Year: 2007
Type: article
Abstract: Within the track literature versus the unconscious, the purpose of this text is to study The Hour and Turn of Augusto Matraga, a short story by Guimarães Rosa, in light of Pindar´s verse: “become what you are”. In fact, in this short story one may recognize a route of singularity – or a process of individuation – in which the character’s violence is vectorized and acquires an ethical direction. However, in the narrator’s words, he is Matraga, “the Man”: “Civilization is constantly being recreated, since in order to become part of human society each person repeats the sacrifice of instinctual satisfaction for the benefit of the community as a whole” (Freud, “Introductory lectures on psychoanalysis”, I, 1915). Based on the possible meanings of the protagonist’s name (“Matraz” = alchemic vase), on the signthat marks him (a triangle inside a circle), and on the importance of his “hour” (his “kairós”) – elements that are not fortuitous, but part of a system of thought – the paperconsiders the possibility of interpreting the change undergone by the character in terms of an alchemic opus: from the depression in which he was found to his “hour”, the golden hour(Aurora) in the fatal fight with Seu Joãozinho Bem-Bem.
Source: Literatura e Sociedade
Author: Adélia Bezerra de Meneses
Institution: Universidade de São Paulo
Language: Portuguese
Subfield: Literature and Literary Theory
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W1997173191