The writer João Guimarães Rosa was born in Cordisburgo (MG) and initially graduated in Medicine, even working in Barbacena. However, after finding himself caught up in the conflicts of the Constitutionalist Revolution of 1932, he heeded the advice to enter diplomacy in search of a quieter life, being posted to Hamburg, Nazi Germany, during theWorld War II.
This story is one of many that make up the book “John Guimarães Rosa"Biography," by journalist Leonêncio Nossa, who spent 20 years investigating the writer's life. "He is a doctor who has difficulty treating patients, then goes into diplomacy thinking he will have the conditions, he will have time to write his stories, but history is catching up with him," he tellsText: Good Living Conversation.
In German soil, Rosa witnessed the war and the persecution of Jews firsthand, documenting everything in a personal diary he never wanted to be published in his lifetime and that remains guarded to this day. "There's a sad scene, yet at the same time, a certain beauty, when he goes to a small city park and finds a sign stating that Jewish children were prohibited from being there. This left him bitter. In his daily life, in conversations with friends, at gatherings, he would show repulsion towards the Nazi regime. He would be considered an adversary of Hitler by the Nazi police," she reports.
One of the significant revelations brought by the biographer's research is the deep African ancestry in Guimarães Rosa's lineage, specifically through his great-grandmother Graciana. "We need to look at certain writings that have been around for so long through the eyes of our time. I believe this is true regarding Guimarães Rosa's work. He is a critically acclaimed figure with a very extensive bibliography, perhaps the most studied writer of the 20th century, but this African ancestry in his life and, consequently, in his work, will not be evident in the criticism, but it is very present in his work," he emphasizes. We cite as an example the short story "The Time and Place of Augusto Matraga," where he makes it clear that Augusto is related to João Lomba. "Lomba is the family of Guimarães Rosa's great-grandmother, who was possibly enslaved and will enter Guimarães' life, perhaps through violence or love, but she will," he reveals.
Your maternal grandfather, Luiz, who was born as an illegitimate son of Graciana with a young farmer, played a decisive role in shaping the future writer, as he was responsible for taking the grandson to study in Belo Horizonte. This family legacy, Nossa emphasizes, will appear in his work.
One of them is the character Riobaldo from “Grande Sertão: Veredas”, whom Rosa vividly described as a "mestizo" (mixed-race, brown, or freedman) and as the very embodiment of Brazil in its cauldron of cultures. "In an interview, he clearly stated that Riobaldo is Brazil. And what is Brazil if not this encounter with violence or with love of peoples, of cultures of the most diverse origins, be it from Africa, Europe, or the indigenous, the new originals of Brazil," he summarizes.
According to the biographer, the true strength of Guimarães Rosa lies in his revolutionary ability to transform literature through the orality of the simple people from the country's interior. He believes the Minas Gerais writer had as one of his main hallmarks the placement of the common Brazilian as the protagonist, celebrating his speech and accents, and valuing the way these people express themselves and their place in the world.
"The greatest revolution in a writer's work is in the language he adopts, in the characters he includes in his work," he defines.
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