At the threshold of Tutameia

Abstract

Guimarães Rosa (1968), in the prefaces of Tutameia: third stories (1967), elaborates a type of poetics for literary reading. Based on Arthur Schopenhauer’s thinking concerning the different steps of reading, Rosa turns to the revealing process which results from the uncommon pieces of/in the literary game, which would raise feelings blunted by the everyday life, evoking the power of literature to unweave the garment that webs the cloth of life. This article proposes a debate on literary reading in an entirely different light” (SCHOPENHAUER, [18--?] apud ROSA, 1968, p.1), understood as the possibility to expand “our scarce reasoning autonomy” (ROSA, 1968, p. 156). Apart from Rosa’s irony, the proposal focuses on the paradoxical act of unraveling, grounded on the commonplace and on whatever is unusual and ineffable, crossing the borders of the triviality of routine. In order to establish a connection with Rosa’s provocations, I resort to Roland Barthes’s The Pleasure of the Text (1973) and Aula (1981), in particular, the discussion about the subversive nature of literature. Genette (2009), Passos (2001) and Rowland’s (2009) studies are also part of the theoretical background to understand the function of the paratexts and the analysis of Guimarães Rosa’s work (1968). Finally, this study aims to analyze the creative critical dialogue between the author, the audience and the critics of that period, through the prefaces of Tutameia, resuming Rosa’s bet on the “drunken” enlightenment of literature.