Guimarães Rosa e o narrador tradicional : um debate à luz das considerações de Walter Benjamin

Abstract

In 1936, Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) published, commissioned by the periodical Orient und Okzident, the essay “O narrador: considerações sobre a obra de Nikolai Leskov”, asserting that the art of storytelling was on the verge of extinction. With the advancement of mass reproduction techniques in art and the rise of information as a form of communication in modernity, what is fundamental to narration in the traditional sense, according to Benjaminian theory, begins to decline: the experience. Already in the post-war period (1939-1945), marked by the end of the orthodox attitudes also in fact of the technical advancement, the literature that defines the moment is divided into two contradictory impulses: realistic continuity and aesthetic renewal promoted by Guimarães Rosa (1908-1967). Considering the new aesthetic features introduced by the writer from Minas Gerais, this work aims to analyze the short stories in the book Primeiras estórias (1962), by the same writer, in order to identify, in the metaphysical backlands world that he composes, the traditional Benjaminian narrator. As a theoretical framework, texts by Candido (1977; 1983; 2002; 2012), Arrigucci Jr. (1994), Coelho (2013), Rónai (2001), Rosa (1994), Gagnebin (1987), and others were used to understand not only Rosa's work but also Benjamin's theory.