The world in motion

Abstract

This study is supposed to be a comment on the analysed text, not a substitute
for it. Without any false modesty, it intends to help the reader (is it not the
function of criticism after all?) to read São Bernardo, by Graciliano Ramos.
That is why it follows the novel so closely, as it was done by the old critics, in
which this work is inspired and, at the same time, aims to surpass. It is not only
– or it is almost never – the factual datum which attracts, sometimes betrays,
the critic’s attention, but rather the movement of the text itself.