Captain Rodrigo Cambará crosses the portal - between literature and history

Abstract

The distinction between history and fiction is blurred. Literature can present fiction narratives as if they were real, bringing real characters for literary fiction. There are similarities between the historical narrative and fictional story since the two speeches are structured the same way and equally they are given meaning. White (1995) establishes a close relationship between historiography, literature and fiction texts. Being possible that a historical figure go to fictional world, the opposite becomes possible as well. It was what happened to the figure of gaucho, a mythological hero who entered the popular imagination, not as a man from yesterday, as it was, shabby and ragged, a horse thief, but an ideal human being that could materialize the necessity of an identity to be constructed, whom we could be proud of. This gaucho’s image was constructed with the help of a literary character; Rodrigo Cambará, who settled in gaucho people’s minds. The Captain lent his identity to gauchos, who chose to print their images over the image of an almost mythological being. From art the life was formed. Literature and nostalgia made the respect that gauchos wanted to themselves. The riograndenses preferred their story told by Erico Verissimo rather than by historians.