in a singing prose, not a prosaic prose, is another species of telling altogether. Predictably, Borges finds the modern novels are an epic fail.

We come now to our time, and we find this very strange circumstance. We have had two world wars, and somehow no epic has come from them—except perhaps The Seven Pillars of Wisdom. But in The Seven Pillars of Wisdom—and I find many epic qualities there—in The Seven Pillars the book is hampered by the fact that the hero is the teller, and so sometimes he has to belittle himself, he has to make himself human, he has to make himself far too believable. In fact, he has to fall into the tricks of a novelist.

The need for the epic (or for the mode of the epic) to weave into the fabric of fiction is necessary for Borges because he sees in the novelistic literature the possibility of gaining a heroic quality. But postmodern narrative tendencies irritate him.

I think that the novel is breaking down. I think that all these very daring and very interesting experiments with the novel—for example, the idea of the shifting of time, the idea of the story being told by different characters—all those are leading to the moment when we shall feel that the novel is no longer with us.

It may not be surprising that the old man prefers the grand style and the great storytelling tradition of heroes and deeds and the singing of them. His brand of fiction romanticizes the mythopoetic tradition. He almost apologizes for his preference, saying he may be an old-fashioned man from the nineteenth century. But myth-making has been with us since time immemorial. As long as the tales are being spoken and sung, handed down from singers to listeners, myths are created and recreated, over and over. After the words of the painter Whistler, Borges proclaims: "Art happens every time we read a poem." Which can be tweaked in this case: A myth is reborn every time we sing an epic novel.

I'm not sure whether Borges will consider João Guimarães Rosa's Grande Sertão: Veredas an epic novel. I'm almost sure he did not even read it. In the exacting terms he give for his type of novel, it fails in several respects. For one, it is told by the hero Riobaldo. And it is full of time shifts, with the muddled Riobaldo criss-crossing time and space in an always apologetic telling. He withholds information from the reader. He deliberately delays the story for—it's really rather irksome—the full impact of the outcome of—the way he always breaks off his narrative—every staggering showdown.

Ah, but hold on, wait a minute: I'm getting off the track. I was about to forget Vupes! My story would be neither accurate nor complete if I left out Vupes, for he comes very much into the picture.

Riobaldo is always getting off the track, circling around his long-drawn out story like a thirsty vulture to the corpse of his memory. Random thoughts assail him. Riobaldo, the hero, the ceaseless teller, belittles himself. He almost surely falls into the tricks of novel writing, making himself too believable.

I know that I am telling this badly, just hitting the high spots. I ramble. But it is not to cover up; don't think that. About serious matters, the normal ones, I have told you almost everything. I have no hesitation. You are a man who judges others as you would yourself; you are not one to censure. And my past deeds have been invalidated, proscribed. My respectability is solid. Now I am like a tapir in a pool; nobody can catch me. Little of my life is left to me. I am talking foolishness.

His words can be endearing and exasperating at the same time. They often linger like an unspoken commentary on the poverty and brutality of people around him. But whether his story ultimately describes the "breaking down of a man" or "degeneration of character" (as Borges cites Mencken) is debatable. I'm not even sure if Riobaldo is the hero of the novel.

Yet in many ways Guimarães Rosa tips the balance of the novel toward epic proportions. There is singing, and there are songs of old excerpted in it, ballads and lyrics. Riobaldo names his horse after a singer whose song haunts him. There are myths, myth-making from his own mouth, bygone stories of great jagunço chiefs. His is not a totally scripted tale. The seeming spontaneity underpins the deep sorrows of his heart. His stories follow the course of a river from the headwaters to the rapids, feeding into countless tributaries, according to the dictates of a compassionate memory.

As I think of them that is how I relate them. You are very kind to listen to me. There are hours long past that remain much closer to us than other more recent ones. You know yourself how it is.

The trickery of the modern novelist usually lies in the handling of memory and in the investigation of a hero's fallibility. And the modern novel, epic or otherwise, is full of these tricks.

The modern epic novel that Borges described is probably a hypothetical one. It was once possible, but modern writing has split the two tasks—the telling of a tale and the singing of verses as mutually exclusive ways of storytelling. Nowadays epic singing in prose is an ideal, like a perfect translation, impossible to write. But he is just too full of hope to give up his dream of the epic. His prophecy of its inevitable comeback, in the form of a novel, is a challenge both to writers and the readers who will sing them.

I think that if the telling of a tale and the singing of verse could come together again, then a very important thing might happen.

...

I have optimism, I have hope. And as the future holds many things—as the future, perhaps, holds all things—I think that the epic will come back to us. I think that the poet shall once again be a maker. I mean, he will tell a story and he will also sing it. And we will not think of those two things as different, even as we do not think they are different in Homer or in Virgil.

That is from his lecture of 1967 or 68. Riobaldo, his precursor, is amenable on the aspect of songs bearing the heroes out. In his own novelistic way, Riobaldo sings his own tale.

"The war was a big one, it lasted a long time, it filled this sertão. Everybody is going to talk about it, throughout the North, in Minas and the whole of Bahia, and elsewhere, for years to come. They are going to make up songs about the many deeds."

...

Sô Candelario looked up with wonder on his face, and in an oddly quiet way spoke from his heart, in a pleasant voice:

"Let there be fame and glory. Everybody will talk about this for many years and in many places, giving praise to our honor. They will make up verses about it in the market places, and it might even be written up in city newspapers."

And maybe in novels too—who can say?

On Diadorim

The Devil to Pay in the Backlands by João Guimarães Rosa, translated by James L. Taylor and Harriet de Onís (Knopf, 1963)


SPOILERS. LOTS.


Two taboos permeate Riobaldo's telling of his adventures. The first is the devil, its questionable non-existence, the evil power it gives those who are willing to make a pact by selling their souls. The second is his love for his fellow jagunço Diadorim.

Diadorim loved me too. So much that his jealousy of me spilled over. After a sudden satisfaction, that other shame arose in me, a strange revulsion. [29]

It is a love that revolts him, that he cannot openly acknowledge in a society where strong men are supposed to desire only women. And so he represses it.

