Recepción en España de "Gran sertón: veredas"

"Recepción en España de Gran sertón: veredas"

by Antonio Maura
Spain, 2006

Antonio Maura, barely a teenager at the time that Ángel Crespo's translation of João Guimarães Rosa's novel introduced the Spanish-speaking parts of the Iberian Peninsula to Gran sertón: veredas back in 1967 (note: that's the original cover from Seix Barral's Biblioteca Formentor pictured above), was hardly the only Spanish reader affected by this publishing industry milestone then or now.  But what can the history of the "Recepción en España de Gran sertón: veredas" ["Reception of Gran sertón: veredas in Spain"] tell us about the translatlantic impact of this lone, isolated translation event?  More than you might expect.  Way more than you might expect, in fact.  As just one example, I'm beginning to suspect that even if all roads don't lead to Rome as far as GS:V literary criticism goes, many of those that don't do lead through Canudos.  Da Cunha's Os Sertões, Guimarães Rosa's Grande Sertão.  What's in a name?

*

A little more context.  Maura, whose work here is actually the transcription of a talk given at a literary conference in Catalonia in 2006 celebrating the 50 year anniversary of the publication of João Guimarães Rosa's GS:V, notes that Ángel Crespo was actually beating the JGR drum in Spain as far back as 1963.  As the director of the Revista de Cultura Brasileña at that time, Crespo (1926-1995) wrote an article in which he claimed that "Guimarães Rosa ha abordado la descripción del sertón y sus habitantes desde un punto de vista tan personal que ha superado, casi diría de un solo plumazo, la tradición de la novela regionalista" ["Guimarães Rosa has tackled the description of the sertão and its inhabitants from a point of view so personal that he has transcended, almost one would say with a single stroke of the pen, the tradition of the regionalist novel"] (108).  Quite a feat.  But in addition to giving the Brazilian novelist credit for essentially having singlehandedly annihilated a tradition, the future GS:V translator also seized the opportunity to make a seemingly judicious if ultimately way off the mark prediction: "el particularísimo lenguaje de Guimarães Rosa, le hace prácticamente intraducible" ["Guimarães Rosa's so extraordinarily idiosyncratic language makes him almost untranslatable"] (10).  From those famous last words, let's fast forward to February and then June of 1967 when Crespo's translation of GS:V came out on Seix Barral and then was almost immediately followed by a special issue of the Revista de Cultura Brasileña dedicated to JGR and his novel.  Maura uses this part of his presentation to discuss the early Spanish reaction to the work.  For those who, like me, are either at least moderately interested in the contours of Spanish-language literary history in general or are maybe just curious about how Latin American authors of the Boom decade finally broke out of the critical and commercial stranglehold previously applied by Spanish peninsular literature critics and fans alike, some of the responses are fascinating.  Critic Julio Miranda, for example, concentrating on the mix of colloquial and learned language on display in the novel, concludes that, "Si hubiera que dar un solo calificativo a esta novela --o poema--, aparte del de genial, yo diría: barroca" ["If I had to come up with a single qualifier for this novel--or poem--other than brilliant, I would say: baroque"].  Although Miranda satisfactorily explains why he would choose this word, it's the comments he makes afterward that are so intriguing from a Spanish critic/Latin American novel point of view (112):

¿No es barroca la mejor literatura americana?  ¿No lo es Carpentier, no lo es Cortázar, Vargas Llosa, no lo fue Vallejo?  Y Guimarães se inmerge en lo americano con plena conciencia de lo que hace, sabiendo, como Riobaldo, que si vende sus recuerdos, "estoy vendiendo también a los otros".  Guimarães Rosa, que recorrió a caballo las tierras del interior de Brasil, como médico.  ¡Como médico precisamente!  Y no venderá a América, no.  El Gran sertón es un pulso sostenido a lo largo de 440 páginas por que nada se escape, por poseer literariamente esa América que necesita encontrarse a sí misma.  Novela del sertón, novela de todo Brasil, novela de toda América.  Novela del hombre humano.  Regionalismo y universalidad en contrapunto riquísimo.

[Isn't the best literature from America baroque?  Isn't Carpentier, isn't Cortázar, Vargas Llosa, wasn't Vallejo?  And Guimarães immerses himself in "the American" with full conscience of what he's doing, knowing, like Riobaldo, that if he sells his memories, "I'm also selling those of the others."  Guimarães Rosa, who traveled through the interior of Brazil on horseback, as a doctor.  As a doctor!  And he won't sell out the Americas, no.  Grande Sertão is a pulse sustained through 440 pages and from which nothing escapes, just to literarily grab hold of that America which needs to find itself.  A novel of the sertão, a novel of all Brazil, a novel of all America.  A novel of the human being.  Regionalism and universality in an exceedingly rich counterpoint.]

