'
Portuguese Literary
&
Cultural Studies
1
3/1
4
\
The Author as Plagiarists The Case of Machado de Assis Guest Editor: Joao Cezar de Castro Rocha Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro
Center for Portuguese Studies and Culture University of Massachusetts Dartmouth
IIIHHHIinBmHHnilHBWHIl IIIUHUHBIIIIUBIIIiaHIIIIIH
plagiarist
as
author
The
—
The Author as
Plagiarist
The Case of Machado de Assis
Digitized by the Internet Archive in
2016
https://archive.org/details/authoraspiagiariOOroch
—
Portuguese Literary & Cultural Studies 13/14
Fall
2004/Spring 2005
The Author as Plagiarist The Case of Machado de Assis
UfiifASS
Center for Portuguese Studies and Culture University of Massachusetts
Dartmouth
DARTMOUTH
Portuguese Literary & Cultural Studies
Director: Frank Editor: Victor].
F.
Sousa, University of Massachusetts
Mendes, University
of Massachusetts
Dartmouth
Dartmouth
Guest Editor: Joao Cezar de Castro Rocha, Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro Editorial
Manager: Gina M.
Reis, University of Massachusetts
Assistant to the Editors:
Mark
Copy
Sousa, University of Massachusetts
Editors: Sandra
Valeria
M.
I.
Streeter, University
Dartmouth
of Wisconsin Madison
Dartmouth
Souza, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth
Graphic Designer: Spencer Ladd, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Typesetter: In As Sena, Lisbon
Advisory Board
Vitor Manuel de Aguiar e Silva, Universidade do
OnAsimo Teotonio Almeida, Brown
Minho
University
Abel Barros Baptista, Universidade Nova de Lisboa Erancisco Bethencourt, Universidade
Nova de Lisboa
Dario Borim, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Joao Camilo dos Santos, University of California, Santa Barbara Joao Cezar de Castro Rocha, Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro Luiz Costa Lima, Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro
Antonio Costa Pinto, ISCTE, Lisbon Erancisco Fagundes, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Antonio M.
Feijo,
Universidade de Lisboa
Bela Feldman-Bianco,
Ana
UNICAMP/IFCH
Paula Ferreira, University of California Irvine
Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, Stanford University
Anna Klobucka,
Ana Mafalda
University of Massachusetts
Leite,
Dartmouth
Universidade de Lisboa
Helder Macedo, King’s College, London
Antonio Machado
Pires,
Universidade dos Azores
George Monteiro, Brown University Jose
N. Ornelas, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Phyllis Peres, University of Isabel Pires de
Maryland
Lima, Universidade do Porto
Coimbra
Carlos Reis, Universidade de A.J.R. Russell-Wood,
The Johns Hopkins
University
Maria Alzira Seixo, Universidade de Lisboa Karl Erik Schollhammer, Pontificia Universidade Catolica
do Rio de Janeiro
Boaventura de Sousa Santos, Universidade de Coimbra
Miguel Tamen, Universidade de Lisboa Nelson Vieira, Brown University Regina Zilberman, Pontificia Universidade Catolica do Rio Grande do Sul
Portuguese Literary
& Cultural Studies
a multilingual interdisciplinary peer-
is
reviewed journal published semi-annually by the Center for Portuguese Studies
and Culture
at the
University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.
nal addresses the literatures
and
cultures of the diverse
Portuguese-speaking world in terms of
critical
and
The
jour-
communities of the
theoretical approaches.
Manuscript Policy
Portuguese Literary nal
& Cidtural Studies (PLCS) welcomes submission of origi-
and unpublished manuscripts
priate to the goals of the journal.
the
MLA
Style
Manual and Guide and
parenthetical documentation sible for the
accuracy of
all
sizes as close as possible to
used throughout the (e.g., abstract,
PLCS gle
to
a
Scholarly Publishing (latest version) with
list
of
Works titles,
Cited.
The author
the information
article, bio-blurb).
PLCS
must be
Updated
PLCS
in the
is
respon-
Font and
names, and dates.
the style of the previous issue of
submission of manuscripts to reviews) are available at
Manuscripts should be in accordance with
quotations,
text. All of
body of the
in English, Portuguese, or Spanish appro-
should be
same language
specific guidelines for
(articles, half-articles, review-essays,
and
www.plcs.umassd.edu (please consult Guidelines).
encourages submission of manuscripts in the form of an attached sin-
MS Word
file.
Subscription Information
The annual
subscription (2 issues) for institutions
individuals. Single issues
may
also
is
$80.00 and $40.00 for
be purchased for $25.00.
United States add $12.00 for shipping and handling.
From
outside the
Inquiries should be sent to Portuguese Literary
& Cultural Studies, Center for
Portuguese Studies and Culture, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth,
Dartmouth,
MA 02747
In Portugal, issues
may
USA,
or by email
he purchased
to:
[email protected].
at Livraria
Buchholz. Please contact the
bookstore to place your order. Livraria Buchholz, Rua
1250-098 Lisbon;
Tel.
Duque de
Palmela, 4,
351-21-317-0580, E-mail:
[email protected].
Advertising
Portuguese Literary
& Cultural Studies accepts advertising that
is
of interest to
scholars in the held of Portuguese, Brazilian, and Luso-African Studies and Critical Theory. Further information
is
available
by contacting the Center
Portuguese Studies and Culture, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.
Cover
Design: Spencer Ladd
ISSN 1521-804X ISBN: 1-933227-10-9
©
2006 University of Massachusetts Dartmouth
Printed by
Command
Print Solutions,
New
Bedford,
MA
for
—
Table of Contents
xix
Introduction:
Machado de
Assis
—The Location of an Author
Joao Cezar de Castro Rocha
Acts of Reading
43
Machado de of the
Assis'
Reception and the Transformation
Modern European Novel
Earl E. Fitz
59
Dress and Female Intelligence: Intertextuality in
Esau and Jacob
Pedro Armando de Almeida Magalhaes
67
Readings of Balzac
The
Case of
in
Twentieth-Century
Machado de
Brazil:
Assis
Gilberto Pinheiro Passes
81
The Shandean Form: Laurence Sterne and Machado de Assis Sergio Paulo Rouanet
105
Machado de
Assis, Critic of Eqa
A Symptomatic
de Queiros
Misunderstanding
Joao Camiio dos Santos
129
Hamlet the
Brazilian
Way
(Machado, Reader of Shakespeare) Sandra Guardini
T.
Vasconcelos
Interpretations
141
Machado de
Assis, a
Contemporary Writer
Joao Almino
143
Machado and Modernism Raul Antelo
161
Machado de
Assis on Popular Music:
A
Case
for Cultural Studies in Nineteenth-Century Latin
America
Idelber Avelar
177
Raymundo
Faoro, Reader of
Machado de
Assis
Alfredo Bosi
199
Around My Room and Around
Life
Antonio Candido
205
Fictionalizations of the
de
Assis'
Reader
Novels
Hello de Seixas Guimaraes
in
Machado
—
219
The Cannibal Metaphor K.
227
in
Machado de
Assis
David Jackson
The Skeptical Paradox
In
Machado de
Assis
Gustavo Bernardo Krause
249
Machado and the Cost
of Reading
Marisa Lajolo and Regina Zilberman
263
The Development of
View
In
a Skeptical Life
the Fiction of
Machado de
Assis
Jose Raimundo Maia Neto
281
The Place of Machado de Assis
in
the Present
Daniel Piza
285
Machado de
Assis:
A Keen Look
at Nineteenth-Century Brazilian Identity
Maria Aparecida Ferreira de Andrade Salgueiro
293
Master among the Ruins Michael
Wood
Novel
307
The Beautiful Form of Sadness: Machado de
Assis'
Hans
Memorial de Aires
Ulrich
Gumbrecht
317
Four Stomachs and a Brain: An Interpretation of Esau e Jaco
Stephen M. Hart
333
How
is
the Second Life of Bras Cubas Different
from His Victor
353
J.
First
One?
