2020 – A Feast of Brazilian Literary Delights Celebrating the birth centenary of CLARICE LISPECTOR (1920-1977), JOÃO CABRAL DE MELO NETO (1920-1999) and JOSÉ MAURO DE VASCONCELOS (1920-1984) #aFeastofBrazilianLiteraryDelights VIRTUAL BRAZILIAN BILINGUAL BOOK CLUB| JOÃO GUIMARAES̃ ROSA| PRIMEIRAS ESTÓRIAS | 11th JUNE 2020, 18.30-21.00 2020 the year of #aFeastofBrazilianLiteraryDelights Primeiras Estórias (1962) by JOAÕ GUIMARAES̃ ROSA (1908-1967) translated as The third bank of the river and other stories (1968) 1 Page ©BRAZILIAN BILINGUAL BOOK CLUB –EMBASSY OF BRAZIL IN LONDON All rights reserved - Creator & Convenor -©Nadia Kerecuk http://londres.itamaraty.gov.br/en-us/book_club.xml 14-16 Cockspur Street London SW11Y 5BL @BrazilEmbassyUK 2020 – A Feast of Brazilian Literary Delights Celebrating the birth centenary of CLARICE LISPECTOR (1920-1977), JOÃO CABRAL DE MELO NETO (1920-1999) and JOSÉ MAURO DE VASCONCELOS (1920-1984) #aFeastofBrazilianLiteraryDelights 21 short stories about the rites of passage and the ages of man, never-ending cycle set in the sertões of Minas Gerais. The translator, Barbara Shelby, made a valiant effort to convey the sense of the quirky contrivances and even advised her US readers to learn Brazilian Portuguese to appreciate João Guimarães Rosa! João Guimarães Rosa began to publish during an effervescent creative period in arts and sciences in Brazil: almost 3 million books of science and literature plus 22 million textbooks were published in 1956 (IBGE data). In Brazil, from north to south and east to west, the mid-twentieth century spawned a huge number of amazing authors of short stories, novels, chronicles, drama, and poetry. João Guimarães Rosa opted for a life as a diplomat, having realised that medicine was not his calling. He applied his story-telling skills and writing fiction became a lifetime activity. However, his literary achievements were not bred in the vacuum. You will not miss the author’s cleverly concocted portmanteau words, using ideas from international auxiliary languages, mostly Brazilian-flavoured, but virtually impossible to render in translation without losing some of the original intention. DETAILS OF AVAILABLE PUBLICATIONS: ENGLISH 1968 - The third bank of the river and other stories translated by Barbara Shelby (1932-2014) published by Alfred A. Knopf, New York ISBN 9780394448404 ASIN B0000CPMN4 Various reprints are available. Free download: https://archive.org/details/thirdbankofriver00rosa PORTUGUESE 1962 - Primeiras Estórias published by Livraria Editora José Olympio, Rio de Janeiro. Various editions and reprints in Portuguese e.g ISBN 10: 8432204544 ISBN 13: 9788432204548 ISBN-10: 8520929788 ISBN-13: 978-8520929780 Free downloads: Various – some of the short stories are available as a separate download, no e-book in Portuguese, also from http://static.recantodasletras.com.br/arquivos/5206036.pdf?1430610030 http://lelivros.love 2 Page ©BRAZILIAN BILINGUAL BOOK CLUB –EMBASSY OF BRAZIL IN LONDON All rights reserved - Creator & Convenor -©Nadia Kerecuk http://londres.itamaraty.gov.br/en-us/book_club.xml 14-16 Cockspur Street London SW11Y 5BL @BrazilEmbassyUK 2020 – A Feast of Brazilian Literary Delights Celebrating the birth centenary of CLARICE LISPECTOR (1920-1977), JOÃO CABRAL DE MELO NETO (1920-1999) and JOSÉ MAURO DE VASCONCELOS (1920-1984) #aFeastofBrazilianLiteraryDelights SHORT HISTORY OF THE BOOK AND TRANSLATIONS The collection of short stories entitled Primeiras Estórias (First Stories), were not actually the first set of short stories published by João Guimarães Rosa. The anthology contains twenty- one loosely assembled short stories framed by a sequence specifically created for the 1962 edition. Eleven of those short stories were published earlier in the daily newspaper O Globo in April 1961: O famigerado, A terceira margem do rio, A Menina de Lá, Sequência, Irmãos Dagobé, As Margens da Alegria, O Cavalo Que Bebia Cerveja, O Inverso Afastamento in the anthology published as Os Cimos, A Benfazeja, Tarantão, Meu Patrão, Soroco, Sua Mãe, Sua filha. Please see table below for translated titles. 