Language as a sign of life, and linguistic play as a sign of fecundity are the hallmark of João-Guimarães Rosa's Grande Sertão: Veredas…. Language in Grande Sertão is a bridge between nature, the sertão (backlands), and culture and is used by men, who also constitute a bridge between the two worlds, both to name their artifacts and to imitate the sounds of the natural world. The narrator of the text, Riobaldo, continues the bridge metaphor by living on the edge of the backlands, a citizen both of nature and of culture. The effect of his bridge identity on his discourse is that of deformation, a condition in which we see the narrator mutilating and recreating the language he inherits from his society…. Language in Guimarães Rosa is the "honneur des hommes" of which Valéry speaks, not raw material to be sifted...