Mendes
Absence of Time: The Counselor's Dreams Pedro Meira Monteiro
373
The (Lack
of) Feeling of
Machado de Karl
391
Ludwig
Irony
in
Assis'
Dom
What Happens: Casmurro
Pfeiffer
Machado de
Dom
Assis'
Casmurro:
Reflections on Anti-Tragic Cordiality Kathrin H. Rosenfield
407
Strategies of Deceit:
Dom
Casmurro
Marta de Senna
419
Some Unknown Chapters
of the First Version
of Quincas Borba Serialized
Ana Claudia
Suriani
da
Silva
in
A
Estagao
Sentimental in
Commerce and Moral Accountancy
Memorias postumas de Bras Cubas
Bluma Waddington
Picturing
Vilar
Machado de
Assis
Short story
The Paradox of the
Alienist
Abel Barros Baptista
Under the Guise of Science Ivo Barbieri
Paradigms at of
Play:
Machado de
The Short Stories
Assis
Paul Dixon
The Short Story
in
Machado de
the Works of
and Horacio Quiroga:
A
Assis
Material Aesthetic?
Pablo Rocca
"Rosebud" and the Holy for Re-Reading
Grail:
Machado de
Joao Cezar de Castro Rocha
A
Hypothesis
Assis' Short Stories
Poetry
561
Cronica
/
Machado de
Journalism
/
Assis, the
Apprentice Journalist
Cristiane Costa
571
Machado de
Assis
and Nationalism:
The Americanas Case Jose
585
Luis
Jobim
The Poetry of Machado de Assis Claudio Murilo Leal
599
Cronica
in
Themes
Fifteen
Ana Miranda
607
Guineas Borba
in
A
Estagao
Marcus Vinicius Nogueira Soares
Reception
625
A
Season
Alfred
627
in
Casa Verde
Mac Adam
Machado de
Assis
in
English:
A
Selected Bibliography
K.
David Jackson
647
Machado de
Assis
Jose Saramago
649
Machado de
Assis
Arnaldo Saraiva
661
Translators
in
Portugal
'"
7
!
-
O grotesco, por cxemplo, nao esta no texro do poeta; e uma excrescencia para imitar
Mulheres patuscas de Windsor. Este ponto e contestado pelos satanistas
algiima aparencia da razao.
compos
a
a afirmar
opera,
nem
grande opera,
que o poeta
com
Dizem
ingles
essa farsa
que, ao
nem
que parece
Shakespeare eram nascidos.
ele
com
tempo em que o jovem Satanas
nao teve outro genio senao transcrever
arte e hdelidade,
tal
eles
Chegam
a letra
da
proprio o autor da composi(;ao;
mas, evidentemente, e urn plagiario.
— Machado de
Assis,
The element of the it is
is
Dom
Casmurro
grotesque, for example,
is
not to be found in the poet’s
an excrescence, put there to imitate The Merry Wives of Windsor. This point
contested by the satanists, with every appearance of reason.
time
text:
when
the
young Satan composed
had been born. They go to transcribe the
his opera, neither
as far as to affirm that the
words of the opera, with
skill
— Machado de
Assis,
Dom
that, at the
Shakespeare nor his farce
English poet’s only genius was
and so
be the author of the composition; but of course he
They say
is
Casmurro (John Gledson,
faithfully that he
a plagiarist.
trans.)
seems to
i /
r
A
Revoki^ao Francesa
e Otelo estao feitos;
tirada para outras pec^as, e assim se
— Machado de
Assis,
A
committed,
— Machado de
Assis,
Othello have been written;
scene and using
it
Semana (Helen Caldwell,
still
there
in other
speaking, acts of plagiarism.
A
ou aquela cena
cometem, literariamente hilando,
lifting this or that
literarily
esta
seja
os plagios.
Semana, 28 July 1895
The French Revolution and prevent one Irom
nada impede que
trans.)
is
nothing to
dramas: thus are
Machado de
Introduction:
Assis
—The Location of an Author^
Joao Cezar de Castro Rocha^
Thar Stendhal should have confessed dred readers cause no
to have written
books
his
for a
hun-
something that brings on wonder and concern. Something that
is
wonder and probably no concern
Stendhal’s
one of
hundred
— Machado de
reaciers,
Assis,
or
fifty,
is
whether
this
will
other book will have
or twenty, or even ten. Ten? Five, perhaps.
The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas
(5)
The Location of a (Utopic) Question
On
work of Machado de
Match
est film.
of
Salman Rushdie confessed
a recent trip to Brazil,
Dom
Assis. ^ Similarly,
Point,
Woody
to use
in
international
encomiums
for the author
possible that a “master
letters”
literary
of his
lat-
newspapers and magazines have
Roberto Schwarz’s expression^
“world republic of
in the
the
—
Is it
release
of the
Adlen expressed his admiration for the author
enthusiastically reprinted these
talism”
on the occasion of the
CasmurroP Cultural supplements
Memoirs of Bras Cubas.
his appreciation
—
as Pascale
marketplace?
of The Posthumous
on the periphery of capi-
—can
achieve
Casanova
calls
full
recognition
the structure of
Casanova provides the answer:
“Notwithstanding the ecumenical ideology that presides over
literary cele-
brations, writers in small languages are apt to find themselves marginalized”
(277;
my
To oeuvre
emphasis).
begin, the question of the international reception of is
at
once unavoidable and
irrelevant.^
ture continues to search for legitimacy,
However,
this
question
is
It is
Machado de
Assis’
unavoidable: Brazilian cul-
which preferably comes from abroad.
ultimately irrelevant, for this legitimacy usually
implies that Brazilian authors have satisfied exotic expectations
imposed on
XX
PORTUGUESE LITERARY & CULTURAL STUDIES
them from
outside.^
That
13/14
this (false)
question lingers today reveals more about
the anguish of an academic and artistic system that sees
than
it
marginalized
itself as
helps to understand the intellectual and artistic production of this loca-
marketing of symbolic goods
tion. Finally, the
docile than
we would
mony
dominates the economic and
that
like
it
to be,
is
(and has always been)
and thus tends
As
political arenas.
of self-exoticism,‘^ the frequency of
more
a result, casting
one’s sight anxiously to foreign reception can lead to the regrettable
non
far
same hege-
to reproduce the
phenome-
which remains overwhelming, espe-
contemporary Brazilian cinema and popular
cially in certain expressions of
music, earning them the dubious epithet of “art for export. In the case of
oeuvre also
Machado de Assis, (unfavorably)
reflects
the restricted international reception of his
on
Brazilian criticism.
Indeed, for
many
decades the central debate of Machadian studies practically reduced the parameters of the discussion to possible reality.
This
prolific
ties
between the author’s work and
local
debate can be summarized by a pair of predictable opposi-
tions: explicit alienation
from, and subtle allusions, to Brazilian society; a delib-
erate act of obscuring his family origins;
coded descriptions of social
inequality.
This colorful game of critical divergences unnecessarily circumscribes Machado de
Assis’
in the
work within
the dilemmas of Brazilian history, instead of placing
realm of the “world republic of
letters.”
Of
course,
would
ture that
reveal
the promises of an
However,
if
—
a critical ges-
an ironically misplaced and misleading fascination with
outmoded concept of
Weltliteratiir.
such a concern with local conditions
clarifies
tique of Machado’s gaze relative to nineteenth-century Brazil, a
not a matter of
it is
simply reversing this process and overlooking local conditions
fundamental aspect of his work that may constitute
his
the subtle criit
also obscures
most relevant con-
tribution to the rewriting of literary tradition. This contribution
Machado’s work
at the center of
contemporary
that the mediocre repercussions of his a perverse (and
work abroad can
after
all,
in Brazilian culture, therefore
it
would
concerns.
critical
false
place
here
problem of
such a debate primarily concerns limits the potential of
It is
also be attributed to
unexpected) effect of criticism’s focus on the
Machado’s “alienation”;
specialists
Machado’s oeuvre
to
wider readership.
attract a
A
him
set
of radical (and absurd) illustrations
Imagine equating Goethe’s and writers at the
Schiller’s
will clarify
perspective.
works with learning how German
end of the eighteenth century overcame
plex vis-Tvis French culture.
my
their inferiority
Imagine someone reading
Madame
com-
Bovary to
THE AUTHOR AS PLAGIARIST - THE CASE OF
primarily
become acquainted with
MACHADO
DE ASSIS
the social transformations that were tak-
Does any-
ing place in French society from the vantage point of a small town.
one believe that the repercussion of Dostoyevsky’s novels can he explicated through an uncontrollable desire to better understand Russian culture nineteenth century? be sublimated, as
it
It is
to explaining the
However, the matter of nationality should not he
condemn Machado’s work Bras Cuhas.