I was crazy about Diadorim, and at the same time, underlying this, was a dull rage at it not being possible for me to love him as I wanted to, honorably and completely. [30]

He denies expression of that love in countless ways. For Riobaldo, it is an evil thing that must not be given due course. It cannot be named, much in the same way that the devil's name cannot be freely uttered. Riobaldo is afraid that the two taboos—his attraction for a fellow man and the existence of the devil—are interlinked.

Always when we begin to love someone, in the normal run of things, love takes root and grows, because, in a way, that is what we want to happen, and so we seek it and help it along in our mind; but when it is predestined, all-embracing, we love completely and fatefully, we have to love, and we come upon one surprise after another. A love of this sort grows first and bursts forth later. I am talking a lot, I know: I am being a bore. But it can't be helped. Well, then, tell me: can love like that come from the devil? Can it possibly? Can it come from One-Who-Does-Not-Exist? Your silence indicates agreement. Please don't answer me, or my confusion will grow. [117]

The novel then appears as a mashup of a violent action adventure and a tender love story, with the restraints of the larger society and its religious/folk beliefs—the dominant arbiter of morals—impinging on individual desires and happiness. But since this is a (LGBT) novel about transformations and perpetual self-inventions carefully worked out, the revelation about Diadorim's sexuality at the end compels the reader to reassess Riobaldo's self-questioning narrative.

Though the novel is often likened to a Western, an Eastern reading gives some insights into the most radical transformation in the book. Eclipsing Riobaldo's transformation from a simple bandit to a formidable jagunço chief is Diadorim's transformation into (or impersonation as) a man. Why did she do it?

The role of Joca Ramiro, her father whom she revered so much, is significant in understanding Diadorim's taking on the duties of an obedient son. Explaining her bravery to Riobaldo when they first met, the Boy (as Diadorim was then known to Riobaldo) explains: "I am different from everyone else. My father told me that I had to be different, very different."

In "The Death of a Disciple" (1918) by the Japanese writer Akutagawa Ryūnosuke, a young girl impersonates the life of a boy (Lorenzo) in order to enter the church and serve God the father: "Whenever he was asked about his origins, Lorenzo would parry all questions with a guileless smile and offer only the vaguest of replies: his home, he said, was Paraiso, his father Deus."

The deep love for her old father is also the reason the legendary Chinese woman warrior Hua Mulan escaped her home to enlist as a soldier after her father was drafted into the army. Her heroic exploits are recorded in the poem “Ballad of Mulan”.

Last night I saw the army notice, The emperor is calling a great draft.
A dozen volumes of battle rolls, Each one with my father's name.
My father has no grown-up son, And I have no elder brother.
I'm willing to buy a horse and saddle, To go to battle in my father's place."

First transcribed in the 6th century and the basis of the popular 1998 Disney animated movie Mulan, it is said to be one of the first poems in Chinese history to support gender equality. After fighting battles for ten years, Mulan and her army visited the emperor who showered the victors with rewards. When the emperor asked Mulan what she desires, she replied that she only wanted to come back home. Her family, learning of her return, joyously welcomed her.

"I open my east chamber door, And sit on my west chamber bed.
I take off my battle cloak, And put on my old-time clothes.
I adjust my wispy hair at the window sill, And apply my bisque makeup by the mirror.
I step out to see my comrades-in-arms, They are all surprised and astounded:
'We travelled twelve years together, Yet didn't realize Mulan was a lady!'"

The male rabbit is swifter of foot, The eyes of the female are somewhat smaller.
But when the two rabbits run side by side, How can you tell the female from the male? 

Unlike in the Chinese poem, the revelatory ending of The Devil to Pay in the Backlands is a tragic affair, all the more poignant for dashing all hopes of potential future happiness between Riobaldo and Diadorim. In a kind of Buddhist sense, it may be part of Riobaldo's karma, part of the settling of accounts in the sertão, the final reckoning of his "pact".

One other interesting character in the book who seems to refract everything Riobaldo is narrating to his silent interviewer is his compadre Quelemém, an absentee commentator to the proceedings. Quelemém is a sort of guru to Riobaldo, "a person of such rare quality, that just being near him, everyone becomes calm, smiling, kind. [491]" Riobaldo derives several religious notions from him—karma, meditation, penance, self-denial—although he cautions against accepting them wholesale.

In this world or the next, each Jazevedão, when he has finished what he has to do, stumbles into his time of penance until he has paid in full what he owes—my compadre Quelemém will bear me out. [13]

He answered me that as we near Heaven, we become cleansed and all our ugly past fades into nothingness, like the misbehaviour of childhood, the naughtiness. Like there is no need to feel remorse for what we may have divulged during the turmoil of a nightmare. So—we become clean and bright! Maybe that is why they say getting to Heaven is so slow. I check these matters, you understand, with my compadre Quelemém, because of the belief he holds: that one day we pay to the last penny for every evil deed we have committed. A fellow who believes that would rather get up before daybreak three days in a row than make the slightest misstep. Compadre Quelemém never talks for the sake of talking, he means what he says. Only, I’m not going to tell him this: one must never swallow whole others tell us—that is an unbreakable rule! [16-17]

In his retrospective telling of his violent past, Riobaldo is all the more concerned about the afterlife and the salvation of his soul, repeatedly invoking God, Heaven, and Our Lady of Abadia. Here we find the abiding presence of religion that was the backdrop of Akutagawa's short story (and also, notably, of Endo Shusaku's novel Silence). For another reading of Grande Sertão's ending, I'm quoting from translator Charles De Wolf's notes to "The Death of a Disciple".

