Grande Sertão: Veredas

“I speak with twisted words. I narrate my life, which I did not understand. You are a very clever man, of learning and good sense. But don't get impatient, don't expect rain during the month of August. I'll soon tell you, I'm coming to the subject that you are waiting for. Did the Evil One exist ?"

“I speak with twisted words. I narrate my life, which I did not understand. You are a very clever man, of learning and good sense. But don't get impatient, don't expect rain during the month of August. I'll soon tell you, I'm coming to the subject that you are waiting for. Did the Evil One exist ?"

"These things all happened later. I have got ahead of myself in my story. You will please excuse this bad habit of mine. It is ignorance. I hardly ever get to talk with anyone from the outside. I don't know how to tell things straight. I learned a little with my compadre Quelemem; but he wants to hear about the facts in the case, the inner meanings, the undertones. Now, on this day of ours together, with you listening to me so attentively, I am beginning to learn to tell things straight."

"I believe all my own lies."

“You can laugh, sir : your laughter shows wisdom. I know. But I want you to think my crazy words over."

“The worst things cannot be kept out by closing doors."

"So, it would seem that those over there-the Judases -were not all mad dogs but some, like ourselves, were merely jagunas working at their trade. Looking at it in another way : were we now, to avenge the killing of Joca Ramiro, terrible as it was, going to spend our whole time in wars and more wars, dying, killing, five, six, ten at a time, all the bravest men in the sertao?"

“It is hard, sometimes, to be always evil; it takes practice in villainy, experience”

“ The months and the years went by. But Diadorim took me with him, wherever he wished to go. I am sure that Diadorim could tell when I was thinking about Otacilia-he divined it and suffered.”

"There was a moment when I wavered. Was it on that occasion? Or some other? It was once ; I remember. My body longed for Diadorim. I put out my hand to touch him; but as I was about to do so, he looked at me-his eyes stopped me. Diadorim, grave, head held high. I felt a chill. Only his eyes denied me. Did I know what was happening to me? My body longed for his body. Terribly. Gloom surrounded us, as when a downpour threatens. I could bury my head in my arms , and stay that way, like a fool, without coming to any decision. What was it I wanted? I didn't want what was hanging over us, so I fetched an idea from afar. I spoke as in a dream : "Diadorim, haven't you, don't you have a sister, Diadorim ?"

From that moment {publication of Sertao and Corpo de Baile} Guimarães was generally recognized as the greatest Brazilian novelist since Machado de Assis. If Machado radically transformed nineteenth-century narrative, Guimarães succeeded in completely revolutionizing the style and diction of twentieth-century narrative. Moving away from the realistic approach of the regionalists, and rejecting as well some of the more frivolous experiments of the Paulista Group, Guimarães rediscovered the baroque possibilities of the oral tale. In Grande Sertai, the entire narrative unfolds in a single endless monologue by the protagonist, Riobaldo, evoking in minutest detail various pivotal episodes of his youth. He is presumed to be talking to a silent, absorbed listener whom he apparently wishes to persuade or convince, and this need to persuade lends his account a persistent note of dramatic urgency. His narrative, however, is decidedly not realistic in either form or manner; for instead of adopting a conventional, colloquial style of speech and presenting events in a more or less orderly sequence (as would be characteristic, say, of a narrator in regionalist fiction), Riobaldo constantly deforms words to suit his mood or purpose, leaves sentences unfinished, and throughout makes continual detours, and twists and turns backward and forward. His ceaseless telling and retelling of essentially the same story, without ever quite giving away the key to the mystery he is unraveling, exerts a hypnotic effect on his listener (and reader). And the tale he tells has the scope and character of an epic.

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.

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?

Can you sell your soul to the devil?

Can you sell your soul to the devil?