The paper inquires upon the reasons for the continual success of Os sertões as a hallowed narrative about the Canudos War and the destiny of Brazil as a nation. The work owes its originality not to the facts it narrates nor to the scientific and anthropological views expressed about such facts, but rather to the pictorial, suggestive, moving way in which they are remembered and made present. The story is described and narrated with the use of imagery and rhetoric. Os sertões constitutes itself as a vividly pictorial and dramatic tour de force, both from the perspective of its composition and of its syntactical structure. Empathy felt by the spectator-narrator sways between unavoidable civilization and Utopian Canudos community, between disapproval, and glorification of the rebellious backlanders, between the acceptance of their elimination and the wish for their becoming immortals at the symbolic level-the work as a whole leading to the formation of a tragic view of history.
Euclides da Cunha; Os sertões; science and literature; pictorialness; dramatization; staging history; tragic view