The surprise ending points to a mélange of traditions. In the minds of the story's first readers, Lorenzo would surely have evoked a non-Christian figure with a nonetheless specifically Christian association: Kannon [Guanyin]. A well-known subterfuge of the "hidden Christians" [Kakure Kirishitan] during the centuries of persecution was to use images of this enormously popular bodhisattva ... to represent the Virgin Mary. Kannon, as it happens, was originally male, becoming female along the journey to Japan from India via China. In a story that was surely known to Akutagawa, she is born Miào-Shàn, the daughter of a rich king in Sumatra, who seeks to thwart her in her desire to become a Buddhist nun, even to the point of setting fire to the temple in which she resides. She miraculously puts out the flames but in the end is put to death.

If this precursor sounds too esoteric, try a very modern variation of the story, in the 2007 Korean hit TV series Coffee Prince, which has a remake in the Philippines last year.

Of God and devil, trigger and weapon

The Devil to Pay in the Backlands by João Guimarães Rosa, translated by James L. Taylor and Harriet de Onís (Knopf, 1963)


"The fact is that every writer creates his own precursors," wrote Borges in an essay on Kafka. "His work modifies our conception of the past, as it will modify the future." Borges the literary critic just defined his own exploratory style of literary criticism. For how can someone be entirely sure which particular authors and books a certain writer has read or was influenced by? A reader could know, for example, that the writings of Author A was influenced by Author B in terms of aspect X. Yet he might not be aware that Author B was influenced by Author C on that same aspect X. And there's really no way to fully know the web of influences because there are now just about infinite books written by infinite authors and containing infinite aspects. It's very likely that the anxiety of influence was felt both by readers and writers. At most, readers could only rely on gut feel and guesswork, just like Borges: "After frequenting [Kafka's] pages a bit, I came to think I could recognize his voice, or his practices, in texts from diverse literatures and periods." The text then is the thing. "If Kafka had never written a line, we would not perceive this quality [his idiosyncrasy]; in other words, it would not exist."

Because João Guimarães Rosa had written some good lines in Grande Sertão: Veredas, and because the novel was translated in various languages, then we can freely write about it. One could make, for example, an observation that Cormac McCarthy created a precursor in the Brazilian writer, he of Blood Meridian, or The Evening Redness in the West. Blood Meridian was of course that horrific ballet of blood and viscera and violence, featuring two unforgettable characters: the kid and the Judge. It was the Judge—extra-large, hairless, and enthusiastic peeler of human scalps—who cut a really nasty figure, the embodiment of the devil to pay in the wild west. The Judge was malignity itself, the author of genocides, disembowelments, and infanticides. What in Guimarães Rosa's "Matraga" story was described as "something God doesn't order and the devil doesn't do". The lawlessness and evil-doings in Guimarães Rosa could not compare to the graphic descriptions of McCarthy. But we get the idea when the narrator said, "You know, sir, the sertão is where the strong and the shrewd call the tune. God himself, when he comes here, had better come armed!"

Two characters in The Devil to Pay in the Backlands resembled the Judge in Blood Meridian. The clownish Zé Bebelo, himself formidable and talkative like the Judge, was a bandit leader who never sleeps—"Work hard to sleep well," he would say. With relish: "After I'm dead, you can rest." Then laughing: "But I'm not going to die [76]." The Judge also never slept. Right after a blood-curdling scene at the end of the book, the Judge was triumphant and hyper: "He never sleeps, the judge. He is dancing, dancing. He says that he will never die."

The figure that was closer to the Judge's temperament, however, was Hermógenes, the arch-enemy of the narrator Riobaldo's band of jagunços. Hermógenes betrayed the brave Joca Ramiro, upright chief of the jagunços. He was believed to have a pact with the devil. Luck seemed to be always on his side as it was hard to catch him. And Hermógenes's cruelty, like the Judge, knew no bounds. There was a scene where a victim was tied and left for him to torture and kill slowly while he relished the man's suffering.

The novel was a haphazard record of Riobaldo's tale of his adventures as a member of a jagunço outfit under different leaders. He was speaking to an unnamed man, a learned person, almost certainly a writer who was interviewing the retired bandit in order to write about his exploits. The tale was told out of order, following the unpredictable courses of winding rivers, branching out into various tributaries. Characters crossed and re-crossed each other. The sertão contained a world, and that world was small. The tableau of scenes made for a jumbled telling but the compositional choices—the details and images, the succession of surprises one after another, the reappearances of characters—were calibrated, perfectly timed, in a narrative that was seemingly without letup in its spontaneous flow.

The elegiac tone of the narration was a hymn to a vanishing land; that is, Brazil in the first half of nineteenth century, at a time when the government was starting to compartmentalize the region by building roads. The bandit wars in the sertão region of Brazil were being fought by private armies funded by the landed class (owners of fazendas) against government troops who were harassing them. We caught the story during during the heydays of vigilante fighting when different factions of armed militias went at cross purposes and even fought each other. Food rations, weapons, and horses were sourced out by exacting tributes from fazendeiros.

The breakdown of law led to more groups being formed to "impose justice" and bring order to the world. They had “taken up arms in the cause of justice and honest government” and to protect friends (their benefactors) who were persecuted by government soldiers. It's not really that different to some regions today which are at war or in conflict or to the most violent cities in the world. Then, as now, warlords and their armies ruled the world.

War strategies and the politics of warfare figured prominently in the novel. They were tempered by the melancholic voice of Riobaldo who was recounting his violent past, sweet loves, and disappointments. Reflecting on the several successions of leadership in his jagunço army, Riobaldo was able to examine his own peripatetic life and give a glimpse of the personal and public lives of jagunços in peace and war.

The imposition of "order and justice" in the sertão was best exemplified by a key scene in the book. It was during the trial of Zé Bebelo, who made war in the pay of government against Joca Ramiro's group, that the ideas for the dispensation of justice were explored. Parliamentary procedures were carefully observed during the trial. It made for a riveting courtroom drama, in fact. It turned out that in a world of chaos and war, jagunços could still be bound by certain codes of conduct.

The prisoner's rights were protected, along with the right to defend himself in a court of war. The "fair" trial demonstrated some ethical considerations in pursuing the rules of war. Human rights, against torture and against death, were safeguarded. In context—and here we find an important "precursor" document—the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948, eight years before the publication of the novel. Being a senior member of the Brazilian diplomatic community, Guimarães Rosa must have been familiar with the discussions on human rights prior to their international adoption.