Miranda's point about the commonalities shared by the new Latin American literature, while adulatory and hyperbolic and paternalistic all at once, is nonetheless well taken.  For her part, the critic Silvia Moodie focuses on the unusual but "tremendamente realista" ["tremendously realistic"] depiction of the landscape to be found in GS:V--even likening it to Euclides da Cunha's Os Sertões [Backlands: The Canudos: Campaign] in some ways.  Anticipating the point that Maura would make in his 1999 prologue to JGR's novel, though, Moodie argues that Da Cunha's "positivist" portrayal of os sertões (plural) is very different from Guimaraes Rosa's often mystical treatment of the sertão (singular).  In the latter work, "el sertón es también símbolo de vida.  [...]  El sertón tiene una interpretación mística en la novela, donde el ambiente geográfico es llevado al plano filosófico vital.  El sertón está por todas partes, pero principalmente en el alma del yagunzo" ["the sertão is also a symbol of life.  The sertão has a mystical interpretation in the novel, where the geographical environment is transplanted to a vital philosophical plane.  The sertão is everywhere but primarily in the jagunço's soul"] (114).  From here, Maura takes a detour from the critical reception of the work to talk about an article on translation methodologies written by Revista de Cultura Brasileña managing editor Pilar Gómez Bedate.  Following her lead, Maura remarks that "Ángel Crespo era ya entonces un poeta reconocido que se interesaba por la traducción como una prolongación de su trabajo literario.  Es también destacable su versión de la Divina comedia en tercetos encadenados, las de algunas obras de Fernando Pessoa y la de la más significativa poesía brasileña de todos los tiempos" ["Ángel Crespo was already back then a reknowned poet who was interested in translation as an extension of his literary work.  His versions of the Divine Comedy in terza rima, some of Fernando Pessoa's works, and the most important Brazilian poetry of all time are also outstanding"] (115-116).  According to both Gómez Bedate and Maura, Crespo's risky intent--more than just to produce a simple translation like those of Taylor and de Onís in English or Jean-Jacques Villard in French--was an attempt at "transcreación poética" or something akin to a "poetic translation recreation."  Maura understandably explains the concept better than I can: "Es decir, que no nos hallamos sólo ante una traducción, sino ante el esfuerzo  --a veces descomunal y titanico-- de un poeta que trata de recuperar la pujanza de una lengua que, por el uso, ha perdido su brillo, su fogosidad y su vida" ["That is to say that we don't only find ourselves before a translation but before the effort--occasionally colossal and titanic--of a poet who's trying to recover the power of a language which, by use, has lost its sheen, its verve, and its life force"] (116).  Maura then dedicates his next two paragraphs to describing how the Revista de Cultura Brasileña crew presented GS:V as "una obra maestra del lenguaje de talla similar a la de Ulises de Joyce" ["a language masterpiece similar in stature to that of Joyce's Ulysses"] and as a work touted for being rather difficult to decipher--which is also how he first encountered the work in his university days (116-117):

Esta fue también la primera impresión que tuve de este libro del que me hablaron cuando estudiaba en la Universidad del Deusto, en Bilbao.  Estábamos entonces subyugados por la innovación lingüística y léxica de Joyce y de su ex-secretario Beckett, por el denominado nouveau roman, por la magia del sur faulkneriana, por el surrealismo americano de Huidobro o el desgarramiento existencial de César Vallejo.  Ahora nos hablaban al oído de un libro mucho más hondo y misterioso, que se servía de la lengua con gran originalidad e inventiva, pero que era mucho más veraz que un simple juego de palabras al estilo joyceano.  Y así fue como leí por primera vez el Gran sertón: veredas en la versión de Ángel Crespo. 

[This was also the first impression that I had of this book that they were talking to me about when I was studying at the Universidad del Deusto in Bilbao.  We were mesmerized back then by the linguistic and lexical innovations of Joyce and his ex-secretary Beckett, by the so-called nouveau roman, by the Faulknerian magic of the South, by Huidobro's Latin American surrealism, by César Vallejo's crushing existentialism.  Now they were whispering in our ears of a much deeper and much more mysterious book, one that made use of language with great originality and inventiveness but which was much more truthful than a simple Joycean play on words.  And so that was how I read Ángel Crespo's version of Gran sertón: veredas for the first time.]

