Matraga revisited: itinerary, destiny, destinerrances

Abstract

Read according to the perception of the narrative voice of zero focalization, “A hora e a vez de Augusto Matraga” presents to the reader the itinerary of the protagonist: a linear journey of suffering, temptations and transformations leading to a final destiny that presumably gathers in harmony the ups and downs of the journey. Aware of this perspective proposed by the narrator, major critics of Guimarães Rosa have perceived the story of Nhô Augusto as a Christian narrative of ascesis in three stages that, although defined in different ways, could be understood in terms of sin, penitence and redemption. This essay intends to explore the dimension of detours and disruptions that disturbs this linear trajectory, compromising it with profound marks of ambiguities and uncertainties. Read in this way, the text presents the reader not only with a destiny, but with what Jacques Derrida calls “destinerrances”: a “destiny” that tries, unsuccessfully, to deny the possibility of those alternative side routes which ultimately challenge the significance of the happy ending of the narrative of ascesis.