Of
course,
to his country.
itself to
As
first
we
the five readers of
ignore the fecund contributions of the
However, the very success of Plagiarist
commit-
depends on the
this school
— The Case ofMachado de
Assis
step in this critical direction.
new
a result,
—
the project of rescuing Machado’s
opening of new paths. The Author as constitutes a
uniqueness of any author.
(exclusively) emphasized, or
to a very restricted reception
we should not
school that has dedicated
ment
in the
true that the matter of nationality cannot (naturally)
vital
is
readings of Machado’s
work come
discuss his legacy in a broader context. Therefore,
cumstances of an author
who
to the fore
when we
we should emphasize
the cir-
boldly experimented with literary genres, freely
appropriated the literary tradition, developed an irreverent rapport with the reader through a series of experiments with the narrative voice, attributed to the act of reading a central role in the act of writing,
of rewriting the text as the text
commenting on
is
and played with the process
being written through the act of ironically
the process of composition.
Machado de
Assis
is
provocative writer, regardless of his geographical coordinates. Indeed,
seems to write
(also) in
order to think about literature.
He
a very
Machado
narrates in order to
propose narrative problems; his oeuvre thus embodies a form whose content the problematization of literature tus
is
itself, its
conditions of readability and the
of interpretation in the age of printing
tions such as these to the fore
we
see a
press.
As soon
new Machado de
as
we
knew
Machado
that writing
will finally find
is
a
byproduct of reading.
abroad more than the
When
five readers
this
is
sta-
bring ques-
Assis appear,
one who
a precursor of Jorge Luis Borges; a precursor to that family of authors
always
is
who
achieved,
of Bras Cubas.
The Location of Places In this context, ate
we can propose
that
Machado de
Assis
was only able
to cre-
groundbreaking work when he came to terms with the circumstance of
Brazil as a “peripheral” country.
develop what
I
would
call
these concepts; otherwise,
This particular location allowed him to
“belatedness as a critical project.” Let
my
xxi
me
clarify
approach could be readily misunderstood.
INTRODUCTION
PORTUGUESE LITERARY & CULTURAL STUDIES
First of all,
I
am
13/14
using the concept of “peripheral” not as an objective
description of a given place hut rather as a complex set of politically, culturally,
and economically asymmetrical
rally
dynamic and change
instead of simply doing tain
contemporary
— —and
the “peripheral” pole being
relationships
located in a hierarchically secondary position
these positions are natu-
the course of a historical process. Therefore,
in
away with the concepts of center and
critical
trends propose,
we must render them
complex, stressing their relational nature. Otherwise, we tools to
such
ever
more
will lack the analytical
understand the growing inequalities of a so-called globalized world.
For instance, spaces
periphery, as cer-
—ones
Casanova proposes the definition of “median
that are neither central nor located
of small European countries
as those
[...]”
literary
on the remote periphery, (277). Regarding one of
these countries, Portugal, formerly a great colonial empire, Boaventura de
Sousa Santos developed the thought-provoking notion of the “semiperipheral condition,” which implies “an intermediate economic development and a position of intermediation between the center and the periphery of the world
economy”
Further in his innovative essay, Sousa Santos expounds the
(9).
cultural consequences of the semiperipheral condition, while defining a
Janus-like figure, the “Portuguese Prospero”: “Being neither an emancipatory
nor an emancipated if in
identity,
Candido
calls this
as
Antonio
impossible margin the “semicolonial condition” of Bra-
and most of Machado’s achievements might be re-read
zilian culture,
light of this concept, for
a
he oscillated between Prospero and Caliban
search of Guimaraes Rosas third margin of the river” (36).
it
in the
implies an appropriation of the tradition based
on
fundamentally irreverent fashion. In the late 1970s, in the context of Italian art history, Enrico Castelnuovo
and Carlo Ginzburg had already proposed
a highly
complex model
for refram-
ing this discussion, calling into question the assumption underlying the
mon
definition of the concepts of center
particularly illuminating to the project of
ofMaehado de Assis. According
If the center
is
The Author
to Castelnuovo
'
5
com-
Their approach
the center, then one cannot but consider periphery synony-
artistic belatedness.
Of
eliminates the difficulty although lent perspective, the relationship
it
course, this
aims
is
at solving
a tautological it.
[...]
is
— The Case
as Plagiarist
and Ginzburg:
by definition the location of artistic creation and periphery simply
means distance from
mous with
and periphery.
scheme, which
Seen under a polyva-
between center and periphery
reveals itself to be
— THE AUTHOR AS PLAGIARIST - THE CASE OF
very ditterent from a peaceful image conriict,
[...]•
which can he observed even
This
is
MACHADO DE ASSIS
nor a matter of diffusion, hut of
in situations in
which the periphery seems
INTRODUCTION
to limit itself to faithfully follow the directions of the center. (286)
The
authors then
show how,
more than an
in the Italian context,
artistic
center responsible for dictating aesthetic values, one finds the emergence of a
dynamic
polycentric structure,
dominance. Of course,
their
in
its
model
is
relationships, variable in
its
patterns of
highly suggestive, especially in the con-
temporary position of the globalized world.
An
author such
as
host “influences” from different cultural centers tion the overlapping of several historical
Machado de
whose
Assis has always already created a personal polycentric library,
shelves
peripheries, not to
moments.
In
men-
Machadian terms, the
contentious nature of the encounter between central and peripheral instances translates itself as a specific entails the possibility of I
am
writer
form of appropriation of literary
unfolding “belatedness
tion. Rather,
I
am
deliberado y de
las
and
Assis’
work. Moreover, although
I
am
val-
aware
I
insist that this
awareness should not obscure the
location that does not (and cannot) see itself as being
the very center of the cultural
movement
keenly acknowledges this potential: frequent that a
“It
is
new human
a
in a given time.
phenomenon
—with
Georg Lukacs
that causes surprise;
type appears for the
of a young country, and from there
penetrates the literature of the
As
contemporary
by any “triumphant interpretation of our backward-
same time
critical potential of a
it is
into ques-
calls
detachment from the hierarchy usually
favors an ironic gaze regarding
— trademarks of Machado de
literature
Manichean comprehension of
atribuciones erroneas.”’^ Therefore, “belatedness as a crit-
of the pitfalls implied
however,
a
and Ginzburg’s quotation
project” presupposes a skeptical
at the
—
appropriating Jorge Luis Borges’ “tecnica del anacronismo
attributed to tradition,
ness,”
as a critical project.”
always coming or existing after the expected time, which would be
is
cultural history that Castelnuovo
ues
which
not using the concept of belatedness to imply that a “peripheral”
defined by the so-called “central powers”
ical
tradition,
all
its
first
time in the
complexities
whole cultivated world.”
a matter of fact, the issue of a belated
modernity has always haunted
Latin-American writers and social thinkers. In Brazilian cultural history, an issue of
paramount importance
nity, that
is,
economic
is
the question of
and the quest
progress, social justice, and, above
all,
for
moder-
the desire to be
up-to-date with the latest trends. Brazilian cultural history, then, engages in
xxiv
PORTUGUESE LITERARY & CULTURAL STUDIES
a
13/14
phantasmagorical race towards what has not yet been clearly indicated, and
therefore cannot be fully achieved. In this context, however fast
you
will
run
restlessly.
who A
always arrive
Thus,
a
You
late.
more
you
travel,
you
are always already belated, especially if
might be pursued by an author
fertile alternative
decides to deliberately espouse anachronism as a method.
Belated Writer
Machado de
—Ahead of his Time
Cubas, was published in
book form terpiece
The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras
Assis’ first innovative novel.
form
serial
in the Revista Brasileira in
1880 and
This groundbreaking work has been praised
a year later.
by writers and
critics
such
as Jose
Sontag, John Barth, and Piarold Bloom,
as a
in
mas-
Saramago, Carlos Puentes, Susan
among
others
— not
mention
to
Brazilian readers. Nonetheless, until the writing of Bras Cubas, although he
was already
among
noted author, respected
a
de Assis did not have yet the “edge” to
admire
—such
Is
contemporaries,
his
work
his
Machadian
the state of the art in
we have
that
after 1880.-^ In this introduction,
mary of the
of the play concerning
state
open the novel
to the first page.
