A dupla face de um crítico: notas sobre “O homem dos avessos”, de Antonio Candido

Abstract

Taking as a point of departure Antonio Candido's essay "O homem dos avessos", in which the Brazilian literary critic Antonio Candido analyzes the novel  Grande sertão: veredas, by Guimarães Rosa, I intend to point out what I would call the "double navigation" in the essayist's analytical strategy. My purpose is to identify in Candido's essay the same double and ambiguous movement that the critic highlighted in the novel, namely, the oscillation between the steps rooted in realism, heir to the social critical approach of the 1930s, and the inventive and creative flight that singles out both the writer and the critic himself. By selecting remarkable passages in the essay, I seek to examine this double fluctuation as a critical procedure analogous to the theme studied by Candido.