Augusto Matraga, the Divine Warrior.
MARCELO GUIMARÃES LIMA CADERNOS DO CEPAOS ISSN 2447-889X Papéis Avulsos / Occasional Papers Julho / July, 2025 Centro de Estudos e Pesquisas Armando de Oliveira Souza, S.Paulo, Brasil www.cepaos.org “Matraga is not Matraga. Matraga is nothing” is the opening of Guimarães Rosa´s celebrated short story “A Hora e Vez de Augusto Matraga” (1946) (The Time and the Turn of Augusto Matraga), a type of novella according to critics, a “short novel” in its structure and a great literary accomplishment in quality and concision. We know, from the title, that the story is about one named Augusto Matraga, about his “time and his turn”. And yet, the opening sentence apparently denies what the title affirms: there is no Matraga, Matraga is “nothing”, that is, it is just a flatus vocis, a mere name. Or simply, Matraga is a fictional character, not a real individual, and, in this case, the story starts by calling attention to its own fictional status, its “unreality”. Matraga is “...