Reader,” a part of which
1
used
as the
That Stendhal should have confessed dred readers will
is
to have written
not cause wonder and probably no concern
The
truth
is
that
it’s
a
a
few
fretful
I
This
key passage; indeed,
is
a
will invite read-
I
“To the
will find a note,
this introduction:
one of
his
books
for a
hun-
it
a
is
whether
other book will
this
or twenty, or even ten. Ten? Five, per-
work where
Xavier de Maistre.
touches of pessimism into
dead man.
wrote
fifty,
question of a scattered
adopted the free-form of a Sterne or have put
leap manifested in
not provide a sum-
something that brings on wonder and concern. Something that
have Stendhal’s hundred readers, or haps.
will
I
this topic. Instead,
There they
epigraph of
one of
the need to pro-
is
quantum
Machado’s works
ers to
learned to
studies. Therefore,
the most pressing questions for Brazilian literary criticism
vide a reasonable explanation for the authentic
Machado
it.
It’s
I
am
I,
Bras Cubas, have
not sure but
possible.
I
may
The work of a
with a playful pen and melancholy ink. (5)^"
this
is
Machado de
After the very beginning of The Posthumous rator fashions himself as an author
who
fully
Memoirs
Assis’ rite
of passage.
of Bras Cubas, the nar-
acknowledges
that,
above
all,
undermines Romantic notions of authorship.
is
a reader, a statement that
is
clear that within this construct, Fdarold Bloom’s theory of “the anxiety
he It
of
THE AUTHOR AS PLAGIARIST
Romantic projection
inHuence” reveals
itself as a
which
what authors such
is
precisely
From 1880, references
Machado
the surface of his texts
authors,
to
THE CASE OF
ever
ASSIS
Assis call into question.
more populated by innumerable
and tropes from the
topics,
MACHADO DE
tradition.
literary
If
consciously assimilates Sterne’s technique of digression, he does so his digressions usually start or
end with
Adam
reference to
with Montaigne’s Havor, for
As Alfred Mac
references.
r amour, which
“Through
notes:
this
and poetry, and
blurs essay, fiction,
literary
De
his later references to
Sterne and Xavier de Maistre, Bras creates antecedents for his disconnected
Had
Postljumous Memoirs' (97).
Jorge Luis Borges read Machado’s novel,
then the Argentinean could well have written a Precursors.”
his
author,”
who
And
new
and
artificial
fictional pact.
his novels to
is
a “deceased
This uncanny
displaces the fiction toward an
which engages the reader
authorial freedom,
Machado not only
compels the readers of
— “Machado and
essay
way: after his death.
man
“delegation of the writing to the dead intransitive
new
should be noted that Bras Cubas
it
starts his career in a special
in a
fashions himself as a reader, but he also
acknowledge
their role in the constitu-
tion of the fictional play.
As
a
matter of
Machado
fact, since his first novel, Ressurreigao,
a genre in
which he
is
explicit the authors
framework
Machado
whom
with
for
Moreover, he imposes upon digress endlessly or travel
the pilot of his journey.^s that
is,
is
As he
Sterne, Xavier de Maistre,
his
a
not only renders
in
the “free-form.”^7
a particular twist.
Machado does not
interested
is
chamber, propelled by witty
demands
humor
a co-pilot;
and the nineteenth centuries as well as injects
Machado had
in the figures of
humor
into the
already envisioned the technique
of the “deliberate anachronism” in this overlapping of historical times
erary genres.
enced
as
Modernity
as
an unfinished process
an impasse but rather
pass different horizons.
as
as
“melancholy ink.” Machado, therefore,
and Stendhal,
of melancholy.
He
states clearly, his itinerary
he adds
brings together the eighteenth
craft his skills in
dialoguing but also provides a concep-
he
form
around
to the “playful pen”
somber mood
he
this
published in 1872,
determined to
takes a step further.
dialogue:
this
is
Posthumous Memoirs, especially in the
a beginner.
note “To the Reader,”
tual
who
portrays himself as a worker
is
and
lit-
not necessarily experi-
an opportunity to simultaneously encom-
Thus, Machado
is
not nostalgic for an idealized view
of Brazilian history, to be preserved against the process of modernization.
Moreover, he
is
XXV
of the notion of “genius,”
Machado de
as is
-
not enthusiastic about the promises of modernity: the
free-
INTRODUCTION
xxvi
PORTUGUESE LITERARY & CULTURAL STUDIES
form of
13/14
responds to the free-form of his thinking
his prose
In other words, the complexity of
—and
Machado’s understanding of the
tradition requires an equally elaborated linguistic expression, tic
experimentation encourages an irreverent reading of
Machado’s breakthrough
vice versa.
and
literary
his linguis-
classical authors.
neither an exclusively literary achievement nor
is
primarily an intellectual accomplishment; as a matter of fact, both deeds are
simultaneously engendered: one fosters the other.
The
explicit
acknowledgement of the simultaneity of
different historical
epochs produces an awareness that distinguishes Machado’s achievements. is
as if peripheral writers
have to face a
phenomenon
It
that could be called the
“compression of historical time”; namely, they simultaneously receive infor-
mation from
several
historical
periods without the “benefit” of a linear
chronological order or an already stable interpretive framework. In Brazilian
problem has always already been
literature this
there; after
existed in Brazil before there were Brazilian novelists. it
“the novel has
all,
So when they appeared,
was natural that they should follow the European models, both good and
bad, which had already
my
Misplaced 41;
become entrenched
The
emphasis).
opment of what could be
in oiir
reading habits' (Schwarz,
usual answer to this situation
is
the devel-
called an “anxiety of up-to-datedness,”
which
obliges the writer to engage in an impossible race, for there can never be an
adequate starting point
—wherever you
begin, you cannot compensate for the
ground already covered. Carlos Puentes humorously
“The
imitations of the independence era
a Nescafe civilization:
past
and ignoring
formal
level,
is
Assis,2"^ for
literary device
logic in their belief in
instantly,
whom
the clash of historical perceptions becomes a at the
Machado
brings
the historical precedence of reading ovqv writing
the first novelists
Latin American literature
applies to
novelists.” Therefore,
is
literatures
—
—
in that sense,
critical readers
from
always wider than Latin America, since
several traditions.
all
were
America and not
were necessarily the attentive and sometimes
two centuries of European novels
encompass
as
of unparalleled strength. This device renders productive,
in Brazil, “the novel has existed before there
of at least
overlooking the
an alternative, exercised by an author such
to the structure of his composition the fact that, in Latin
simply
such anxiety:
tradition” (10).
Nonetheless, there
Machado de
move beyond
we could become modern
targets
this
It
is
its
onset,
it
has to
true that, to a degree, this circumstance
acknowledgement
is
indispensable, in order to
avoid another naive eulogy of belatedness. In the case of Latin America, how-
THE AUTHOR AS PLAGIARIST - THE CASE OF
ever,
where the colonial past was
produced a predictable and
mental lack of sibility of
originality,
Machado welcomes
which becomes
On
the contrary,
the notion of a funda-
a liberating force.
If
there
is
no pos-
fashioning oneself as an “original” writer, then the entire literary
tra-
dition might be freely appropriated. Thus, Machado’s conflation of several
centuries of literary tradition, literary genres, and, above
of the acts of read-
all,
ing and writing fully enunciate Borges’ “deliberate anachronism.” In an astute
reading of the Brazilian author, Carlos Puentes remarks:
And
American hunger, the
nonetheless, the Liitin
appropriate to create a brilliant
of the
all
traditions,
all
cultures, including
new horizon under which
all
places
all
desire to
embrace everything,
Machado
makes
are simultaneous,
a
like a surprising vision
Aleph, prior to the very famous one imagined by Borges
Therefore,
to
their aberrations; the utopian desire
and times
appearance in The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas
first
(24)
transforms the notion of belatedness, which accom-
panies the process of peripheral modernization, into a critical project.
not true that,
at the
Is it
time of the prevalence of the French school of compara-
tivism throughout the nineteenth century
and
In the first
commonly
twentieth century, a “peripheral” author was
outcome of “influences” received from metropolitan seems to ponder: might
I
allow this author to
reader,
an imaginative writer, and, above
archies
and
all,
decades of the
interpreted as an
Machado
writers? If so,
become
at
once
a malicious
a skeptical critic regarding hier-
literary glories?
Machado’s undermining of traditional notions of authorship his divergence
with the established views of his time.
answer to the problem of
literary
modernity
He
in Latin
also expresses
takes his insightful
America through the
questioning of the acts of reading and writing further in his next novel, Qiiincas Borba, published in 1891. In chapter CXIII, the reader
is
introduced
to the following situation: Rubiao, the faithful but foolish follower of the
philosopher Quincas Borba, inherits his master’s fortune, and begins spending it
recklessly.
