الموضوع: اعظم 100 كتاب في التاريخ: ما سر هذه العظمة؟- دراسة بحثية
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قديم 01-03-2013, 08:48 AM
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by Joao Guimaraes Rosa, Brazil, (1880-1967)
Grande Sertão: Veredas (Portuguese for "Great Backlands: Tracks"; English translation: The Devil to Pay in the Backlands) is a novel published in 1956 by the Brazilian writer João Guimarães Rosa.
The original title refers to the veredas - small paths of wetlands usually located at higher altitudes characterized by the presence of grasses and buritizais, groups of the buriti palm-tree (Mauritia flexuosa),[1] that criss-cross the Sertão region in northern Minas Gerais, Southeast Brazil - as a labyrinthine net where an outsider can easily get lost, and where there is no single way to a certain place, since all paths interconnect in such a way that any road can lead anywhere. The English title refers to a later episode in the book involving an attempt to make a deal with the devil. Most of the book's spirit is however lost in translation, as the Portuguese original is written in a register that is both archaic and colloquial, making it a very difficult book to translate. The combination of its size, linguistic oddness and polemic themes caused a shock when it was published, but now it is considered one of the most important novels of South American literature. In a 2002 poll of 100 noted writers conducted by Norwegian Book Clubs, the book was named among the top 100 books of all time.[2]
Grande Sertão: Veredas is the complex story of Riobaldo, a former jagunço (mercenary or bandit) of the poor and steppe-like inland of the Rio São Francisco, known as Sertão, of the state of Minas Gerais in the dawn of 20th century. Now an old man and a rancher, Riobaldo tells his long story to an anonymous and silent listener coming from the city.
Riobaldo is born into a middle-class family and, unlike most of his contemporaries, receives an education. This enables him to begin his career as a tutor to a prominent local rancher, Ze Bebelo, and he watches as Ze Bebelo raises an army of his own jagunços to stamp out several of the local bandit gangs. Instead, for reasons that are never fully clear—apparently a desire for adventure—he disappears from the ranch and defects to the side of the bandits under the leadership of Joca Ramiro. Due to his excellent aim, Riobaldo becomes a valued member of the band and begins to rise in stature. In the course of the events Riobaldo gets acquainted with Diadorim, who we later find out is someone from his past who used the name, "Reinaldo". Diadorim is a young, pleasant and ambivalent fellow jagunço. The two start a profound and subtly homoerotic friendship. Throughout the book it is hinted that Diadorim is Joca Ramiro's nephew or illegitimate son.
Ramiro's men defeat and capture Ze Bebelo, but after a short trial, Bebelo is released. The war is temporarily over, but news later comes that two of Ramiro's lieutenants, Ricardão and Hermogenes, have betrayed and murdered him. As a result, the victorious army splits in two, Riobaldo staying with the current leader, Medeiro Vaz. When Vaz dies of illness, Ze Bebelo returns from exile and takes ownership of the band (this is actually where the book begins; the previous part is told in a very lengthy retrospective). They survive a lengthy siege by Hermogenes' men, but Ze Bebelo loses the taste for fighting, and the band is idled for nearly a month in a plague-ridden village. When this happens, Riobaldo mounts a challenge and takes command of the band, sending Ze Bebelo away.
Riobaldo, who has mused on the nature of the devil intermittently since the beginning of the book, tries to make a pact with the devil. He goes to a crossroads at midnight, but is uncertain as to whether the deal has been made or not, and he remains unsure for the rest of the story. He leads his band across a hostile desert and successfully ambushes and destroys Ricardão's men and kills Ricardão. He then moves against Hermogenes but is surprised; with difficulty and heavy casualties, his army defeats Hermogenes. The climax of the book is a knife-fight between the two opposing armies. In the fight, Diadorim kills Hermogenes, but is in turn killed.
When Diadorim's body is washed, Riobaldo discovers that Diadorim is in fact a woman, and the mystery of their love is cleared up. Riobaldo resigns command of the jagunços and settles down to a more conventional life.
The book is written in one long section, with no section or chapter breaks.
==
∞

