By Miguel Nenevé and Rose Siepamann of the University of Rondonia, Brazil
IN THIS article, we would like to discuss briefly another ‘bridge’ that links Guyanese to Brazilian and, by extension, to Mozambican literature: It is the oral tradition in literary texts. These texts someway present a counter-discourse to rigid Western constructs of reality, and to the ‘high’ language of the Western World or of the ‘centre’.  So, tales, popular sayings, and proverbs are part of these writings.

Oral tradition is important because it participates in daily education of societies who live far from the centre of decision.  The writers invent, re-invent or recover words and expressions as they convey the traditional values, religious and ethnic knowledge and wisdom of the people.

Guyana is well served by authors who use creative and inventive language in order to dismantle the colonizer ‘truth’. If one pays attention to authors such as Wilson Harris, Edgar Mittelholzer, Jan Carew, among many others, one would realize that these  artists reveal a ‘rebellion’ against  cultural and linguistic loyalty to the centre´s  imposed standards.  They offer, in some ways, representations of the interface between the spoken and the written language, so that their texts help to resurrect mythic figures and forgotten proverbs, perhaps as agents of hope and decolonization.

We would like to briefly illustrate here how  the oral tradition as well as the creation and recreation  language, visible in Guyanese literature, are present in  the works of a Brazilian and a Mozambican writer. We focus our attention on Joao Guimaraes Rosa´s and Mia Couto´s  use of a creative, ‘impure’, and revolutionary language as perceived in the stories,   ‘The Third Bank of the River’ and in ‘The Waters of Time’ respectively .

Both Guimaraes Rosa and Mia Couto reveal very good skills in re-inventing and recreating the Portuguese language so that they make the text very light and funny. In both stories, simple people from the interior of the country get mixed with the river that flows along their lives.  At the end, river and men seem to be the same.

The simple, ‘impure’ and unsophisticated language reveals the close connection between Man and nature at the same time that promotes a recovery of people´s neglected culture. In this way, one can state that the revolutionary language is a way of valorizing people´s simple lives, as well as a way of decolonizing their particular world.

In a lecture in Belo Horizonte in July 2007, Mia Couto affirmed that  “Brazil and Mozambique do not only speak the same language, but feel in a similar way what cannot be spoken in any language.”

Couto, the Mozambican writer, believes that there are many things in common between the two countries, as, for example the kind of ‘saudades’ , or nostalgia for what has happened, or a lamentation for what could have happened. On several occasions, the Mozambican author has acknowledged that Brazilian Literature was very important for him to develop an irreverent way of writing.  Among the Brazilian authors mentioned by Couto as important for his writing is the writer from Minas Gerais, João Guimarães Rosa, author of the famous ‘The Devil in the Backlands’ and many other stories as ‘The Third Bank of the River’.

It is visible for the readers of Portuguese language that both the Brazilian and the Mozambican writers produce a decolonizing literature as they go back to the past, recover popular sayings, old proverbs, hidden myths from the backlands. Surely, one also finds differences between the two authors: While in Guimarães Rosa´s text, the narrative gets denser and heavier as it explores psychological experiences,  Mia Couto´s narrative seems to be more concentrated on the process of creation, or rather re-creation of language.

We chose the stories, ‘A Terceira Margem do Rio (The Third Bank of the River)’ by Rosa, and ‘Nas Águas do Tempo (On the Waters of Time)’ by Couto because they carry the same theme and use similar language. Both texts explore human landscapes and voices unseen and unheard previously. These voices mix themselves and water-down with the images of the river, once the characters search the river in order to dislocate themselves to an interior world, a more intimate and more isolate place. Moreover, both authors use the language as a way of decolonizing their culture, once they revisit the past and restore vigor to the forgotten popular language.

In his work, ‘Decolonizing the Mind’ (1986), Ngugi Wa Thiong´o, remembering Fanon, argues that language is used to colonize, in order to keep away the colonized from the centre where the decisions are taken. Therefore, language works as an instrument to separate the people “who know” from those “who do not know.”

