Violência, mal radical e livre arbítrio: Guimarães Rosa leitor de Nietzsche

Abstract

Grande Sertão: Veredas (1956), the masterpiece of the Brazilian writer João Guimarães Rosa (1908-1967), contains an articulated and detailed illustration of the various ways in which human violence manifests itself. The thematic of violence in the novel’s economy and in general in the whole production of the author is strongly connected to the theme of evil, which Guimarães Rosa oftentimes personifies in the Devil, with whom the characters of the novel entertain a metaphysical relation. The reconstruction of the author’s German library, recently carried out based on the books that belonged to him, provides interesting data concerning the Brazilian novelist’s readings of Nietzsche’s works. A handwritten note of Guimarães Rosa in the margin of the Human, all too human aphorism 99 is a precious starting point to reconstruct the philosophical background of the phenomenology of violence delivered in the novel. Our contribution intends to show how much the meditation of Nietzsche’s moral doctrine forms an essential theoretical foundation to understand the reflexion on violence, on evil, and on free will contained in Grande Sertão, and more generally in the whole works of Guimarães Rosa.