The question has been raised: Why hasn’t The Devil to Pay in the Backlands, the first and only English translation of Grande Sertão: Veredas, been republished? And to be quite honest, it was with this question that AMB began. As someone who can only read in English, naturally, I asked as I read the novel for the first time: why haven’t more people read this? To me it didn’t make any sense. The Devil to Pay in the Backlands was magnificent, and no one cared. Once I looked into the matter, I found that most every English-only reader who reads the book asks the same. Then I learned that the general consensus among a great deal of Portuguese-English readers is that the English translation is, among other things, a joke, blasphemy, a cowboy story.
Here’s an example of what the conversation looks like on the internet: Gnooks.
∞

As we learn from Piers Armstrong in his essay, “Guimarães Rosa in Translation: scrittore, editore, traduttore, traditore,”[1] Guimarães Rosa maintained a close, working relationship with his English Translator, Harriet de Onís, as was the case with all of his translators (English, German, Spanish, French & Italian), and acted as literary edifier to each, instigating a spirit of rivalry amongst them when necessary to meet deadlines, or to ensure maximum effort be given to the endeavor of translation. We learn that Guimarães Rosa was less an idealist and more a pragmatist “willing to make aesthetic compromises” to see that the translation was completed in his lifetime; and, more importantly, we learn how Guimarães Rosa believed there to be a higher metaphysical meaning to Grande Sertão: Veredas, which could be conveyed with other words (from other languages) without necessarily translating the original Portuguese word for word.
Armstrong quotes the following from one of Guimarães Rosa’s letters to his German translator, Curt Meyer-Clason, which I’ve translated (very roughly) for the general comprehension of the English Reader:
“Of course, even I recognize that much of the ‘daring’ expression stands to be lost in any translation. Most importantly, in the book, is the indeed essential, the content. To attempt to reproduce everything, everything, tone for tone, spark for spark, blow by blow, the sertanejo monologue exacerbated, would be a massive undertaking, a work of arduous recreation, costly, reckless & random. I know neither the publisher, nor the translator, nor the author, [we,] can take such a risk (69-70).”
Understanding that Guimarães Rosa is, to a certain extent, as responsible for the final product in English as Onís, the argument could be made (pale though the English translation may to the original): The Devil to Pay in the Backlands is the author-approved translation—subpar, comparatively, but nothing to scoff at when you can’t read Portuguese.
Of the negative criticism The Devil to Pay in the Backlands receives even till this day, Armstrong says the following under the section of his essay “The Strategies of the Translators”:
“Critics hostile to the North American version, which was executed by highly qualified professionals, should understand that its nature was due to a strategy and not simply to incompetence. The strategy was to minimize foreignness and culturally transpose the material into a context recognizable and familiar to the reader in the target culture. Such a strategy may betray the dignity of high art, which effectively presupposes a pre-requiste familiarity with certain currents within alien cultures through the privilege of education. It is still a legitimate strategy and an arduous stylistic exercise (74).”
I note these passages because I believe they shed a great deal of light on our subject; I don’t intend to suggest we settle for the 1963 translation (because even Guimarães Rosa had his opinion:
“The American book is filled with flaws & still deeper alterations, impairments, omissions and cuts. Just compare it with the original on any page.”[2]).
I only aim to clarify that perhaps the best people, willing & able for the job at the time, carried out Knopf’s translation, and if anything, I wish to remind the reader that David Treece’s translations of The Jaguar & Other Stories, along with the stylistic rendering demonstrated by Charles Perrone, stand as two fine examples of what brilliant potential still exists for Grande Sertão: Veredas—some future, yet unforseen translation, which will undoubtedly exceed far beyond what Guimarães Rosa was willing to settle for back in the sixties, as well as beyond what he could have ever imagined possible from the English language, especially when we consider what Piers Armstrong mentions in his essay about how “within the Rosean repertoire, Grande Sertão: Veredas is comparatively translatable (65).”
∞

I’ve just begun to delve into the work of Piers Armstrong, Professor of the Department of Modern Languages at CalState Los Angeles. He’s written a great deal regarding Guimarães Rosa in recent years, and I’m sure anyone who wishes to form an opinion of the 1963 English translation should undoubtedly read him first.
∞

“Guimarães Rosa in Translation: scrittore, editore, traduttore, traditore,” is the essay which has served as my primary source for this post, and which is divided into the following sections: