A song of exile in “‘Cara-de-Bronze’”

Abstract

Part of Corpo de baile, "‘Cara-de-Bronze’" is a singular text in Guimarães Rosa's oeuvre. In it, the author's stylistic boldness reaches a high level of elaboration, both in the mixture of literary genres, references, intertexts, and paratextual resources, and in the unrevealed action that drives the plot, with enigmas that instigate a game of riddles with the reader. It is one of Guimarães Rosa's few narratives whose plot unfolds, partially, outside the boundaries of North and Northwest of Minas Gerais and surrounding areas. Using toponymic and other indications, this article seeks to identify the route taken by Grivo to fulfill the request of the farmer Cara-de-Bronze, suggesting that this journey constitutes a rhapsody to cerrado, the Brazilian savanna, due the number of references to the nature of this biome, which crosses several Brazilian states. This article also presents words elevated to the status of symbols in Rosa's literature, such as the buriti palm and the term querência, which allows for an analysis of the title character's condition as an exiled person. Finally, a parallel is drawn with the poet Antônio Gonçalves Dias and his "Canção do exílio".