No meio do redemoinho: ética, violência e modernidade em Grande Sertão Veredas

Abstract

The present work tries to bring out a broad view to the exam of Guimarães Rosa’s novel Grande Sertão: veredas, focusing on the problem of modernization and its implications on the representation of violence on the plot. We propose, as method, a two part analysis: the first, from a horizontal point of view, subtracts its substance from the Brazilian history; the second one, a transversal approach, whose goal is to reveal the point in which, after using the representation of violence as its raw material, the novel tears its particulars aspects – the mise-en-scène of the decay of Brazilian patriarchal forces and the consolidation of social relations mediated by the law in the sertão – and advances towards the core of modern sovereignty – in which the relation between law and violence is fundamental. As a development of this contact, Rosa’s work would gain its universals contours by representing the scarce possibility of justice and redemption faced with a formless and, therefore, monstrous violence. We intend to show how Grande Sertão: veredas uses this notably modern kind of violence as the driving force that leads to, in a first moment, the structuring of the jagunço’s universe upon mythical basis to, in a second moment, deconstruct them tragically, revealing the cycle of violence, attached to guilt and fate, that culminates in an escalade of anguish and in its catastrophic ending. In this way, the prominent relations between Riobaldo and Diadorim would form an arc whose extremities would be occupied by the ‘testimonial tenor’ of Riobaldo’s narrative and by its messianic outcome.