A hora e vez de Augusto Matraga or “about how someone becomes who he is”

Abstract

Within the track literature versus the unconscious, the purpose of this text is to study The Hour and Turn of Augusto Matraga, a short story by Guimarães Rosa, in light of Pindar´s verse: “become what you are”. In fact, in this short story one may recognize a route of singularity – or a process of individuation – in which the character’s violence is vectorized and acquires an ethical direction. However, in the narrator’s words, he is Matraga, “the Man”: “Civilization is constantly being recreated, since in order to become part of human society each person repeats the sacrifice of instinctual satisfaction for the benefit of the community as a whole” (Freud, “Introductory lectures on psychoanalysis”, I, 1915). Based on the possible meanings of the protagonist’s name (“Matraz” = alchemic vase), on the sign
that marks him (a triangle inside a circle), and on the importance of his “hour” (his “kairós”) – elements that are not fortuitous, but part of a system of thought – the paper
considers the possibility of interpreting the change undergone by the character in terms of an alchemic opus: from the depression in which he was found to his “hour”, the golden hour
(Aurora) in the fatal fight with Seu Joãozinho Bem-Bem.