From this wonderful personal anecdote about his student days and a winning follow-up about how he later rediscovered the novel during a sojourn in Brazil, Maura returns to the topic of GS:V's "propio destino editorial" ["own publishing fate"] in Spain (118).  There's talk about a Galician scholar who wrote a book on the "galleguidad" in JGR's work, including all the Galician "nombres" ["names"], "dichos" ["sayings"], "cantos" ["songs"], and "danzas y costumbres de origen popular" ["popular dances and customs"] said to abound in the Rosian body of work (119).  There's talk about Uruguayan author Cristina Peri Rossi's complaint in a Barcelona journal that, as late as 1982, the Spanish public manifested "una ignorancia salvaje" ["a savage ignorance"] about Brazilian literature.  One of the problems?  "Los editores, por su parte, no se han preocupado por editar a los autores brasileños de una manera sistemática y a la vez selectiva; los pocos que han sido traducidos, lo fueron en virtud de la tarea fantástica de algún traductor que los impuso: tal es el caso de Guimarães Rosa y de Graciliano Ramos" ["The publishers, for their part, haven't bothered to publish the Brazilian authors in a systematic and at the same time a selective way; the few that have been translated were translated by dint of the fantastic piece of work of some translator who demanded them: such is the case with Guimarães Rosa and Graciliano Ramos"] (120).  In siding with Peri Rossi in regard to the accuracy of the complaint about the Spanish "provincianismo cultural" ["cultural provincialism"] of the times, Maura takes pains to clarify that both a few Brazilian classics in general and GS:V in particular eventually found some hardcore fans in Spain against all odds.  José María Guelbenzu, for example, is on record reminding us that "la parte geológica (del libro de Euclides) inspiraría a Juan Benet el memorable comienzo de su Volverás a Región" ["the geological part (of Da Cunha's book) would inspire the memorable beginning of Juan Benet's Return to Región"] (122).  And it's to María Guelbenzu, "uno de los escritores españoles de mayor conocimiento e interés por las grandes narraciones de todos los tiempos" ["one of the Spanish writers with the most profound knowledge of and interest in the great narratives of all time"], that Maura turns to in the end because, "al referirse a los dos sertones, el de Euclides y el de Rosa, concluye que mientras el primero sería comparable con la Ilíada, el segundo sólo podría serlo con la Odisea" ["on referring to the two sertones (i.e. the plural of sertão) of Da Cunha and Rosa, he concludes that while the first one would be comparable to the Iliad, the second of the two could only be comparable to the Odyssey"] (124).  I'd like to give José María Guelbenzu the last word here; the anecdote that follows appears on pages 124-125:

Durante una estancia en São Paulo, un amigo escritor me sugirió la idea de considerar dos libros cumbres de la literature brasileña, Os Sertões, de Euclides da Cunha, y Gran serton: veredas, de João Guimarães Rosa, en paralelo con los dos relatos señeros de la literature clásica griega, la Ilíada y la Odisea.  La comparación es tentadora porque, en realidad, Los sertones es la historia del asedio y destrucción de Canudos ("La Troya de estuco de los jagunzos") y Gran sertón: veredas es un viaje lleno de episodios aventureros por el sertón hasta alcanzar el hogar de retirada.  Otra relación procede: hay entre ambas una diferencia semejante a la que distingue la Ilíada  --en tanto que expresión y representación del cambio que se origina en la religió y la sociedad griega, de lo dionisaco a lo apolíneo--  de la Odisea, que es una auténtica novela de personaje en un espacio mitopoético.

[During a stay in São Paulo, a writer friend suggested to me the idea of considering the two most important works of Brazilian literature, Euclides da Cunha's Os Sertões and João Guimarães Rosa's Grande Sertão: Veredas, in parallel with the two unequalled tales of classic Greek literature, the Iliad and the Odyssey.  The comparison is tempting because, in reality, Os Sertões is the story of the siege and destruction of Canudos ("The mud hut Troy of the jagunços") and Grande sertão: veredas is a journey through the sertão full of adventurous episodes until reaching the hearth that is home.  Another relationship is fitting: there is between both works a difference similar to that which distinguishes the Iliad--an expression and representation of the change that originates in Greek religion and society from the Dionysian to the Apollonian--from the Odyssey, which is an authentic character-driven novel in a mythopoetic space.]

Source

Maura, Antonio.  "Recepción en España de Gran sertón: veredas."

Revista de Cultura Brasileña, 2007, 108-125.