One
whose owner
of his enterprises
—Camacho,
is
the funding of a political newspaper,
an unscrupulous lawyer and journalist
interested in taking advantage of Rubiao’s naivete.
newsroom and
casually reads an article.
minor changes
in
its
xxvii
recent, the prevalence of the act of reading
collective “anxiety of inHuence.”
towards the end of the century,
MACHADO DE ASSIS
One
day,
—
Rubiao
is
only
visits
the
Even more randomly, he suggests
composition. Naturally,
Camacho
adopts his patron’s
INTRODUCTION
PORTUGUESE LITERARY & CULTURAL STUDIES
suggestions. Rubiao
is
is
made
Rubiao, satisfied with the correction
(160)-^'
many
There
of course, a
from reading books
There
is
a
to
all
would be tedious.
rapid.
The
What
that phrase to the
certainly
best thing
to leave
is
it
this
book
first
not important. Even
It’s
is
“‘How
the books he’d ever read.’”
uncannily
fast transition
offers a solution:
would be
— from
the analysis
so,
way: For a few
was the author of many works by other people.
This passage
chapter:
composed and pon-
phrase saying that Rubiao was co-author and the
first
books read by him.
would be going from
all
in this
Machado
being their author.
gap between the
authorship of
problem
logical
new
for a
title
in the article,
phrases that he ended up writing is,
associa-
the true author of the entire piece. In Machado’s
words, Rubiao’s reaction could provide the
dered so
humorous chain of
delighted, and, through a
he
tions, decides that
13/14
(
most
the
there
difficult
on the course
would be long and
moments Rubiao
felt
he
160 )^^
akin to the spirit of the most celebrated short stories by
Jorge Luis Borges, especially the ones devoted to the Issues of readership and authorship. As Silviano Santiago Insightfully remarks, based
reading of “Pierre Menard, autor de Quijote”: writer
is
a
devourer of books.
(40). If we follow Rubiao’s ers
He
reads constantly
“[...]
on an innovative
the Latin
American
and publishes occasionally”
method, we understand that Latin American writ-
do not publish more often because there
no volume
is
that potentially
was
not written by their hungry eyes. In Machado’s next novel,
of authorship
is
Dom
Casmtirro, published in 1899, the question
once more of paramount importance. For instance. Bento
Santiago, the first-person narrator, clarifies that the
an unfortunate Incident. bor, a
One day,
young man; indeed, he
works. Naturally, Santiago
him “Casmurro.” The people give
in other words,
title
home on
who
a “poet”
falls sleep,
nickname
revenge, he decides to
common
is
returning
of the novel stems from
a train, he meets a neigh-
decides to recite his complete
infuriating the
unknown
his inconsiderate neighbor,
it,
of a quiet person
Casmurro
is
who
someone who
Bento Santiago certainly was not of
is
He
and chooses
to call
keeps himself to himself
Or,
not polite enough to spend some
“Dom” was added
aristocratic stock.
in
mockery, since
However, instead of
being upset, the narrator transforms the nickname into the Casmurro.
As
narrator elucidates the epithet: “[...] the [meaning] the
minutes listening to embarrassing poetry.
Dom
“genius.
title
of his memoirs:
even bestows on the young poet an unexpected
possibility:
THE AUTHOR AS PLAGIARIST - THE CASE OF
Still,
Hnd
couldn’t
1
finish the
book,
him no
will.
ill
whole work
is.
much.
that
keep
My
this one.
with a
narrative;
if
I
can’t find
poet on the train will
little effort,
since the
I’here are books that only
owe
another before
Hnd out
Machado de
who
primarily the written
INTRODUCTION
some not even
that to their authors:
Assis affirms his uniqueness through the role of a
eventually becomes a self-reflective author,
memory
of his private library. Thus,
it is
whose
text
is
not surprising
Machado’s oeuvre, there are constant allusions to and rewritings of
that, in
Shakespeare’s works.
Dom
de Assis.
No
other author
Casmurro
Othello of
Machado de
Machado
is
so important to the reader
is
a radical reading, that
is
Helen Caldwell examines the case Assis:
A
is,
a rewriting
her groundbreaking
in
Study of
Dom
Casmurro. As a matter of
stories, plays,
and
Machado’s rewriting brings to the fore a potential contradiction. important
as lago’s malice,
it is
the position he occupies that allows
Machado
creates
an Othello
who
own
Othello’s lago’s
also his
is
Machado
of Othello.
The Brazilian
obsessed with this particular play: “Shakespeare’s
brought into the argument of twenty-eight
is
bear
1
he can think that the
title is his,
lago.
is
articles” (1).
not true
insecurities regarding
intrigues
own
fact,
Othello
Is it
work on him?
to
Thus, Othello’s drama
re-enacted, but with the suppression of the character of lago. This clever
artifice reveals the
nature of jealousy, portraying
regardless of objective evidence, feeds
on
itself
it
as a
feedback system that,
Bento Santiago, the
first-
person narrator of the novel, spends more than two hundred pages trying to
convince the reader (and, above betrayed
him with Escobar,
is,
—without an lago
jealousy, apparently uncalled for,
instead of charging his partner?
systematic falsifying of tion
on
fiction”
reflection
on the
Machado
And
the
more he
to the readers, the less he
to blame, if
Thus
how
seems able
his
to
not by pointing to the jealous person the novel stages “a parody of tragedy, a
evidence, the text
inter-relations
tries to
can he justify an increasing
is
a literature
on
literature, a fic-
(Hansen 43). Moreover, Machado’s rewriting between the
acts
is
literally a
of reading and writing.
another beautiful homage to Shakespeare, which once
offers yet
more highlights
all
himself) that his wife, Capitu, has
allegedly his best friend.
present his case to the jury, that
persuade them
all,
thoughtful
undermining of
authorship. In a chapter properly entitled
traditional
“The Opera,” the
concepts of
narrator
XXIX
1
Plagiarist
reflective reader
that, as
that
ASSIS
(4)-^'’
The Author as Therefore,
I’ll
And
my
a better title for
MACHADO DE
remem-
XXX
PORTUGUESE LITERARY & CULTURAL STUDIES
13/14
whom
bers the curious theory of an old Italian tenor, according to
was neither
“God
explains: 18).-^^
dream nor
a
the poet.
is
I
the world
but an opera. Literally so Marcolino
stage,
a
he music
by Satan.
is
{Dom Casmurro
[...]”
After his expulsion from Heaven, Satan stole the manuscript from the
Heavenly Father and composed the to hear.
Upon
Satan’s insistence.
a
did not want
whole company”
of the grotesque, for example,
is
not to be found
(19).^^
Some
in the poet’s text:
an excrescence, put there to imitate The Merry Wives of Windsor. This point
it
is
is
contested by the Satanists, with every appearance of reason.
the time farce
was
God
the reader finds the corollary to Marcolino’s theory:
later,
The element
at first,
decides to stage the opera, creating “a
and invented
special theatre, this planet,
paragraphs
which,
score,
He
when
the
young Satan composed
had been born. They go
This perhaps sounds
like
and so
plagiarist?
is
an odd eulogy. After
that an author excels in his creation exactly
an original
skill
of the composition; but of course he
The paradox seems
Romantic notions of authorship,
say that, at
Shakespeare nor his
English poet’s only genius
as far as to affirm that the
words of the opera, with
to transcribe the
to be the author
his opera, neither
They
when he
faithfully that
a plagiarist.
how
all,
(
he seems
19 -
can
20 )^^
we concede
allows himself to
unavoidable, but only
if
become
we hold
which the “anxiety of influence”
in
is
as
contagious (and unfounded) as Othello’s and Bento Santiago’s jealousy.
However,
if
an author envisages
own
his
location as precarious, then, the
acknowledgment of previous “influences” (and
let
us use the term in order to
engage with Bloom’s theory) cannot be experienced
become
liberating, for the act of being influenced
literary tradition as a
mankind,
said
way
over; the best
Othello 165)A^
“The
best
of portraying
way of comprehending
it
was by
author
them” [Brazilian
Rego shows the amplitude of
his affiliation to the
clear that a creative
the universal
of great writers the world
‘plagiarizing’
others, Enylton de Sa
Machado’s readings, underscoring it
opens up the doors of the
Machado, was through study
Among
Machado makes
they
whole. Caldwell perfectly explains Machado’s appropri-
ation of literary tradition: soul of
as anxiety; rather,
is
above
Menippean all
Satire.
a malicious reader
of the tradition, which then becomes a vast and tempting menu, whose of options
is
Machado was
to be appreciatively savored and, particularly
a proper digestion, that
is,
fond
of,
ruminated on
as
to
use a
metaphor
list
that
many times as needed for Once more, this
the composition of the next book.
