88 ratings (3.53 avg)
12 reviews

Gabriel Lando

Add friend

Gabriel’s Bookshelves

to-read‎ (0)

currently-reading‎ (3)

read‎ (87)

did-not-finish‎ (0)

Stats | More…

Gabriel is Currently Reading

Gabriel Lando is currently reading

Art of Freedom: The Life and Climbs of Voytek Kurtyka

by Bernadette McDonald

bookshelves: currently-reading

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

May 14, 2020 08:12PM

Gabriel Lando is currently reading

Grande Sertão: Veredas

by João Guimarães Rosa

bookshelves: currently-reading

Reading for the 2nd time

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Gabriel Lando said: " How did Guimarães Rosa not get a Nobel Prize?

This is an ubiquitous question. Academics all around the world, from Slovenia to Japan, are simply dazzled by the fact that this man, without a doubt the most talented Brazilian writer of all time, did not How did Guimarães Rosa not get a Nobel Prize?

This is an ubiquitous question. Academics all around the world, from Slovenia to Japan, are simply dazzled by the fact that this man, without a doubt the most talented Brazilian writer of all time, did not receive the prize. If you put aside Veredas, you still have at least four of his books that are worth a lifetime of reading. If you include Veredas, which can be seen as the Brazilian Faust, there is simply no excuse: Rosa was one of the best writers in history. Unfortunately, outside academic circles the book is considered hard to read - but this isn't true. In the preface the author himself says: "I write for everyone. I write such that both the peasant and the academic can read me. It is obvious that they will understand my books from different perspectives, but that are all valid".

The book, in its original Portuguese, is perfect. As a translator myself, I understand that prose can be translated with a minimum loss of information between Portuguese and English, but poetry cannot. And don't fool yourself: Veredas is a poetry book. Tremendous effort was put to translate this book to dozens of languages, and some of them (Hungarian, German, Finnish) have a grammar structure where you can probably preserve most of Rosa's neologisms, and others (French, Italian, Romanian, Spanish) are close enough to Portuguese, such that not much is lost. I don't know how the translators were able to work it in English, Swedish, Norwegian, Japanese, etc... I really don't know. I'd advise people to try to read it in its original form as much as I would advise reading Tchekov in Russian or Ulysses in English - unfortunately, not everyone wants to go that way.

In a fact-simile version of this book, you can see that Rosa went page by page, throughout years of work, adding commas, graphic signs and hyphens to selected spots along the text. He also exchanged the order of words a lot: each edition published while he was still alive has some modification: he probably read his own book a hundred times (this is also in parallel with Goethe, who perfected his own Faust throughout his whole life). He did this because he saw writing as a sort of music, and Portuguese (a very musical language) can be made even more musical by changing phonetic emphasis and punctuation. Rosa created words based on their sound (as can be explicitly seen in at least one long story of Sagarana, which is just about that topic), which turns his writing into philosophical music. Veredas should be read because of its music, because of its plot, because of its style, because of its language... Veredas is the best book I've read in my life. ...more "

Mar 21, 2017 12:08PM · see review

Gabriel Lando is currently reading

Higher Education: A Big Wall Manual (Cragmanship)

by Andy Kirkpatrick

bookshelves: currently-reading

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Oct 31, 2018 04:57AM

Gabriel’s Quotes

“Por perigos, que por diante estivessem, eu aumentava os quilates do meu regozijo.”
― Guimarães Rosa, Grande sertão: veredas

0 likes

“I face death, rather than avoid it. I climb anyway. Somehow I manage to handle the comings and goings of partners and loved ones. I pay homage, but I also move on. I don't know about whatever might come with death. Little by little I understand what it is that comes before: the life we are all living through right now. I see how easy it is to die in those beautiful places. I have lost many friends to the loveliness and horror of ice and stone walls. I still cry for them, for myself. The beauty of the high places is tempered by threat and danger. I remember the struggles won and lost up there. Every situation in life has its black side. Every human being on this planet would love to make that side go away. Wishing it away, ignoring the danger and the consequences, they can make believe it no longer exists. I refuse this option.”
― Mark Twight, Kiss or Kill: Confessions of a Serial Climber

tags: climbing, death, mountains

7 likes

“Se amanhã meu dia for, em depois d'amanhã não me vejo.”
― Guimarães Rosa, Grande sertão: veredas

0 likes