But the novel was not just a platform for philosophical meditation on human rights. It also explored ideas about the individual as a free agency of good and evil, equipped with human feelings and human reason. The individual has seemingly unlimited capacity to change, to reform his ways, from one station in life to another, from one type of person to another. This individual political will to change was closely tied to Riobaldo’s metaphysical discussions on God and the devil, on saints, reincarnation, and the afterlife. Does the devil exist or not? Does God exist to thwart the devil's plans? How free are we to make a choice between good and evil? What is a "just" war? What compels a man to transform himself from good to bad and the other way round?

It was significant that Riobaldo had a special ability. He was an expert marksman. He held the life of his target enemy on his trigger finger. The latter's hearbeat depended on Riobaldo's error, but Riobaldo never made any. Choosing whom to mark out for death and whom to spare—was not that the same as playing God? How easily are we swayed by our own appetite for murder and destruction?

Those fellows there were really a gang of kind friends who helped each other at every turn, and who did not balk at sacrifices to that end. But the fact remained that, in support of some political feud, they would not hesitate to shoot up a village of helpless people, people like ourselves, with mothers and godmothers. And they found it quite natural to go out and do the same thing for the sake of health and exercise. I was horror-stricken—you know what I mean? I was afraid of the race of men. [332]

In several instances in the novel, Riobaldo was faced with a decision to choose between what he perceived as right and what he knew to be wrong. A single word from him could decide the fate of an innocent young woman. A single bullet could pass judgement on the life of a man or a horse or a dog. Every day, in battle or outside them, a jagunço may have to decide, one way or another, on things whose outcome may haunt him forever. "Living is a dangerous business", our apologetic narrator repeated many times, too many for one's comfort. When Riobaldo pulled the plug on someone, he knew his entire being decided it, not just his hand: "I tell you, this right hand of mine had fired almost by itself. What I know is, it returned Adam to dust. That's just my way of talking. [452]"

It didn’t help that Riobaldo often courted unreliability. In many instances he denied the existence of the devil, in others he subscribed wholly to the concept and was even willing to make a pact with the "dark side". The power to do good and evil resides in any one of us, but it is regulated not only by the societal rules and legal frameworks governing our actions, but by the God of our chosen religion. But in the sertão, where God has to come armed, the situation was not simple. "It is man who exists," Riobaldo reflected at one point. Are devil and God then mere labels for acts of men?

God exists, yes, slowly or suddenly. He acts, all right—but almost wholly through the medium of persons, good and bad. The awesome things of this world! The backlands are a powerful weapon. Is God a trigger? [283]

In Riobaldo's puzzlement we see the same conflict faced by Augusto Matraga. But the question was probably beyond good and evil, or their relativism.

If I wanted to make another pact, with God himself—I wonder if I can?—would this not wipe out everything that went before? ... What is needed is for God to have greater reality for people, and for the devil to amuse us with his own non-existence. One thing is sure, one alone, even though it differs for every person, and that is: God waits for each of us to act. In this world, there are all degrees of bad and good persons. But suppose everybody were bad; would not then everybody be good? Ah, it is only for the sake of pleasure and happiness that we seek to know everything, to develop a soul, to have a conscience. To suffer, none of this is needed. Animals suffer pain, and they suffer without knowing the reason. I tell you, sir: everything is a pact. Every road is slippery. [259]

Everything in the book could be seen as a setup for one final revelation. Rereading it revealed that hints were carefully dropped along the way. My next post is a look into Diadorim's character and more precursors of the novel—eastern, as opposed to western, writers.

OTHER READERS:

Richard / Caravana de recuerdos (multiple posts)
Miguel / St. Orberose (multiple posts)
Scott / seraillon

Rise / in lieu of a field guide (multiple posts)

Matraga is not Matraga

"Augusto Matraga's Hour and Turn" by João Guimarães Rosa, in Sagarana, translated by Harriet de Onís (Knopf, 1966)


Sagarana was João Guimarães Rosa's first book, a nine-story cycle published in 1946, a decade before the appearance of his back-to-back masterpieces: the novel Grande Sertão: Veredas and the seven interlinked novellas in the two-volume Corpo de Baile. The title, as noted by Franklin de Oliveira in the introduction to the translation, is an amalgam of "Saga, an Old Norse root, a verbal creation at the service of the epic, and the Tupi suffix rana (in the manner of)." In the manner of a saga, the stories explored the poignant, comic, and earthy territory of the backlands of Minas Gerais, Brazil.

The last story in the cycle—"Augusto Matraga's Hour and Turn"—was significant for anticipating the concerns of Grande Sertão: Veredas. After an almost fatal and life-changing experience, the titular character underwent a radical self-invention after making a pact with—who would have guessed it—no less than God. This was an almost anti-Faustian tale, a fine complement to the novel that succeeded it.

But "Matraga is not Matraga, or anything", announced the first sentence of the story.

Matraga is Estêves. Augusto Estêves, the son of Colonel Afonsão Estêves, of Pindaíbas and Saco-da-Embira. Or Mr. Augusto, Nhô Augusto—the man—on that evening of a novena, at an auction behind the church in the village of Our-Lady-of-Sorrows-of-the-Creek-of-Muricí.

In the rest of the story, the name "Matraga" was no longer mentioned, a conspicuous absence that says something about the validity of names as determinant of a person's identity. Aren't the various salutations and configurations of the names (as Estêves, as Nhô Augusto, as Augusto Matraga) preconditions for one's changing status in life?

Nhô Augusto was a rich, patrician and cruel hacendado about to fall on hard times due to his wanton lifestyle and mismanagement of assets. He was as evil as he was impulsive: he treated people like animals and was himself described like an animal—"hard, rough, and unbridled, like a huge beast of the forest"—so evil he was "worse than a poison snake, which whoever sees it is duty-bound to kill." We are squarely in the middle of Guimarães Rosa's territory, in the mêlée of maelstrom, the middle of the whirlwind. It is the territory of "permanent crisis" wherein the dichotomy of good and evil was ever shifting, playing out its many erratic manifestations.