— THE AUTHOR AS PLAGIARIST
is
-
THE CASE OF
MACHADO DE
ASSIS
the literary device that transforms belatedness into critical project. After
Machado
himself explains the “difference between
simply invoke someone
which
authority
else’s
— and
literal
quotations
all,
—which
the really artistic quotations
quoted authors” (Sa Rego, “Preface
creatively rewrite the
—Warning”
xvii).
Thus, there can hardly be any higher praise than considering an author
to be
an authentic
metonymy of plagiarism
— Shakespeare.
not true that, by definition, the plagiarist has to
Is it
Machado
historical time? Therefore,
come
afier\\\s
model’s
did not excel as an author in spite of his
time and place; instead; he developed a highly original approach to the notions of authorship and readership because, as ter
on the periphery
of capitalism.”
we have
John Gledson
seen, he
was
“a
mas-
offers the best synthesis of
Schwarz’s theory:
The
great achievement of
how
is
it
.
think,
I
is
also, in
many
own
is
to explain
time, writing in a slave-owning cul-
ways, so advanced'^ Schwarz’s great perception
backwardness, and does not merely happen in spite of
Moreover, precisely by not being located
world
Machado
that were age,
Rio de Janeiro,
in his provincial
century,
an apparent paradox:
that the modernity paradoxically arises, to a considerable degree, out of the
is
.]
Master,
that a writer so rooted in his
tural backwater, [.
A
is
presumed
embodied
sophisticated
in
it.
(ix)
at the center of the capitalist
in the last
decades of the nineteenth
able to direct an especially keen critical gaze at notions to be universal.
what he
called
mockery of
The parody of scientific
“Humanitism,”
Positivism,
Social
Psychology, and even Spiritualism. In chapter
Memoirs of Bras Cubas, there
is
is
theories of the
a perfect illustration of a
Evolutionism,
Behavioral
CXVII of The Posthumous
an overt parody of Comte’s philosophical
sys-
tem, focusing on the arbitrary establishment of three phases throughout the course of mankind’s history: previous to
all
man and
formed into four
and
it
will
things” (162).^2 steps
arbitrariness, disguised
to the fore
Humanitas has three
phases: the
static,
creation; the expansive, the beginning of things; the dispersive,
the appearance of man; tion of
“[...]
—
after
all,
have one more, the contractive, the absorp-
Yhe
why
three
under the rationale of a
by Machado’s
moments
are
not two phases, or
suddenly trans-
five periods?
scientific discourse,
is
The
brought
fictional derision.T"^
This witty disposition associated with a skeptical view of “human nature”
—
a notion already
phenomenologically bracketed in Machado’s
xxxi
fic-
INTRODUCTION
PORTUGUESE LITERARY & CULTURAL STUDIES
tion
—
quote
I
John
justifies
The
Barth’s interest in the Brazilian author.
following
one of the most acute definitions of Machado’s achievements:
is
discov'ered
by happy accident the turn-of-the-century Brazilian
Maria Machado de Sterne’s Tristram Ulysses
Assis.
Shandy
and would not
have read him: as a fair
how
to
Machado
is
exuberant.
—
likely
I
Joaquim
had not quite learned from
have learned horn Sterne
combine formal
had
directly,
I
Joyce’s
happened
to
sportiveness with genuine sentiment as well
Pre-Romantic; Joyce
is
novelist
himself much under the influence of Laurence
— taught me something
degree of realism. Sterne
Machado
A
13/14
is
late
or Post-Romantic;
both Romantic and romantic: playful, wistful, pessimistic, intellectually
He was
provincial
is
also, like myself, a provincial [...]. (vi-vii)
by the very location of his
a plagiarist
culture.
The
gesture
of reproducing other cultures always implies, at least potentially, the gesture
of mockery, the attitude of critical detachment. Moreover, Barth conflates
Machado’s work two opposing
historical perceptions:
what concept one attaches
“Pre” as well as “Post,” no matter
Once more,
in
Machado would be
the “playful pen” and the “melancholy ink”
to his fiction.
come
to the fore.
Susan Sontag also notes the strength to be derived from the simultaneous perception of contradictory viewpoints:
Our
standards of modernit)' are a system of flattering illusions, which permit us
selectively to colonize the past, as are
our ideas of what
mit some parts of the world to condescend to for a point
And
is
to love this
literature’s possibilities,
is
become
to
nition of the plagiarist. artistic
He
I
is
may
stand
less
provincial about literature, about
names
to voice
what Machado
really
is:
a
an author
who
“refuses to accept the traditional
invention since he himself denies the total freedom of the
(Santiago 37).
is
may
then conclude by proposing another defi-
He
is
a writer
whose
author should desire to be portrayed writer
Being dead
oneself (39-40)
Peripheral, provincial: different
artist”
rest.
which per-
one of the most entertainingly unprovincial books ever
book
creative reader, a plagiarist.
notion of
the
provincial,
of view that cannot be accused of being provincial. The Posthumous
Memoirs of Bras Cubas written.
all
is
someone who ultimately
is
originality
as “original.”
is
his
After
awareness that no all,
an “original”
not sufficiently well-read or whose libraty
only contains uninteresting volumes.
If it is
true that there are authors
who
THE AUTHOR AS PLAGIARIST
more than they
publish
who
Machado de most
Assis
is
fore-
who
name
is
Don
aware that he
fully
Pierre
is first
Menard. The Machadian
Menard. After
all,
plagia-
the project of
if
Quixote had been brought to fruition, then,
Cervantes would have become the
ends up being
plagiarist, as Satan’s libretto
contaminated by one of Shakespeare’s that, as
is
a successful Pierre
copying the integrity of
INTRODUCTION
and
a great author. His
nonetheless,
rist,
who
plays.
However, and
in spite of the fact
Susan Sontag guessed, “Borges, the other supremely great writer pro-
duced on that continent, seems Borges would not disagree as the old Italian
Machado de
to have never read
different
if
Machado de
names were attributed
Assis” (39),
to the plagiarist;
tenor claims: Shakespeare, or an obsessive reader of Othello,
Assis.
Acknowledgements
A
task such as The
Author
as Plagiarist
— The Case ofMaehado de
Assis
could
never have been achieved without ample collaboration. First and foremost,
want
to
thank Professors Victor]. Mendes and Frank
accomplishing
are
at the
a different institutional
F.
University of Massachusetts
and
Sousa.
The work
Dartmouth
is
I
they
shaping
intellectual place for Brazilian Studies in the
English-speaking world. This volume would not have been possible without their
commitment. Gina Reis has provided indispensable support
project. Valeria
for this
Souza and Sandra Sousa offered an invaluable collaboration
to the proofreading.
In the hnal stages of the editing process
Research Fellowship from the Alexander von to
I
counted on the benefit of
Humboldt Foundation.
conditions for the development of
The
want
leave,
my work.
Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro has granted
which has allowed
me
both
Thomaz
Pereira de
dedication in different
The Academia
Amorim Neto and Adriane Camara
moments of the
Brasileira
iconographic collection.
me
a research
to fully dedicate myself to this project, also spon-
CNPq and Prociencia (UERJ). Therefore, Professor Jose Eufs Jobim as well as my colleagues for their trust.
sored with funds from
its
I
a
thank Professor Joachim Kiipper, of the Freie Universitat, for creating per-
fect
project
I
want
I
must mention
to
thank
de Oliveira, whose
was most appreciated.
de Eetras has kindly given us permission to use
The
section “Picturing
xxxiii
an author
is
Borges has already christened the plagiarist
an author
is
ASSIS
than he could ever publish.
a render.^^^ Jorge Luis
becomes
then, conversely, the plagiarist
write,
much more
has read
MACHADO DE
THE CASE OF
-
Machado de
Assis”
Is
a
xxxiv
PORTUGUESE LITERARY & CULTURAL STUDIES
generous
result of this
and
Longo
Leila
would
I
mitment
offer.
for their
mention the
thank Professors Antonio Carlo Secchin
to
thank the
made
The Case of Machado de to
want
I
encouragement.
like to especially
to this project
13/14
whose
translators,
Assis entirely in English. Last
assistant to the editors,
Mark
belief in
The Author
possible to present
it
Streeter,
as Plagiarist
but not the
whose
and com-
—
I
want
and
intel-
least
alertness
ligence were fundamental to the final version of this volume. Because of the efforts of
many
Machado de
people,
Assis’
work
will hopefully attract a
much
wider readership.