The ‘high’ language will reflect only the history of the high class. In this way, it is also the language which helps to decolonize, to recover, and to rethink values and beliefs so far neglected.  Language, Ngugi affirms, has “a suggestive power well beyond the immediate and lexical meaning.”  In this sense, language is also useful for the purpose of decolonization when the writers revise and rewrite the “unique language and unique truth.”

In Rosa´s ‘The Third Bank of the River  (A Terceira Margem do Rio)’, the reader sees the re-creation and recovering of proverbs and sayings in a forgotten world. Together with the mark of loneliness, in a trip taken alone in search for one´s origins, one sees orality:  What one hears comes from the mouth of the people: “Our father did not say nothing (Nosso pai nada nao dizia).”

On another occasion, his wife says: “…you go, you stay, you never return (Cê vai, ocê fique, você nunca volte! ).”  The orality is also reproduced in the voice of the speaker: “…the river stretched itself large, deep, dumb as always (o rio por aí se estendia grande, fundo, calado que sempre).”

The reader will find many similarities between Guimaraes Rosa´s and Mia Couto´s texts.    On several occasions, in articles and interviews, the author acknowledges that Guimaraes Rosa has influenced his writings.  In the story,  ‘Nas Águas do Tempo (On the waters of Time)’, one sees not only the style, but also the theme as similar to Rosa’s ‘The Third Bank of the River’.

Like Rosa, Couto presents voices that dilute through the running river: “My grandfather, on these days, was taking me downriver.”   Mia Couto also recreates another language within the Portuguese language. The ‘new’ language is culturally remodeled, based on the orality in the custom and in the popular wisdom. “Ele remava devagaroso, somente raspando o remo na correnteza (He rowed slow-slowly, softly touching the water with the row).”

This orality is alive and visible in both authors when they dislocate the words to a different position in the sentence.  Their purpose seems to reinforce the hidden voices of people in a forgotten world. The neologisms also show the cultural and linguistic heritage of a people who live far from the centre. Portuguese words such as  ‘devagarosos’,  ‘agorinha’, ‘desbengalado’, ‘solavanqueava’, ‘ensonada’,  ‘sonecando’, ‘espantável’, and many more, are not used in a high standard language.

As we have argued, besides the oral tradition, the authors  also use many neologisms in the semantic and textual levels. In this way, both Joao Guimaraes Rosa and Mia Couto reflect what Fanon suggests: When the intellectual writes to his people, he or she has to write in order to recover hope, showing that the margins have a lot to weave with the centre.

The neglected,
distorted and almost dead voices appear in the text in order to announce another world. Using a different language, they create means to invert, to contest and deform some of the “true meanings.”  In this sense, both authors show that language is essential for decolonization. The ‘impure language’, the popular sayings, and the old proverbs reveal how people are stuck to the river, to the house, to their backlands.

By naming and renaming their surrounding worlds, the Brazilian and the Mozambican authors suggest that people do not accept the imposition of the Western or the ‘central’ world.

Therefore, like in Guyanese most celebrated writers, in Guimaraes Rosa and Mia Couto, the  interrogation of the oral form, through writing, is a vital aspect of sustaining the tradition and of recovering  neglected or forgotten voices.

To respond to this author, either call him on (592) 226-0065 or send him an email: oraltradition2002@yahoo.com

What’s Happening

•           The Guyana Annual 2010 issue is now available at Guyenterprise Ltd. on Lance Gibbs and Irving Streets, Queenstown.

•           The new closing date for the Ministry of Culture, Youth & Sport literary competition for schools is July 9, 2010. Please contact me for more information. This competition includes three follow-up components, via a writers’ workshop, using entries submitted, performances of shortlisted entries, and a publication of the outstanding works.

* A big THANK YOU to all (family, friends, and organizations) that made My Birthday Literary Lime another satisfying and fulfilling experience in my life.