When Augusto's wealth diminished, he was left by those close to him. It was but the beginning of his downfall: "with crushing debts, on the losing side politically, his credit gone, his lands neglected, his ranches mortgaged, and the outlook hopeless, all doors closed, like a blank wall". Dona Dionóra, his wife whom he had estranged with his unfaithfulness and plain badness, ran off with another man. His men, whom he had neglected, deserted him for better pay as henchmen of Major Consilva. The latter was the instrument to his destruction. He was left for dead by his own men at the behest of Major Consilva who later appropriated all his properties and consolidated the power he once enjoyed.

"Matraga" was also a close study of revenge, a feeling associated with savagery and inhumanity. Despite the biblical undertones and apparent seriousness, the story was told like a brooding musical, with characters suddenly breaking into singing solo or in chorus. The prose was epigrammatic and onomatopoeic—"In the distance a dog spelled out one single, meaningless name"—and with its self-questioning tone parodied its own artifice: "This is a made-up story and not something that happened, no indeed"; "And everything happened just like this because it had to, inasmuch as it did." The third person narrator was pedantic, just like Riobaldo, the indefatigable narrator of Grande Sertão.

Crushed and destroyed, Augusto was taken in by a black couple who revived him not only through traditional medicines and procedures but with unceasing prayers and religiosity. Consulting and confessing to a priest, the man was comforted by a single certainty that will dictate the rhythm of his revenge. The priest had given him a powerful code, what for him was a mantra or spell to be whispered in times of trials and temptations, akin to an amulet: words to deal with the blows of fate: "Everyone has his hour and his turn; and yours will come."

With the underlying themes of the use of religion to temper the inherent ugliness in man and the use of violence to enforce the idea of goodness and decency, "Matraga" was a classic case of human conversion and transformation, the spectacular metamorphosis of a sinner's worldview into that of someone "half mad and half saint". This renewal of life, the curbing of animal temper and invocation of goodness in daily life transactions, was sealed under ritual oath.

Nhô Augusto knelt in the middle of the road, opened his arms wide, and swore: "I am going to heaven, I really am, by fair means or foul. And my turn will come. To Heaven I am going, even if I have to use a club."

Nhô Augusto and his adoptive parents went away to live a new life, in a new place. He became true to his promise.

He lived trying to help others. He hoed for himself and for his neighbors out of the warmth of his heart, wishing to share, giving out of love what he possessed.

Even so, the animal instinct was branded in him. He was constantly gnawed by thoughts of consummating his vengeance, tempted every which way to go back to his old evil ways, to secure the power lost to him. Time passed and the charitable life and work he demonstrated did not give him peace of mind. What is the price of penance and penitence? What is the cost of atonement for sins if salvation and liberation call for an itching beyond human comprehension and control?

And it was only then that he realized how he was lashed to his penitence and understood that this business of signing up with religion and trying to snatch his soul from the mouth of the devil was the same as entering a swamp where going forward or backward or to the sides is always hard and always drags you deeper into the mire.

The idyll was broken when a band of jagunços passed the village. Its leader exuded power and violence his old life knew too well.

And the leader—the strongest and tallest of all, with a blue handkerchief rolled around his leather hat, his white teeth filed to sharp points, of commanding gaze and a hoarse voice, but with a pretty, gentle face of a maiden—was the most famous man in the two backlands of the river ... the stump-puller, the earth-shaker, the fire-eater, the boast-stopper, the measure-taker, the question-settler, the no-obstacle-brooker: Mr. Joãozinho Bem-Bem.

The charisma of the jagunço chief certainly contained shades of gallantry that only exemplary individuals possessed (and also shades of characters in his future novel). Joãozinho Bem-Bem was in fact so famous and mythical he was mentioned at least four times in the first half of The Devil to Pay in the Backlands. (Riobaldo called him the fiercest among all jagunços of old. Zé Bebelo wanted to follow his example. He considered the late chief as the only man-jagunço he could respect. Diadorim also made example of the "iron-clad rule of Joãozinho Bem-Bem, who never took a woman but was as brave as they come.")

At first sight, the two men—the repentant convert Nhô Augusto and the famous chieftain Joãozinho Bem-Bem—showed instant liking for each other. For Augusto, Bem-Bem's friendship represented a resurrection of a life of constant violence that once pumped in his lungs with unadulterated oxygen blood. The arrival of the bandits "equipped with an extravagance of arms—carbines, almost new; muzzle-loading pistols of one or two barrels; revolvers of good make; knives, daggers, pigstickers with carved handle, clubs and machetes—and wearing an excess of scapularies around their necks" was enough for him to once again smell the intoxicating blood in the air. He did not hesitate to offer hospitality to the leader and his troop. Joãozinho Bem-Bem awakened the possibility of finally avenging the death sentence pronounced on him by Major Consilva, along with the betrayal of his men and the treachery of his wife.

Joãozinho Bem-Bem saw through Augusto's old instincts, detecting the stain of his past. He liked the hospitable and friendly man so much he even offered him a job in his group, to be part of a band of warriors who will bring order to the whole sertão. What more, he offered him a favor he could exploit to his advantage: "If you need anything, if you have an unpleasant message to send to somebody ... If you have some frisky enemy anywhere, just you give me his name and address."

Both proposals Augusto refused, going against a part of his nature that cried for full-bloodied vengeance. He refused because the time is not yet ripe. Augusto was always, always waiting for the right time, the apocalyptic moment of his hour and his turn.

Harriet de Onís, the co-translator of Grande Sertão, translated the story with a sure touch although she confessed in the book's preface that the task "has not been easy".

I have been in constant communication with the author, and at times I have felt like a sick-bay steward delivering a baby by radioed instructions from a doctor on land. The author, incidentally, is a doctor, though at present attached to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Brazil with the rank of Minister. ... It is abundantly clear that he is aware of all the literary trends and ferments in the world today and employs them in his own way, yet nobody could be more Brazilian.