Notes ^
This
was written thanks
text
Foundation.
also
I
want
to
to a Research Fellowship
from the Alexander von Humboldt
thank Professor Joachim Kiipper, of the Freie Universitat, for
his
support and encouragement. “
The
editing of the
volume
CNPq
is
the
outcome of a
research project
on the history of the novel
thank Ross Forman for help-
and Prociencia (UERJ).
I
want
to
ing in editing the original version of this introduction.
I
want
also to
sponsored by
in Brazil
his criticism ^ See
thank Victor Mendes’ for
and suggestions.
Rushdie.
^ See Allen.
am
1
alluding to Schwarz’s
A
Master on the Periphery of Capitalism.
I
will return to
traversed
by an almost
Later,
Schwarz’s reading of Machado’s fiction. ^ In spite of her unquestionable
naive usage of
awkward
adjectives,
commitment, Casanova’s book
such
is
languages, that contradict the premises of her
as
own argument. ^
Most
Machado would read the following passage with an ironic (although self-con“Machado de Assis is no longer unknown among us. Four of his novels and some
likely,
tained) smile:
fifteen or so short stories
have
now
appeared in English and have been greeted with a kind of
indignant wonder that this Brazilian author
even a ^
name
to us” (Caldwell,
Although important,
tion. Nonetheless, let Assis,
Machado
this discussion digresses
me recommend
international acclaim he deserves?”
And
widely recognized as a literary language is
in
1908 was not
from the main purpose of
this introduc-
in
1839 and died
Earl Fitz’s analysis of the problem. See his
where he asks the question: “why has
truth, unfortunately,
who was born
3).
it
taken so long for
Machado
he provides the answer: “Portuguese in
which quality
that Brazilian literature
is
literature
is
Machado de
to begin to receive the [...] is
simply not
written.” Therefore, “the
not recognized as constituting a significant
part of Western literature” (10-11). ^
A
cultural
orientalizing.” It is
I
phenomenon that Edward Said, referring owe this remark to Ross Forman.
worth remembering
that in
to another context, has called “self-
1924 Oswald de Andrade launched the “Manifesto da
poesia pau-brasil,” according to which “brazil-wood poetry” should be exported. However,
it
would not be a natural but a cultural commodity that was to be exported, suggesting that Brazil would only achieve autonomy through its culture, rather than through its natural resources, as
MACHADO DE ASSIS
THE AUTHOR AS PLAGIARIST - THE CASE OF
is
commonly
of
seated. In the ctirrent sittiation
“art for export,” the critical potential
The
times replaced hy an accommodation to foreign expectations.
Brasilwas hrst published in the Correio da
Manha on
March
8
1
most
Manifesto da poesia Pau-
924. There
1
is
XXXV
is
an English transINTRODUCTION
hy
lation available,
Stella
a
Sa Rego (see
Works
Cited).
on the French reception of Wagner, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe remarks:
In his study
“With
M. de
respect to this perfection of ‘l.atin’ art since the Renaissance, there
backwardness to the Cierman nation,
according to Wagner, inferiority into
and
this issue, see Stissekind
same
this
with Cioethe and
art really begins
an inferiority and
is
culturally ‘coloni7.ed’
This
[...].
who
Schiller,
why,
is
converted
this
an advantage” (42).
Regarding
On
German
and
artistically
isstie,
Baptista.
from the perspective of the African
literatures of
Portuguese expres-
sion, see Salinas Portugal, especially 15-20.
See Candido 70. ’5 Peter
relation
Burke
assumption that
of their approach: “The authors argue that the
offers a succinct definition
between centre all
anci periphery
both
is
complex and
a
a variable one.
They deny
the
lags are peripheral or that all peripheries lag” (xiii).
See Jobim.
Here this
Author of the Quixote”:
the famous passage, from Borges’ “Pierre Menard,
is
new technique
This technique
fills
is
the
most placid works with adventure. To attribute the Imitatio
Louis Fercfinanci Celine or to James Joyce, itual indications?” (44).
atribuciones erroneas.
The
this
is
original reads: “[...]
Esa tecnica ptiebla
[...]
Louis Ferdinand Celine o a James Joyce
de esos tenues avisos espirituales?”
la
argument
is
made even
how
can easily appreciate
clearer,
this
underdeveloped world, which
is
[...]
Christi to
not a stifhcient renovation of its tenuous spirtecnica ciel anacronismo deliberacio y de las aventuras los libros mas calmosos. Atribuir a
la
cie
Imitacion de Cristo ^no es una suficiente renovacion
Obra 450).
{
Schwarz, “Brazilian Culture: Nationalism by Elimination” the
“[...]
anachronism and the erroneous attribution.
that of the deliberate
through
comment on
a
would enhance the
and
self-esteem
Some
7.
Foucault’s
paragraphs
earlier,
and Derrida’s work: “One relieve the anxiety
seen as a tributary to the central countries.
We would
of the
pass
from
being a backward to an advanced part of the world, from a deviation to a paradigm, from inferior to superior lands
(although the analysis set out to surpass just such superiority)”
Lukacs 155. Lukacs’ approach seems
to be
(6).
an ingenious adaptation of Lenin’s theory of
“the weakest link in the imperialist chain” to the realm of cultural history.
I
am
proposing to
re-read Lukacs’ insight through the notion of “belatedness as a critical project.”
Casanova
also develops the
notion that “Anachronism
characteristic of areas distant
is
Greenwich meridian” (100). However, I am more interested in proposing the concept of “compression of historical time,” in which the simultaneity of cultural appropriafrom the
literary
tions of several historical a succession
moments
brought to the
is
Roberto Schwarz has formulated perfectly Posthumous Memoirs unless
fore, instead
of supposing the linearity of
of aesthetic movements dictated by an invariable center.
we wish
the
somewhat
to ignore the facts of quality,
of literary criticism.
However, there
is
this
problem: “The discontinuity between the
colorless fiction of
which
Machado’s
are after
all
also a strict continuity,
first
phase
is
undeniable,
the very reason for the existence
which
is,
moreover, difficult to
establish” {Master 149). Assis,
um
de sens
Posthumous Memoirs livros para
cem
provavelmente consternara coenta,
nem
vinte, e
5.
e se este
quando muito,
difusa, na qual eu. Bras
The
original reads:
Cubas,
“Que Stendhal
Dez? Talvez cinco. Trata-se, na verdade, de
Um
Xavier de
que admira
e consterna.
outro livro nao river os dez.
confessasse haver escrito
O
nem nem cinuma obra
leitores, e coisa
se adotei a
forma
livre
cem
de
leitores
que nao admira, de Stendhal,
Sterne ou de
um
xxxvi
PORTUGUESE LITERARY & CULTURAL STUDIES
13/14
Maistrc, nao sd sc Ihc meti algumas rabugciis de pessimismo.
com
Escrcvia-a
pcna da galhofa
a
Bluma Waddington
da melancolia
c a tinta
em
).
1
ser.
Obra de
finado.
problem
PhD
in her
dis-
Machado de Assis.” Memorias postumas de Bras Cubaf (1 IS-
See especially the chapter, “Cita^ao e autobiografia: IS
Podc
{Memorias postumas^l).
Vilar proposed an insightful reading of this
sertation: “Escrita e Icitura: cita^ao c autobiografia
ful
[...]”
Miirilo
Mendes
e
Vilar contbines Machado’s unefermining of traditional notions of authorship with a care-
study of what she
“Machado de
calls
As Bras Cubas explains
whom
dead
man who
The
original reads: “[...| e
writer, for
is
campa
autor, para quern a
Assis’
que
am
1
nao sou exatamente
cti
also
who
is
dead but
a
Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht’s
um
autor defunto, mas
um
defunto
[...1” (99).
Hansen 42. For an innovative reading of this ume. See
not exactly a writer
the grave was a second cradle [...]” {Posthumous Memoirs!).
outro bei\'o
foi
system of citation.”
to the reader: “1...]
Victor Mendes’ essay in this vol-
issue, see
essay for another approach to Machado’s narrative
devices as instances of a “second-order observer,” according to Niklas
Luhmann’s
definition.
