As três margens do rio e o vertiginoso fluxo da vida

Abstract

This essay seeks to show how the title and the plot of "A terceira margem do rio" [The third bank of the river], the acclaimed short story from the book Primeiras estórias, by João Guimarães Rosa, relate to the notion of "the unexcluded middle," as discussed by Immanuel Wallerstein in an article on Fernand Braudel and Ilya Prigogine. In this perspective, the short story emphasizes the possibility of a third way that does not exclude, and indeed encompass, the two paths that are often presented as mutually exclusive by the binary thinking - a system that is very difficult to surmount, as a fragment by Adorno and Horkheimer shows.