João Guimarães Rosa

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João Guimarães Rosa

João Guimarães Rosa (born June 27, 1908 in Cordisburgo , Minas Gerais , † November 19, 1967 in Rio de Janeiro ) was a Brazilian writer . His most famous novel Grande Sertão: Veredas is seen by some literary critics as the Brazilian counterpart to Ulysses ( James Joyce ) and Berlin Alexanderplatz ( Alfred Döblin ).

biography

Guimarães Rosa was born as the first of six children to Florduardo Pinto Rosa (nickname "Seu Fulô") and D. Francisca Guimarães Rosa ("Chiquitinha").

As an autodidact , Guimarães Rosa acquired extensive knowledge and numerous languages. He started French when he was seven, as he later recounted in an interview with a cousin:

“I speak: Portuguese , German , French , English , Spanish , Italian , Esperanto , some Russian ; I read: Swedish , Dutch , Latin and Greek (but with the dictionary always next to me); I understand some German dialects; I studied the grammar: Hungarian , Arabic , Sanskrit , Lithuanian , Polish , Tupí , Hebrew , Japanese , Czech , Finnish , Danish ; I've tried several others. But only at the simplest level. And I think that studying the minds and mechanisms of other languages ​​helps a lot to understand your own language more deeply. In general, however, I study because I enjoy it, out of desire and for distraction. "

As a child he came to live with his grandparents in Belo Horizonte , where he finished elementary school. He first attended high school at Santo Antônio College in São João del Rei , but soon returned to Belo Horizonte, where he graduated. In 1925, when he was only 16, he applied to the medical faculty of the University of Minas Gerais .

On June 27, 1930, he married Lígia Cabral Penna, a 16-year-old girl with whom he had two daughters, Vilma and Agnes. In the same year he finished his studies and began to work as a doctor in Itaguara , which at that time belonged to Itauna in Minas Gerais. He stayed there for about two years. It was in this small town that he first came into contact with people from the Sertão , the area that later became a reference point and source of inspiration for his work.

Back in Itaguara, Guimarães Rosa served as a voluntary doctor in the Força Pública during the amendment to the constitution of 1932. In Passa-Quatro , Minas Gerais, he came into contact with the later President Juscelino Kubitschek , who was chief physician at the time. He later became a civil servant. In 1933 he went to Barbacena to work as a doctor in the 9th Battalion ( Oficial Médico do 9º Batalhão de Infantaria ). He spent most of his life as a Brazilian diplomat in Europe and Latin America. From 1938 to 1942 he was Vice Consul in Hamburg, where he met his second wife, Aracy de Carvalho Guimarães Rosa , who was later honored as Righteous Among the Nations for her work in saving Jews . After the break in German-Brazilian relations on August 22, 1942, Guimarães Rosa was briefly interned.

In 1963 he was unanimously elected to the Academia Brasileira de Letras on his second candidacy . He was only able to take his seat in 1967, three days before he died of a heart attack.

His best-known novel is probably the monumental work Grande Sertão , in which, like authors of magical realism, set pieces from European, non-indigenous myths ( Faust , Odysseus ) are assembled. Regarding Guimarães Rosa as part of the Magical Realism trend is therefore not easily possible despite the regionalist background. Critics tend to emphasize the relationship with the “Literatura fantástica” of the countries on the Río de la Plata .

Curt Meyer-Clason took care of all the translations into German .

Selected Works

  • Caçador de camurças, Chronos Kai Anagke, O mistério de Highmore Hall e Makiné (1929)
  • Lava (1936)
  • Sagarana, o Duelo (1946), German Sagarana. Narrative cycle
  • Com o Vaqueiro Mariano (1947)
  • Corpo de Baile (1956), German Corps de ballet. Novel cycle . novel
  • Grande Sertão: Veredas (1956), German Grande Sertão, Roman
  • Primeiras Estórias (1962, filmed under the title A Terceira Margem do Rio )
  • Tutaméia? Terceiras Estórias (1967), German Tutaméia. Third stories
  • Em Memória de João Guimarães Rosa (1968, posthumous )
  • Estas Estórias e Ave, Palavra (1969/1970, posthumous)
  • Meu tio iauaretê , My uncle, the jaguar. narrative
  • Buriti (short story)
  • Backland. A photographic series by Maureen Bisilliat based on texts by João Guimarães Rosa . Texts translated by Curt Meyer-Clason. With an afterword by Edgar Ricardo von Buettner. Edition diá, St. Gallen and Cologne 1987, ISBN 3-905482-29-0 .

literature

  • Ligia Chiappini, Marcel Vejmelka (ed.): World of Sertão / Sertão of the world. Explorations in the work of João Guimarães Rosas , Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-938944-14-1

Web links

proof

  1. ↑ Deutschlandradio Kultur : "Masters of the Language Landscape" , June 27, 2008
  2. ^ Aracy Moebius de Carvalho: Justa entre as nações , The International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation , accessed February 26, 2013
  3. ↑ Orlando Grossegesse : Curt Meyer-Clason. Quick-change artist between Brazil and Germany . In: Tópicos , ISSN  0949-541X , Vol. 49 (2010), Issue 3, pp. 48-49, here p. 49.
  4. ↑ Michael Rössner: Literatura fantástica in Brazil? In: Erna Pfeiffer , Hugo Kubarth (eds.): Canticum Ibericum. Newer Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American literature reflected in interpretation and translation . Vervuert, Frankfurt am Main 1991, pp. 244-256.
  5. ^ Curt Meyer-Clason: The Sertão des João Guimarães Rosa. With bio bibliography. In: Mechtild Strausfeld (ed.): Brazilian literature. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1984, ISBN 3-518-38524-0 , pp. 249-272 and pp. 381-387. (Suhrkamp Taschenbuch. 2024).
personal data
SURNAME Rosa, João Guimarães
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Guimarães Rosa, João; Viator (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Brazilian author and novelist
DATE OF BIRTH June 27, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH Cordisburgo , Minas Gerais
DATE OF DEATH November 19, 1967
Place of death Rio de Janeiro