Ler as palavras de João Guimarães Rosa

Today, for the first time, I read a passage from Grande Sertão: Veredas. In Portuguese, I mean. Ergo the paucity of posts: I’ve been taking Portuguese courses at UCSD.We’re nine weeks in. So while my work on the A MISSING BOOK project has not manifested itself here, it continues on each day as I learn the language. And so back to the beginning: I’ve read the words of João Guimarães Rosa. I can say that now! Ilana Gorban of flamingofeather once told me reading a page out of Grande Sertão: Veredas is like running up a hill only to find another hill. I know I don’t know how difficult the path is ahead, but I see it. I set out.

Travessia (Steps)

In the Spirit of

A Missing Book

Let’s do something just for fun, in the spirit of spreading the word:
I have two copies of The Jaguar & Other Stories to give away. Just email amissingbookATgmailDOTcom with your name, mailing address, and as many or as few words as you’d like to include regarding your interest in João Guimarães Rosa. I’ll randomly select two.

Grand Sertão: Veredas [Out of Nothing]

“If the original does not exist for the reader’s sake, how could the translation be understood on the basis of this premise?”
                                                                           Walter Benjamin, The Task of the Translator

Click on the quote above to see three excerpts of Grand Sertão: Veredas, translated from the Portuguese by Google Translator, and recently published in the fifth issue of the LA-based electro-mag, Out of Nothing.

The Task of the Translator

Walter Benjamin

“For what does a literary work ‘say’? What does it communicate? It ‘tells’ very little to those who understand it. Its essential quality is not statement or the imparting of information. Yet any translation which intends to perform a transmitting function cannot transmit anything but information—hence, something inessential. This is the hallmark of bad translations.”[1]

Sagarana

In prototypical form, Sagarana first appeared in 1938 as a one thousand-page manuscript, entitled Contos, submitted to the Premio Humberto de Campos fiction contest by a thirty eight year-old João Guimarães Rosa, under the pseudonym Viator. The manuscript took second place, but even with the interest of critics and publishers piqued, no one could find Viator to offer a publishing deal. Eight years would pass before the manuscript, pared down to half the number of pages and reworked by the author, would reappear for publication, this time titled Sagarana.

Luis Hrass, in the most intimate portrait of João Guimarães Rosa written in English, wrote of the great author’s penchant for the letter S. Almost a vertical infinity symbol, and fluid like the rivers of which he so often wrote, the S for Guimarães Rosa  was fluid and ideal for

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João Guimarães Rosa (June 27, 1908 - November 19, 1967)

In Celebration of João Guimarães Rosa

June 27th will mark the 103rd anniversary of João Guimarães Rosa’s birth. We celebrate ∞

Paths & Spaces of João Guimarães Rosa

David Treece, Translator of The Jaguar & Other Stories, will make his next contribution to Rosean studies in English translation as translator & editor of Paths and Spaces: Regionality and Uni­versality in the work of João Guimarães Rosa, alongside colleagues Ligia Chiappini and Marcel Vejmelka. Originally published in Brazil in 2009 as Espaços e caminhos de João Guimarães Rosa, this collection of academic essays is comprised of papers originally presented at an international symposium held in Berlin, Germany in December 2008.

Paths and Spaces will be the first-ever collection of essays in English dedicated to the work of João Guimarães Rosa. There’s no release date as of yet, but you can be sure to read more about it here, at AMISSINGBOOK.COM, as the time approaches.

I’m marrying Christina (Please Stand By)

Things will be busy over the next few weeks, so posts may be infrequent. Please feel free to search the archives. You may want to subscribe by clicking on the “Subscribe” button below, in which case you will be notified via email whenever I do get to post here next.

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To recap: João Guimarães Rosa is sompletely[1] the Melville-Faulkner-Rulfo-Joyce-Proust-Mann of Brazil. Only few English readers know it. A so-far proven translational impasse, Grande Sertão: Veredas, Guimarães Rosa’s seminal and single novel, was only published in English once, in 1963, and has since been out of print. This website posits that given the absence of Grande Sertão: Veredas from most any English literary discourse outside of (most often) Brazilianist circles, Grande Sertão: Veredas (or João Guimarães Rosa) is a missing book.

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[1] N. Fumero: “I understand you sompletely.”

A Hammock Beneath The Mangoes

A Hammock Beneath The Mangoes, Edited by Thomas Colchie (1991)

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