"Prólogo" to "Gran Sertón: Veredas"

"Prólogo" to Gran Sertón: Veredas

by Antonio Maura
Spain, 1999

To help situate João Guimarães Rosa's GS:V in its national and international (or at least transatlantic) contexts, I thought it might be useful to turn to Spanish academic/critic/fellow of the Brazilian Academy of Literature Antonio Maura, whose 1999 prologue to the Spanish translation of the novel and whose 2006 study "Recepción en España de Gran serton: veredas" ["Reception of Grande Sertão: Veredas in Spain"] have both been quite eye-opening for me.  In any event, tonight I'll begin with a quick rundown of his short but action-packed seven-page "Prólogo" to GS:V before possibly moving on to his slightly longer "Reception" article later.  Maura begins by noting that Brazilian writers of Guimarães Rosa's generation were heir to two competing traditions or what he calls two "tendencias literario-ideológicas" ["ideological/literary tendencies"]: Brazilian modernism on the one hand, which was interested in reflecting on language and the identity of the nation, and the regionalist novel on the other hand, which was interested in the denunciation of social problems through literature.  According to Maura,  GS:V is a synthesis of and improvement upon the two models although the impact of forerunners like Mário de Andrades' Macunaíma (modernist) and Graciliano Ramos' Vidas secas (regionalist) helps explain why JGR's readers find themselves in the presence of "una novela de características regionalistas y ante la obra de un autor que indaga en las raíces y en la estructura del portugués de forma semejante a como Joyce o Faulkner hicieron en la lengua inglesa" ["a novel of regionalist characteristics and before the work of an author who investigates the roots and the structure of Portuguese in a similar way to what Joyce or Faulkner did in the English language"] (7-8).  So far so good.  What really differentiates Guimarães Rosa from his Brazilian predecessors, though?  One thing is his insistence on the primacy of language, as evidenced from this tellingly wonky interview quote from the novelist: "El bienestar del hombre depende del descubrimiento del suero contra la varicela o la mordedura de la serpiente venonosa, pero también de que devuelva a la palabra su sentido original: meditando sobre la palabra, el hombre se descubre a sí mismo" ["Man's well-being depends on the discovery of the chickenpox vaccine or the anti-venom for poisonous snakebites but also on restoring to the word its original meaning: meditating on the word, man discovers himself"] (9).  Depending on how kindly disposed you are to this sort of thing,  the one-time traveling country doctor Guimarães Rosa's pronouncement may seem odd, philosophical, pretentious, or all of the above.  Yet the critic Maura goes on to show how JGR's apparently authentic uneasiness about the double-edged sword that is the word manifests itself in the very names of the characters of his novel.  The jagunço villain Hermógenes, for example, "llevaría en su nombre el haber sido generado por Hermes y, al igual que Autólico, Mirtilo, Pan o Hermafrodita, hijos de este dios, mostraría una ambigüedad entre lo animal y lo humano, lo masculino y lo femenino, lo moral y lo inmoral.  Hermógenes sería, en consecuencia, la representación de la astucia, de la traición y, por tanto, del mal" ["would bear in his name that of having been engendered by Hermes and, just like Autolycus, Myrtilus, Pan or Hermaphroditus, the children of this god, would demonstrate an ambiguity between the animal and the human, the masculine and the feminine, morality and immorality.  Hermógenes would be, accordingly, the representation of cunning, of betrayal, and, therefore, of evil"] (10).  All interesting enough, you say, but so what?  Maura's two-part reply is ingenious.  First he declares that "estos juegos de palabras, de significados, de polisemias invitan a una interpretación simbólica del libro que, además de como un relato de las banderías sertaneras o como la confesión de un ser humano, puede leerse como un discurso hermético --volvemos a Hermes-- semejante a los textos cabalísticos medievales" ["these plays on words, on meanings, on polysemes invite a symbolic interpretation of the book which, in addition to being a tale about the sertão factions or being the confession of a human being, can be read as a hermetic discourse--Hermes yet again--similar to medieval kabbalistic texts"].  Then he boldly submits that, in this respect, "el largo monólogo de Riobaldo podría dividirse, como una sínfonia, en siete movimientos temáticos de aproximadamente ochenta páginas cada uno, a excepción del cuarto, que actúa como paréntesis narrativo entre los dos bloques que suponen los tres primeros y los tres últimos tiempos" ["Riobaldo's long monologue could be divided, like a symphony, into seven thematic movements of approximately eighty pages each, with the exception of the fourth one, which acts as a narrative parenthesis in between the two blocks comprising the first three and the last three time frames"] (10).  Although I'd probably have to read GS:V another time or two before being able to put Maura's seven division breaks to the test (he provides descriptions which I'm choosing to leave out here for reasons of space), suffice it to say that this first-time reader of the novel was tickled with where the Spaniard went next.  I hope you'll pardon the extended paragraph, but it's just too juicy for me to chop up or otherwise abbreviate (11-12):