In spite of the difficulties de Onís encountered, the stories in her rendering (I have read two from the cycle so far, the first and the last) exuded mysticism and grandeur that must be a part of the sense of place that gave birth to them. The odd registers and diction and unusual sentence constructions lent an authority to the text. For her work in Sagarana, she received the PEN Translation Prize in 1967.

"Matraga" had been twice adapted to the big screen, in 1965 and 2011. The more recent adaptation directed by Vinicius Coimbra was awarded Best Fiction Feature by both jury and audience in the Rio International Film Festival (here's the trailer).

Grande Sertão: Veredas Group Read, May 2013

The devil is coming.

– O diabo na rua no meio do redemoinho.*

– The demon in the street, in the middle of the devil wind.

– The devil in the street, in the midst of the dust devil.

Coming in May is a group reading of a Latin American masterpiece from Brazil: Grande Sertao: Veredas by João Guimarães Rosa (translated into English as The Devil to Pay in the Backlands).

The event is hosted by Richard of Caravana de recuerdos, Scott of seraillon, Miguel of St. Orberose, and me. Miguel will read the original Portuguese, Richard the Spanish translation, Scott the French translation, and I the English translation. The group read badge is designed by Scott based on a Portuguese edition of the book.

The novel recounts the violent wars raging in the hinterlands of Brazil. It is narrated by Riobaldo, a jagunço or bandit, to an unnamed interlocutor. Riobaldo candidly shares his thoughts and in the process betrays his philosophical meditations on various existential questions.

Grande Sertão: Veredas is considered by many to be the Great Brazilian Novel of the 20th century, "the Brazilian Ulysses" in Joshua Cohen's list of cultural Ulyssi. Its translation, The Devil to Pay in the Backlands, is said to be a flawed and abridged translation but nonetheless is still cinematic and powerful. (Comparing a fragment from the English version with a retranslation of the same fragment, one can see that the two versions are at least "comparable".)

Everyone is invited to read along with us in any language the book is available in. Readers can post their thoughts on the book on their blog/site on the last week of May. And then we'll discuss!

Regarding the availability of the English translation, used copies command very steep prices from online sellers, so only the libraries can be the viable sources of a copy. If it's not in your nearest library, you can try interlibrary loan, if that's possible.

* The epigraph of the novel already hints at the playful quality of the language. The translation will have to consider the word play: whatever linguistic solution will reflect the way the Portuguese word for devil (diabo or demo) is sandwiched inside – right in the middle of – the word for wind (redemoinho).

– The devil in the street, in the whirl of the whirlwind.

– The demon in the street, in the furnace of firestorm.

Readers:

Richard, Caravana de recuerdos

Miguel, St. Orberose

Scott, seraillon

Caroline, Beauty is a Sleeping Cat
Stu, Winstonsdad's Blog
obooki, Obooki's Obloquy
Emma, Book Around The Corner
Vishy, Vishy's Blog

A new translation of Grande Sertão: Veredas?

Felipe at A Missing Book has an exclusive interview with Earl E. Fitz on what is shaping up to be the next main event in Latin American letters: the translation of the extremely difficult and slippery epic Grande Sertão: Veredas by the Brazilian master João Guimarães Rosa. Here is Fitz on the place of Guimarães Rosa in literature:

With respect to literary history, our pantheon of Western literary giants should, without doubt, include Rosa in it. And it would have already done so had he been more accessible in good, reliable English translations. Perhaps he will yet be. If I were re-writing Western narrative history, I would include Rosa in the tradition of Proust, Mann, and Joyce, arguing that, at his best, as in [Grande Sertao: Veredas], Rosa brings together, into a single, marvelously philosophical and deeply poetic text, all of the different breakthroughs concerning artistic, literary, and intellectual invention that these other great writers have wrought.

In the Americas, one of the still unexplained anomalies is why the original English translation of [Grande Sertao: Veredas], The Devil to Pay in the Backlands (trans. by de Onis and Taylor) did not strike more fire, with the critical establishment and with the general reading public in the United States, when Knopf brought it out in 1963, just as the now famous “Boom” period was gathering force. Regardless of how one feels about the translation itself, the fact that Rosa and [Grande Sertao: Veredas] are all but totally missing from discussions even now in the North American academy about “Latin American” literature is, to my way of thinking, simply astonishing. And unacceptable. To have this great Brazilian masterpiece absent from discussions of literature in the New World is a glaring omission of the most damaging sort, and it needs to be rectified....

(...)

Just recently, my old graduate school cohort and long time friend, Professor Elizabeth Lowe, the Director of the Translation Program at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and I have committed to doing a new English translation of The Devil to Pay in the Backlands. We’ve collaborated on other translation projects, including [Clarice Lispector]’s Agua Viva (The Stream of Life) and her posthumous novel, Um Sopro de Vida (A Breath of Life), and we feel we could offer a useful new English version of this great novel, one that would help gain for it the recognition it so richly deserves. Just as other great texts, like Don Quixote, need to be periodically re-translated so that they can speak to yet another generation of readers, so, too, we feel does Rosa’s epical masterpiece need to be updated and re-introduced to the English speaking world.

I can't help posting a lengthy excerpt. You can read the entire exchange here.

