Excerpts from Grand Sertão: Veredas
By João Guimarães Rosa
Translated from the Portuguese by GoogleTM

I.

There is no devil. Neither spirit. I've never seen. Someone ought to see, so it was myself, this your servant. Would tell you ... Well, the devil regulates its black state, the creatures, women, men. Ate: children - I say. Well, not saying "boy - train the devil"? And the uses in plants, the waters, on land, wind ... Manure. ... The devil in the street in the middle of the whirlwind ...

Huh? Huh? Ah. Figuration mine, the worst behind, the certain memories. Unlucky me! I suffer no penalty count ... Best if arrepare: for a ground, and with the same format of branches and leaves, not of the sweet cassava, which is eaten policy, and the bitter cassava, which kills? Now, you've seen a estranhez? The sweet cassava can suddenly turn azangada - reasons I do not know, sometimes it says and replanted in the ground forever, with seedlings followed, manaibas - loathing going on, every so often, takes the venom itself. And, it turns out, the other the mandiocabrava, and also that sometimes can become tame, at random, to be eaten without any harm. And that and? Eh, you've seen, to see the ugliness of hate wrinkled, ugly faces, the faces of a rattlesnake? He watched the pork fat, crude happier every day, can, could, snorting and swallowing for your convenience dirty the whole world? And hawk, crow, some of them the features already represent the accuracy of forward slash, tear and shred the bill, it seems a very sharp bounce by evil desire. Everything. Pies have up races stones, ugly, poisonous - deadly to spoil the water, if they are lying on the bottom of the well, the devil inside them sleep: are the demo. If you know? And the demo - and so well that the meaning of a quicksilver evil - has ordered to follow his path, licensed to champion?! Arre, he mixed in all this.

That it spends, will spend the devil inside us, little by little, and the reasonable suffer. And the joy of love - my compadre Quelemem says. Familia. Really? And, and not e. You do not ache and ache. And everything and not e. .. Almost every serious criminal more fierce, and always very good husband, good son, good father and good friend-of-your-friends! I know of. So that is the later - and God together. I saw lots of clouds.

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FELIPE MARTINEZ | FROM \"GRAND SERTÃO: VEREDAS\" BY JOÃO GUIMARÃES ROSA (I.)

[out of nothing] | 5 | "out of a system declaring nothing out of relevance"

aestas 2011

Beard & Hat, Dog/Cat Derision, Small Apple Tree, The Cohort, M1A1

Diadorim and me both. We gave tours. As well, we differed from others - because not much gunman continued to talk even close friendships: the well they mix and unmixing of chance, but each one and done for you. Two of us together, nothing anyone did not speak. They had the good common sense. Said one, kids, say - could die. Became accustomed to see us Parmenter. That no more reason to curse. And we were talking near the gully - bilayer old farm, where the watercress flower. This lusfus, was darkening. Diadorim lit a little fire, I went for cobs. Spent many moths, through our faces, and coarse beetles were thwarted. He pulled a brisbisa. IANS revinha wind with the smell of some rain around. And Chiim the crickets gather the field into squares. For me, so, so many details, was not able to remembereth me, I'm not a little thing to stop, but the longing remembereth me. What if today. Diadorim his trail put me forever in all those quisquilhas nature. I know how I know. Sorumbavam sound like frogs. Diadorim, seriously hard, so pretty in Relume the coals. Almost we not opened his mouth, but it was a delemar I took to it - the extensive hopeless life. For me, I do not know that dizziness of shame, silence him I was obeying him quiet. Almost no less went like this: we arrived at a place, he told me to sit, I sat down. I do not like to stay standing. Then, after he had sat, in turn. Always by far. I dared not move closer. So to me was that Diadorim sometimes seemed to have a trim mistrust; me, who was the friend! But this occasion, he was there more to come, the half-mao me. And I - not bad for me to consent to any claim of sweet things that are ugly - I forgot everything, unwind in one of contentment, stopped thinking.

Excuse me sir, I know I'm talking too much, side. Slips. And so that old age does. Also, what is worth and what would not be worth? Everything. Mire see: you know why and I regret not purge? I think that does not leave and my good memories. A little light-repentant saints glows in the dark. But I remember everything. It had great occasions in which I could not do evil, even if I wanted. Why? God comes to guide us by a league, then lets go. So, it remains worse than it was before. This life and upside-down, no one can measure their losses and crops. But the tale. Tale to me, to tell you. As well as not understanding me, I wait.

∞

In 1956, João Guimarães Rosa published his masterpiece, Grand Sertão: Veredas, in his native Brazil. In 1963, an English translation was published in the United States as The Devil to Pay in the Backlands. Due to the highly intricate and complex nature of Guimarães Rosa's linguistic ingenuity, as well as to an inexperience with the source language on the part of the English translator, the translation was deemed unsuccessful by Brazilianists, and failed to gain any ground with general readers, even in the midst of the Latin American Boom of the 1960s. The Devil to Pay in the Backlands never saw a second printing and was virtually forgotten for more than fifty years, with not a single English translator able or willing to undertake the challenge.