This work analyzes language and meaning perspectives outlined in 59 letters exchanged by Guimarães Rosa and his North-American translator Harriet de Onís. From a post-structuralist point of view – according to which language is not an instrument of representation, but rather a multiplicity of volatile and discontinuous historical practices and, therefore, refractive to general theories aspiring essence – the fecundity of different ways of looking at language present in this particular piece of Rosa’s corpus is sought on extra-theoretical grounds. The irreducibility of these views to any general philosophy and the noticeable differences of attitude between Guimarães Rosa and Harriet de Onís regarding language (differences that emphasize by contrast Rosa’s positions) are shown and, especially, the specific way Rosa promotes performatively the disturbance of reductionist deep-rooted cultural expectations about language in these letters. Special thought is given to the way paradox emerges in Rosa as a creative force and not as an encumbrance, aporia: by the productivity of paradox, fertile angles open up and through them one may attempt to recognize or, in Rosa’s own words, think-feel, different aspects of language, notably the common language; the vital dynamic that binds the text, the author, the translator and the reader; the irreducible irrationality and mystery; and the poetic statute of language.