"The Slaughter of the Ponies" (João Guimarães Rosa)

     "I'll bet they're killing our ponies!"
     And the hell of it was, they were. The corral was full up with our mounts and the poor horses were trapped, hardy and blameless as they were; and they, the damned dogs, with no fear either of God or the law in their hearts, outdid themselves to torment and plunder—as if they were tearing our hearts from our bodies—firing into our ponies, to right and left! It made you sick to see such a sight. Bobbing up and down—somehow understanding, without knowing for sure, that the devil had been turned loose in their midst—the horses whirled crazily around and around, galloping in fits and starts. Some of them reared up on their hind legs and pawed the air with their front hoofs, and fell on top of one another, and tumbled in a whirling jumble. And some with their heads held high in the air beat the necks of others, shaking their stiff and prickly manes: they seemed no more than twisted, curved lines! Their whinnying came as it clutched at their hearts: a shrill, brief cry, if neighed out of rage; short also, but deep and hoarse, if neighed out of fear, like the shriek of a wildcat, blasted from flared nostrils. They spun madly about the enclosure, colliding with the stakes as they ran wild, kicking in frenzied welter. What we were seeing was like an infinity of wildly fluttering wings. They raised dust from the very stones! Then they began to fall flat on the ground, their legs widespread, holding up only their jaws or forelocks: their bodies rippled. They began to fall, nearly all of them, and finally all. Those that were slow to die whinnied in pain. From some it was a piercing, snorted groan, almost as if they were speaking. From still others a constrained whine in the teeth, uttered with great difficulty. That whinny was not breathed out as the animal gave up its strength; it was squeezed out as the animal gasped for its final breath.

This long quote comes from the first paragraphs of an excerpt published in The Borzoi Anthology of Latin American Literature, Volume II: The Twentieth Century – from Borges and Paz to Guimarães Rosa and Donoso (1977), edited by Emir Rodríguez Monegal and Thomas Colchie. The excerpt is titled "The Slaughter of the Ponies," one of the "Two Texts" by João Guimarães Rosa included in the anthology; the other is the short story "The Third Bank of the River."

The two texts are prefaced by a long introduction on the life and works of Guimarães Rosa. The introduction mentions near the end that: ' "The Slaughter of the Ponies,' is taken from Grande Sertão and is one of the episodes eliminated from the U.S. translation [emphasis added].' The U.S. translation is The Devil to Pay in the Backlands by James L. Taylor and Harriet de Onís, published by Knopf in 1963.

The text of the "Slaughter of the Ponies" (pp. 683-686 of the anthology) is attributed as taken from "Grande Sertão: Verédas (The Devil to Pay in the Backlands), especially translated by Jack E. Tomlins." It's not clear whether Tomlins was credited for the U.S. translation (a clear mistake) or to the excerpt itself (possibly a mistake too, according to Gregory Rabassa below).

In his memoir If This Be Treason: Translation and Its Dyscontents (2005), Gregory Rabassa sustained the assertion that the text was left out in the U.S. translation:

[Grande Sertão] had already been translated but a lot had been slurred over and a lot had been left out. When Emir Rodríguez Monegal and Thomas Colchie were putting together their Borzoi Anthology of Latin American Literature they both agreed on the chunk of Grande Sertão that would give the best sense of the book as a whole. Since a good part of their anthology made use of extant translations they went to The Devil to Pay in the Backlands and found that their sought-after selection had been one of the many parts left out. Tom Colchie had to do his own translation, which stands out when held against the purported version. [pp. 71-72]

This claim, that the slaughter of the ponies was not included in the Taylor-De Onís translation, turns out to be false. The incident occurs in pages 280-284 of the book. The same opening paragraph reads:

     "Look, they are killing the horses!"
     Damned if they weren't. The corral filled with our good horses, the poor things imprisoned there, all so healthy, they were not to blame, and those dogs, with neither fear of God nor justice in their hearts, were firing right and left into that living mass, to torture and sear our souls! What an appalling sight. Realizing without understanding that the devil was at work, the frantic horses galloped around, rearing and pawing and coming down with their front hoofs on the backs of others, stumbling, colliding, their heads and necks stretched, their manes stiffly flying: they were just a lot of writhing curves! They were whinnying, too—high, brief whinnies of anger, and whinnies of fear, short, hoarse, as when a wildcat snarls through wide-open nostrils. Round and around they went, bumping into the fence, kicking, scattering, panic-stricken. They began falling, sprawled on the ground, spreading their legs, only their jaws or foreheads held upright, trembling. They were falling, nearly all, then all of them. Those slow to die were crying in pain—a high snorting groan, some as if they were talking, others whickering through their teeth, struggling with their last breath, gasping, dying.

This section is indeed one of the most memorable parts of the book and shows why Guimarães Rosa is considered a writer of descriptive power. The incident described runs for a few more paragraphs. In it, Guimarães Rosa evokes at once cruelty and sympathy—disgust at the suffering of animals at the hands of men, and men's genuine compassion for them.

Rabassa's observation that a lot had been left out may be true, but this particular incident at least is not one of them. However, it is clear from the length of the extracts that the Taylor-De Onís translation compresses a lot of the phrases and sentences compared to the earlier quoted Tomlins/Colchie translation. In the penultimate paragraph of the excerpt itself, the Tomlins/Colchie translation contains several sentences that are not present in the Taylor-De Onís translation. Other than that, the whole incident in the U.S. translation corresponds well with the Borzoi anthology excerpt, albeit in shortened form. This indicates that the U.S. translation possibly used a minimalist strategy that affected the lyricism and verbosity in the prose style of Guimarães Rosa. The minimalist prose has its charms but could alter the perception of a writer known for his verbal skills and wordplays.

To further illustrate whether the Tomlins/Colchie translation really stands out when compared to the Taylor-De Onís translation, perhaps it's best to quote the ending of the Borzoi extract and its counterpart to The Devil to Pay in the Backlands:

Tomlins/Colchie translation:

     The flow of time during those days and nights got choked and snagged in confusion: it was all directed toward one final horror. It was a block of time within time. We were trapped inside that house, which had become an easy target. Do you know how it feels to be trapped like that and have no way out? I don't know how many thousands of shots were fired: it was all echoing around my ears. The shots continued dizzily whining and popping and cracking. With walls and plaster still standing around us, the beams and tiles of another man's ancestral home set themselves up between us and them as our only defense. I can tell you—and I say this to you so you'll truly believe it—that old house protected us grudgingly: creaking with complaint, its dark old rooms fumed. As for me, I got to thinking that they were going to level the whole works, all four corners of the whole damn property. But they didn't. They didn't, as you are soon to see. Because what's going to happen is this: you're going to hear the whole story told. . . .


