["Sagarana," Guimarães Rosa's first book,] marks the beginning of a new direction for Brazilian letters. In search of a valid setting and technique which would escape the constrictions of provincial literature, Guimarães Rosa followed da Cunha in making use of the variegated folklore and magic of the backlands while avoiding at the same time a tiresome exploitation of the picturesque. All the stories in "Sagarana" are open to symbolic interpretation. The title of the book is an indication of the author's method—it is a word of his own invention which combines the Old Norse root saga with the Tupi suffix rana, meaning "in the manner of." In doing so, he proclaimed a new stylistic approach to the tradition-hardened and European-oriented Portuguese.

Guimarães Rosa began the forging of a new language through prodigious linguistic play and the creation of new words. In his work, oral...