I agree, brother. I'm brazilian and from Bahia ("baiano"). I already visited Canudos once and I saw a poor city with thousands of thousands of bullet holes in everywhere.
Well, a correction. The "Sertão" is a big area from Brazil, but it has a diverse climate.
Yeah, I guessed you were brazilian due the writers you suggested. Many of them without any internaitonal reckongnition. But well, I was replying to you, but writing to all, sorry if seemed like braziliaxplanation
And well, even in Minas there is a diversity of Sertões, one can feel it in Rose description, as the book moves away from the more desertic north, climb up in the central region and then moves to Goiás things change. The translation always bugged me, it was like Americans thinking all regions from rocky mountains to californa was one and same, in our case, the country actually starts in the North and moves down... They should have tried to sell out Sertom
Well, you explained a good overview about "favelas" (slums), monarchy and sebastianism ("Dom Sebastião and the battle of Ksar el-Kibir").
For foreign members, Dom Sebastião is similar to King Arthur.
But my Province (Bahia) endorced Dom Pedro II and the crowd estimated him a lot. For that, Conselheiro was considered a "King" in tradition of sebatiastianism like Pedro II as well.
My greatfather was monarchist too. Has books on it and those leeches from the remaning Orleans e Bragança family even quote him. An interesting and good novel dealing with the mix up of those themes is Suassuna Pedra do Reino, but I had no idea how his humor and popular language goes translated.
For most people Dom Sebastião can be a key to understand Fernando Pessoa poetry. Some of his poems and personas are emulating sebastianism.
About the title, I imagined a mode to explain these events in a easier mode.
The odd thing was that Guimarães Rosa was a good speaker of english and always took great interest on the translations of his work. I just wonder what he tought about the title himself?
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