Taylor-De Onís translation:

     Those days and nights went by in sluggish confusion, directed toward one single terrible objective. Time took on a different rhythm. We inhabited a roofed and walled target. Do you know what it is to be holed up like that? I don't know how many thousands of rounds were fired—my ears were filled with the dizzying noise, the constant whining, popping, cracking. The plastered walls, the beams and tiles of the big old house, these were our shield. One could say—and I want you to believe me—that the entire house felt outraged, creaking complaints, and smoldering with rage in its dark corners. As for me, I thought it was just a matter of time before the whole thing would be razed and nothing left but the bare ground.  But it did not happen that way, as you will soon see. Because you are going to hear the entire story.

The Devil to Pay in the Backlands: Translation bedeviled

"Grande Sertão, Veredas by the Brazilian João Guimarães Rosa is the greatest novel of his country – and one of the most extraordinary attempts to render simultaneity of time and space in the modern novel."
– Carlos Fuentes, “Forgotten Treasures: A Symposium”

"One of the greatest books our literature has produced, brutal, tender, cordial, savage, vast as Brazil itself, the image of Brazil drawn by a writer with a consummate mastery of his craft."
– Jorge Amado, “The Place of Guimarães Rosa in Brazilian Literature,” in The Devil to Pay in the Backlands

"His literature is pure stream of consciousness in the Joycean sense: language dances free, unabated, across time and space zones .... As in the novel-as-mural, exemplified by his most memorable opus, The Devil to Pay in the Backlands (in Portuguese, Grande Sertão: Veredas), he believed the challenge in Brazilian literature was “to be inclusive and exclusive, to strive for the universal and the particular.” … [H]is fabulous display of language and his encyclopedic knowledge are neutralized by a Chekhovian attitude to character: Guimarães Rosa turns the speaker into [an] unsanctimonious storyteller, at once map and compass to Brazil."
– Ilan Stavans, Introduction to Masterworks of Latin American Short Fiction: Eight Novellas (ed. Cass Canfield Jr.)

"It’s a damn good book. Some have said it’s the best contemporary Latin American novel of them all, but it’s hard. The American version, The Devil to Pay in the Backlands, is a travesty. Can you imagine such a title!"
– Gregory Rabassa, interview

"[Guimarães] Rosa would have to be rewritten, not translated, unless by the likes of James Joyce."
– Gregory Rabassa, If This Be Treason: Translation and Its Dyscontents


1. About the book

Apropos of the blurbs above, Grande Sertao: Veredas (1956) is a notoriously difficult novel, employing puns, neologisms, and archaic words from the Portuguese. The writer, João Guimarães Rosa (1908-1964), was a diplomat, fluent in many languages, and had a wide experience as a doctor in the countryside of Brazil. The novel is about bandit wars in Brazil, about making a pact with the devil, about leadership politics, about the celebration of the flora and fauna of the land, and about things not seeming what they are.

When The Millions last year asked readers about what out-of-print classics they think should be reprinted by NYRB, I did not hesitate to name The Devil to Pay in the Backlands (1963). This despite the fact that this novel, as translated by James L. Taylor and Harriet de Onís, is generally regarded as a flawed translation. The translators supposedly disregarded the rhythms and linguistic innovations in the original novel, cutting certain scenes in the books, and producing a western landscape instead of a backland country of north Brazil.

In the absence of a new translation, English readers can only consult the one English translation if they want to access the book. Though they can always wait for a retranslation, it will take some time, many years, if at all. Someone commissioned by New Directions (presumably, Gregory Rabassa) was supposed to retranslate it, but later backed out due to the difficulty of the task.


2. Availability

The book is out of print. A used copy in the Amazon (the bookseller jungle) costs some 300 bucks.

By default, we read what we have, what is given us, and what is handed down to us by the translators Taylor and de Onís, who must have wrestled with the Joycean intricacy of the language created by the master novelist. In reading this not-well-received translation one still recognizes the stream of genius, a genius which even if only a fraction of the original, is still a generous flow. For now, it’s the closest we can ever be to an obra maestra.

3. Selected bibliography

All of Guimarães Rosa's English-translated works below, except the latest (The Jaguar and Other Stories) and the story anthologies, are out of print. They've become collectors' items for their literary merit and the beautiful illustrations and binding, usually featuring the drawings of the artist Napoleon Potyguara "Poty" Lazzarotto (1924-1998). (See for example A Journey Round My Skull and A Missing Book.)

Magma, 1934 (poetry, published 1997).

Sagarana, 1946 (English translation by Harriet de Onís: Sagarana: A Cycle of Stories, 1966).

Corpo de baile: sete novelas, 1956 (7 novellas).

Grande sertão: veredas, 1956 (English translation by James L. Taylor and Harriet de Onís: The Devil to Pay in the Backlands, 1963).

Primeiras estórias, 1962 (English translation by Barbara Shelby: The Third Bank of the River and Other Stories, 1968).

Tutaméia: terceiras estórias, 1967 (very short stories & essay-like "prefaces").

Estas estórias, 1969 (short stories).

Ave, palavra, 1970 (miscellaneous).

The Jaguar and Other Stories, 2001, English translation by David Treece.

In selected anthologies:

Oxford Anthology of the Brazilian Short Story, ed. K. David Jackson – contains 7 stories by Guimarães Rosa.

Masterworks of Latin American Short Fiction: Eight Novellas, ed. Cass Canfield Jr. – contains the long story "My Uncle, the Jaguar," trans. Giovanni Pontiero.

The Borzoi Anthology of Latin American Literature, Volume II: The Twentieth Century – from Borges and Paz to Guimarães Rosa and Donoso, eds. Emir Rodríguez Monegal and Thomas Colchie – contains a "chunk" of Grande Sertão, trans. Thomas Colchie.

The Oxford Book of Latin American Short Stories, ed. Roberto González Echevarría – contains 1 story ("The Third Bank of the River"), trans. William L. Grossman.