Grande sertão: Veredas como gesto testemunhal e confessional

Abstract

The work presents a interpretation of João Guimarães Rosa novel from 1956 from the point of view of some topoi developed inside the theories of testimony and confession: Riobaldo witnesses some moments of his life before a listener/reader. The violence of "sertão", a consequence of the play between anomie and force, unfolds itself in the anguish derived from the impossible love to Diadorim. As in many other texts with strong "testimonial tenor", the memory fragmentation and its spacialization guide the narrative stream. The work built a "topography of memory" that is analysed as a simulation of a traumatic memory. Oscillating between testimony and confes-sion, the text authorizes a reading of the literary work functioning as the mise en scène of a memory of a catastrophe. The question of the intrinsic relation between law and violence, as much as the spectacle of the body in pain, that we can also read in this novel, are other characteristics of testimonial acts. The essay presents too the falocentric element that is present both in confession and testimony as well as in this book. It is showed that the presentation of all those testimonial and confessional elements inside a sophisticated work of fiction send also a new light over those topoi.