Abstract: The article explores the symbolic correspondences of a character of Guimarães Rosa with the universe of “violeiros” in the São Francisco valley. The text draws attention to the relativity and ambivalence of our categories of thought, exploring the country culture as Rosa constructs in the biography of ex-jagunço Riobaldo and other characters. The article suggests that the backwoods universe embodied in characters from the Rosean novel “is an open field of possibilities”, serving as inspiration for us to glimpse many connections with the ethnographic context The dilemma of the existence or not of the devil, which occupies Riobaldo’s concerns, is comparatively confronted with the symbolic ambivalence about a musical instrument, the viola, associated by the guitarists with both Jesus and the Magi as well as evil and demon himself.
Keywords:
Anthropology and Literature; Grande Sertão: Veredas; Viola and Violeiros; Paradoxes and Antinomies