No es necesario recordar la importancia y el significado que tiene el número siete en el judaísmo primitivo y en la cábala medieval.  En Gran Serton: Veredas el número siete viene asociado al tres o número de la Trinidad.  En esta misma línea de razonamiento vemos que el vocablo nonada, con el que comienza la novela, puede expresar tanto una nadería, una bagatela, como ser el término del que el Maestro Eckhart se sirve en sus sermones para expresar el ámbito sagrado en el que el alma humana pierde su raíz de criatura para hacerse uno con la realidad de Dios.  Si a esto añadimos el signo del infinito con el que concluye la obra, podremos hacernos una idea del propósito del autor.  Pero no sólo encontramos en Gran Sertón: Veredas ideas y conceptos del dominico alemán o de la cábala medieval, sino también de la Divina Comedia.  Son numerosas las referencias al infierno o al paraíso en esta novela que pretende servir también de iniciación a una sabiduría más alta, a un conocimiento del ser humano en todos sus órdenes significativos.  ¿No es acaso Riobaldo, como Dante en la Comedia, un alterego de su autor, convertido en personaje literario, y el libro, el relato de un viaje por los paisajes del infierno y del paraíso a la búsqueda de una razón universal?  Y por lo que se refiere a la crónica de un viaje, tampoco podemos dejar de mencionar el primer gran relato de viajes de la historia literaria occidental: La Odisea, poema que describe la travesía maritima de Ulises, quien, al igual que Riobaldo  --como advertirá el lector--, es protegido por Atenea, la diosa guerrera y virgen nacida de la cabeza de su padre.  También Riobaldo, como Fausto, hará un pacto con el diablo y, como Don Quijote, cabalgará por los espacios desérticos en la confusión de su locura, iluminado tenuemente por un ideal femenino que no logrará encarnar en ninguna mujer viva.

[It's unnecessary to evoke the importance and the significance that the number seven has in early Judaism and in the medieval Kabbalah.  In Gran Sertón: Veredas, the number seven comes associated with the number three or the number of the Trinity.  In this same line of reasoning we see that the word nonada, with which the novel commences, can signify a small thing, a mere trifle, just as much as being the term which Meister Eckhart makes use of in his sermons to express the sacred space in which the human soul loses its root being in order to become one with the reality of God.  If to this we add the infinity sign with which the work closes, we'll be able to give ourselves an idea of the author's aims.  But we don't only find ideas and concepts from the German Dominican or the medieval Kabbalah in Gran Sertón: Veredas but also ideas and concepts from the Divine Comedy.  The references to heaven and hell are numerous in this novel, which also tries to serve as an initiation to a higher plane of wisdom, an understanding of the human being in all his significant orders.  Isn't Riobaldo perhaps, like Dante in the Comedy, an alter ego of his author converted into a literary character, and the book an account of the journey through the landscapes of hell and paradise in search of a universal reason?  And as regards the chronicle of a voyage, neither can we forget to mention the first great travel account in western literary history: the Odyssey, a poem which describes the maritime voyage of Ulysses, who, just like Riobaldo--as the reader will notice--is protected by Athena, the war goddess and virgin born from out of her father's head.  Also, Riobaldo like Faust will make a pact with the devil and like Don Quixote will ride through the desert spaces in the confusion of his madness, tenuously illuminated by a feminine ideal that won't successfully be embodied by any living woman.]

Man, that's some good stuff there from Maura.  Maybe I should save his reception article for some other time and end this GS:V cycle on a contextual high note that would be tough for me to replicate anyway.  Or maybe I could share a little about that Guimarães Rosa-centric piece on the contemporary Brazilian novel written by an Uruguayan character from Borges' El aleph.  That might provide some conceptual Lat Am fun in the sun, too. 

Source

Antonio Maura's "Prólogo" to JGR's novel can be found on pages 7 (lucky) through 13 (unlucky) of the Ángel Crespo-translated Gran Sertón: Veredas (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1999).  The Antonio Maura photo above, attributed to EFE, accompanies this 2011 write-up on Maura from El Mundo.