The Short Stories of João Guimarães Rosa

Rio de Janeiro - "Tutaméia" (1967) is one of the best Brazilian short story collections. Even so, in my opinion it does not hold a candle to "Sagarana" (1946) or "The Third Bank of the River and Other Stories" (1962). In his first book, from 1946, João Guimarães Rosa created a kind of story which perfectly blended style, theme and format. Rosa was most at home in the long story, or novelette, the sort of stories found in "Sagarana" (particularly "The Hour and Time of Augusto Matraga") and in "Corps de Ballet,” such a massive tome that it later was to be divided into three parts. A novel like "Grande Sertão: Veredas (The Devil to Pay in the Backlands)" is the exception to the rule. Even if Rosa had lived into his nineties (that is, until 1998) I don't imagine that he would have produced on another book on that scale, with those dimensions.

"Third Bank" is magnificent, superior to "Tutaméia" (published in 1967, the year of the author's death), but certain mannerisms are already evident, a certain excessive synthesis, which, paradoxically, is one of the tics of Baroque style. Baroque style does not simply mean extraordinary in extent, overabundant in terms of growth, a multiplicity of forms, excesses in ornamentation and in mechanisms growing in every possible direction. The Baroque also produces inward growth, with works of modest dimensions into which the author forces himself to cram, to shove, to squeeze as many effects as possible, as if he were trying to win a bet. The first symptoms of this are barely visible in "Third Bank,” and the whole process unfolds triumphantly in "Tutaméia".

The posthumous books ("Hail, Word,” "These Stories") were not, of course, final texts, definitively approved by the author, but they have more in common with "Tutaméia" than with "Sagarana." It seems as if Rosa's literary success and increasing diplomatic commitments after the success of his two books published in 1956 ("Grande Sertão" and "Corps de Ballet") meant that in the 11 remaining years he was not able to dedicate himself to writing to the same degree as he had earlier. He had many stories to tell, and knew that he did not have much time in which to tell them. The second edition of "Corps de Ballet,” presents seven stories in a single volume of 513 pages. "Tutaméia" contains 40 stories and four prefaces in fewer than 200.

The "mannerism" of these late stories, the almost cryptographic style, the increasingly dense syntax, everything gives us a writer who has chosen this telegraphic manner because of the truncated, zigzagging rhythm of his daily life, divided between his work at the office, constant travel, copious correspondence with family and friends, the oversight of the translations of his works into other languages, the social and diplomatic commitments of Itamaraty (the Brazilian diplomatic service). At the peak of his success Rosa must have longingly remembered his days of relative "shadow, silence, and solitude" prior to 1956, which allowed him to publish two such colossal works as "Grande Sertão" e "Corpo de Baile,” his best books, in the same year.

* Translated by Tom Moore, who writes the column Rio Life for BrazilMax.

Books by João Guimarães Rosa on Amazon.com.