The Cartography of Siruiz's Song

Abstract

The study intends to show how the poetic signs of Siruiz's song, articulated to the spatiotemporal contexts of its four versions in the diegesis, not only map key points of Riobaldo's crossing through the sertao, but also mirror in this map the design of the Canis Major constellation, merging history and myth. Although the original version of the song is offered to the interlocutor as an encrypted foreshadowing of the hero's fate, the other compositions raise doubt as the narrative tuning fork. Thus, the narrator-composer enunciates a dilemma between the confirmation of the message in the jagunco's route and the voluntary action in defining directions which transform the young errant into chief and, finally, into a farmer garrisoned by former jaguncos.