ABSTRACT
The devil to pay in the backlands, the translation of Grande sertão: veredas into English by Harriet de Onís and Professor James Taylor published in the beginning of the 1960s, is generally considered insufficient, not living up to Guimarães Rosa’s original. The better known part of the story of this translation is presented in papers that use as their main source the letters exchanged between Guimarães Rosa and Harriet de Onís, which are in the JGR collection at the Brazilian Studies Institute (IEB - Instituto de Estudos Brasileiros) at the University of São Paulo - Brazil. Based on papers already published about this subject and on the analysis of letters exchanged between translator Harriet de Onís and the editors at Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., this paper aims at better clarifying some facts that seem to have remained in the background, especially De Onís´s efforts to advocate for her translation and the singularity of João Guimarães Rosa’s text. As a support to the discussion, we resort to Pascale Casanova and Emily Apter and their visions about “World Literature”.
Keywords:
The devil to pay in the backlands: João Guimarães Rosa; World Literature; Harriet de Onís; Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.