3 Page ©BRAZILIAN BILINGUAL BOOK CLUB –EMBASSY OF BRAZIL IN LONDON All rights reserved - Creator & Convenor -©Nadia Kerecuk http://londres.itamaraty.gov.br/en-us/book_club.xml 14-16 Cockspur Street London SW11Y 5BL @BrazilEmbassyUK 2020 – A Feast of Brazilian Literary Delights Celebrating the birth centenary of CLARICE LISPECTOR (1920-1977), JOÃO CABRAL DE MELO NETO (1920-1999) and JOSÉ MAURO DE VASCONCELOS (1920-1984) #aFeastofBrazilianLiteraryDelights The original 1962 anthology was prepared jointly by the author and the publisher José Olympio (1902-1999). It contains an index of the titles of the short stories, followed by a sequence of pictorial ideographic symbols. Some of the symbols appeared scattered on the dustjacket. The short story list accompanied by a set of symbols is printed on front and back flaps of the dust jacket. The illustrations on the front and back dust jacket show the symbol of infinity ∞, which appears in other J. G. Rosa’s writings. The symbols add a possibility of an additional semiotic reading. Like many writers, J. G. Rosa tended to draft sketches and drawings along with his notes for stories. The author worked punctiliously to produce the symbolic illustrations in the graphic design with publisher. Perhaps, a nod to his predecessors such as Raul Pompeia (1863-1895), who illustrated his 1888 novel O Ateneu, and Mário de Andrade (1893-1945) his Macunaíma (1928), the latter featuring Brazilian petroglyphs. They are equally reminiscent of cave paintings and diverse writing systems used throughout world since the most remote past. Some of the ideograms echo Brazilian Cordel literature illustrations (chapbooks). Subsequent editions did not include the original dust jacket with its illustrations. One ought to highlight the fact that João Guimarães Rosa belonged to circle of publishers and journalists. He obtained support from them early in his writing career. Those journalistic literary publications became an essential part of circulation of his literary works. He was an accomplished self-publicist and exploited his network of contacts to promote his works. As a younger writer, he also published stories and poems under various pen names. Often his pieces were reprinted in numerous newspapers, journals including a small medical periodical Pulso published by the Sidney Ross Lab (manufacturer of analgesics such as Melhoral and upset stomach relief medicines - Sonrisal and Sal de Frutas Andrews ). In Pulso, he published fifty-five short stories (each a page and half in length) from May 1965 to July 1967, forty of which were assembled for Tutameia - Terceiras Estórias (1967). J. G. Rosa was known to charge publishers to print his articles. Paulo Francis (1930- 1997) told the readers of the magazine Realidade in 1967 that the author charged an exorbitant amount to become a regular contributor to the magazine Senhor. Our book club members will recall that Clarice Lispector published her works in that magazine (See the February 2020 post). His pieces appeared in various places, for example: O Globo, Pulso, Correio da Manhã, O Jornal (Rio de Janeiro), O Cruzeiro, Manchete, Senhor, Letras e Artes (a suplement of A Manhã ), Diário de Minas (Minas Gerais), Folha da Manhã (São Paulo), O Estado de S. Paulo (São Paulo), and Jornal de Letras (Rio de Janeiro). Networking was straightforward for J. G. Rosa. His circle of friends included for example: the literary critics Álvaro Lins (1912-1970), Franklin de Oliveira (1916-2000) and Josué Montello (1917-2006), the publisher Pedro Bloch (1914-2004), the historian and politician José Carlos de Macedo Soares (1883-1968), a journalist Joel Silveira (1918-2007), who served as a WWII correspondent covering the contributions of the Brazilian Expeditionary Force (FEB) in Italy, fellow diplomats, journalists and writers such as Antonio Olinto (1919-2009) and Assis 4 Page ©BRAZILIAN BILINGUAL BOOK CLUB –EMBASSY OF BRAZIL IN LONDON All rights reserved - Creator & Convenor -©Nadia Kerecuk http://londres.itamaraty.gov.br/en-us/book_club.xml 14-16 Cockspur Street London SW11Y 5BL @BrazilEmbassyUK 2020 – A Feast of Brazilian Literary Delights Celebrating the birth centenary of CLARICE LISPECTOR (1920-1977), JOÃO CABRAL DE MELO NETO (1920-1999) and JOSÉ MAURO DE VASCONCELOS (1920-1984) #aFeastofBrazilianLiteraryDelights Chateaubriand (1892-1968) and the diplomat, writer and foreign affairs minister João Neves da Fontoura (1887-1963). The table below shows where the short stories were printed first. It also has the titles which appeared in the first translation by Barbara Shelby. The last column shows six stories which appeared in a more recent translation by David Treece. The numbers to the left of the translated titles indicate the order in which they appear in the respective publications. J. G. Rosa structured the sequence of the short stories in his 1962 Primeiras Estórias featuring the same boy character in the first story, As margens da alegria, and the last, Os Cimos, thus, creating a sort of infinite cycle. The central short story is O espelho and seemingly the author intended to generate a kind of reflection, or echo, with recurrence of the story themes in the two halves of the anthology. However, the English translation by Barbara Shelby does not follow the sequencing of the original except the first, last and middle stories. Primeiras Estórias Original BARBARA SHELBY D. Treece in 1962 publication Translation The Jaguar