Guimarães Rosa’s “Sequência”: the self voyage in the backwoods

Abstract

The present paper aims at reflecting upon the change of the Self in the tale entitled “Sequência”, tenth narrative of Guimarães Rosa’s work Primeiras Estórias. This change happens in the Gerais’ day-to-day life, apparently from a meaningless fact: the flee of a cow and the trip of the character who pursuits it in the backwoods. The changing ‘voyage’ reinserts the man on a new plan which has as its symbolic value the passage of the river and its changes on a sort of interchange of experiences, apprehended along the path. “Sequência” puts the man on a move, thusly in full process of acknowledgement and seek within this geography which projects him to an existential human dimension, where it is philosophically possible to know thyself.