Note 5 — Chapter III · PERIOD OF AUTONOMOUS DEVELOPMENT (1750-1830)

The natives named him Caramurú, whence the name of the epic. The word has been variously interpreted as signifying “dragon risen out of the sea” (Rocha Pitta) and “son of the thunder” (Durão’s own version), referring in the first instance to the man’s rescue from the wreck and in the second to his arquebuse. Verissimo rejects any such poetic interpretation and makes the topic food for fruitful observation. He considers the Brazilian savage, as any other, of rudimentary and scant imagination, incapable of lofty metaphorical flights. “The Indians, infinitely less poetic than the poets who were to sing them, called Diogo Alvares as they were in the habit of calling themselves, by the name of an animal, tree or something of the sort. They named him Caramurú, the name of a fish on their coast, because they caught him in the sea or coming out of it. And to this name they added nothing marvellous, as our active imagination has pictured.” And “this very sobriquet as well as the epoch in which it was applied, are still swathed in legend.”