“Already in the “Warning to the Reader,’ put at the beginning of Ressurrei
in his
ou quatro
pocket”
(3).
will
is
this: ‘an
decide that this older definition
The
original reads:
outro daqui ate ao fim Ihe
guardo rancor. E
vezes; tanto bastou para
Ha
livros
[sentido]
que Ihe pos o vulgo de
homem
dos
caJado e metido
“The
definition
we 2).
cio livro, vai este
isso
ele
Santiago better than the one //coffers” {Brazilian Othelb
“Tambcmi nao achei melhor
que apenas terao
que
obstinate, moodily, stubborn, wrong-headed man.’ Perhaps fits
com pequeno
original reads:
bolso” (67).
consigo” (67). Helen Caldwell mistrusts the narrator’s elucidation, and asks keenly:
he did not want us to see
enough
his
fechei os olhos tres
original reads: “[...]
and
short,
and closed
and put
interrompesse a leitura e metesse os versos
The
tired,
mesmo.
esfor(;o,
O
sendo o
setts atitores;
tftulo para a
meu
narraejao; se
nao
tiver
poeta do trem ficara sabendo que nao
tftulo seu,
alguns
minha
nem
podera cuidar que
tanto” (67).
a
obra e sua.
THE AUTHOR AS PLAGIARIST - THE CASE OF
Caldwell provides an insightful remark concerning
Machado de Assis. [...] Jealousy has a hit part though in stories turn upon the ugly passion
fascinate
—
ten short
an ironic
stressed this factor in
the
Machadian
Machado’s
universe.
marriage, as well
as,
from the
[...]
on the other hand, the
original reads: “Ciriou
how
1).
latter,
to he sure,
it
receives
Silviano Santiago has also
the problem of jealousy arose in
and
man and woman
games of marivaudage
union” (66). See also Param 198-206.
at
um
never ceased to
character’s conception of the nature of love
delicate
A
original reads: “Oeiis c o poeta.
The
seven of the
explaining “[..d
fiction,
comes
It
have to represent to be able to arrive
•^^The
this issue: “Jealousy
seven of his nine novels; the plots of
in
not rudely comic treatment” {Brazilian Othello
if
MACHADO DE ASSIS
nuisica c de Satanas [...]” (78).
tearro especial, este planeta, e inventou tuna
companhia
inteira [...]” (78).
39
“Q
uma excrescencia para imitar com alguma aparencia da compos a grande cSpera, nem essa Etrsa
no tetxo do poeta;
grotesco, por exemplo, nao esta
e
Mulheres patuscas de Windsor. Este ponto c contestado pelos satanistas
tempo em que o jovem Satanas
razao. 19izem eles que, ao
nem
Shakespeare eram nascidos.
senao transcrever a
da opera,
letra
composi^ao; mas, evidentemente,
Chegam com tal e
um
and using
in
it
there
still
is
literarily
The
original reads:
impede que
cena
seja tirada para outras peqas, e
“Machado 5).
“Genero "^2
In this context,
e estilo nas
lifting this or that
A
Semana, published
“A Revolu^ao Francesa e Otelo estao
que o
it is
escritor brasileiro,
uma
sem
1
^5
“O
important to
recall Jose
Memorias postnmas de Bras
alienista”
(“The
Psychiatrist”),
utmost. See The Psychiatrist
its
owe
this
remark
Machado, then,
is
to
Henning
Ciibas" {Coloquio! Letras [1972]: 12-20).
in the
toda a crea^ao; a
Machacio developed the parody of
and Other
know
that “there
is
no
literature,
scientific dis-
its
cations that can only exist in the act
extroversion, as if
it
loses itself
searching for themselves”
Ramalho
only interliterature;
methodology developed
paradigm, a paradigm capable of analyzing the
very process of
uma
Stories.
culture, only interculture.” This awareness implies a
production
a
e contara mais
Ritter.
Santos’ keen definition. Atlantic authors
no
O
Guilherme Merquior’s pioneering essay
part of the tradition of “Atlantic” writers, according to Irene
a post-nationalist analytical
nada
deixar de ser brasileiro, estivesse
original reads: “Conta tres fases Humanitas: a stdtica anterior comedo de todas as cousas; a dispersiva, aparecimento do homem; contractiva, absorp^ao do homem e das cousas” (260).
In
Gazeta
tradigao universal: a literatura” (Enylton Sa Rego,
The
course to
in
feitos;
assim se cometem, literariamente
expansiva, a
scene
A SemanaA^^).
julgava necessario
consciente de que sua obra pertencia a
calundn
proprio o autor da
speaking, acts of plagiarism” (165-
was extracted from one of the cronicas ^xom
falando, os plagios” (Assis,
nao teve outro genio ele
Machado’s own words: “The French Revolution and
de Notlcias, 28 July 1895. esta oti aqtiela
ingles
que parece
nothing to prevent one from
other dramas: thus are committed,
166). This passage
que o poeta
plagiario” (79).
In the sequence, Caldwell quotes
Othello have been written:
a afirmar
arte e fidelidade,
“in the light of
literary
and cultural
while searching for identifi-
(5).
PORTUGUESE LITERARY & CULTURAL STUDIES
13/14
Works Cited Allen,
Woody. “Dirctor
30 Jan. 2006. Assis,
Machado
elogia
Dom
Casmurro
e Central do Brasil." Folha de S. Paulo
I
Ilustrada,
wwwl .h)lha. uol.com.br/fsp/ilustrad/fq3001 200606.htm.
dc.
Dom
Casmurro. Rio de Janeiro: Civilizaqao Brasileira/Instituto Nacional do
Livro, 1977.
Dom
.
Casmurro. Irans. John Gledson. Oxford: Oxford
Memorias postumas de Bras Cubas. Rio de Nacional do Livro, 1977. .
UR
1997.
Janeiro: Civiliza^ao Brasileira/Instituto
The Posthumous Memoirs ofBras Cubas. Trans. Gregory Rahassa. Oxford: Oxford
.
The
.
Berkeley:
Psychiatrist
U
and Other
California
Stories.
1
997.
R 1963.
Quincas Borba. Rio de Janeiro: Civilizaqao Brasileira/Instituto Nacional do Livro, 1975.
.
Quincas Borba. Trans. Gregory Rahassa. Oxford: Oxford
.
UR
Barth, John. “Foreword.” The Floating Opera 6c The T?id of the Road.
—a
Baptista, Abel Barros. Autobibliografias Assis.
Lisbon: Relogio
D’Agua
do
solita^do
livro
Hundred Txemplary
1998.
New York:
na fic^do
Anchor,
Creative Minds.
New York:
Aires:
“Pierre
989.
Geniuses-.
A
Mosaic of One
Warner, 2002.
Borges, Jorge Luis. “Pierre Menard, autor del Quijote.” Obras Completas. Vol.
Buenos
1
na fic^do de Machado de
e
Editores, 1998.
Bloom, Harold. “Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (1839-1908).”
.
UR
Grossman and Helen Caldwell.
Trans. William L.
I.
Ficciones.
Emece, 1989.
Menard, Author of the Quixote." Trans. James
New York: New
A. Yates and James E. Irby.
E. Irby. Labyrinths.
Ed. Donald
Directions, 1964.
Burke, Peter. “Introduction: Carlo Ginzburg, Detective.” The Tnigma of Piero della Francesca.
By Carlo Ginzburg. Eondon: Verso, 2000. Caldwell, Helen. The Brazilian Othello of Machado de .
Machado de Assis-. The
Brazilian Master
Candido, Antonio. “Duas vezes
A.
Assis.
Berkeley:
and his Novels.
passagem do dois ao
U of California U of California
Berkeley:
tres.’” Textos
P,
P,
I960. 1970.
de interveriQo. Ed. Vinicius
Dantas. Sao Paulo: Duas Cidades/34 Eetras, 2003.
Casanova, Pascale. The World Republic of Letters. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2004. Castelntiovo, Enrico, and Carlo Ginzburg. “Centro e Periferia.” Storia dell’arte italiana. Vol.
1.
Turin: Giulio Einaudi, 1979. Fitz, Earl.
Machado de Assis. Boston: Twayne, 1989.
Fuentes, Carlos.
Machado de
la
Mancha. Mexico DF: Fondo de Cultura Economica, 2001.
Gledson, John. “Introduction.”
A
Master on the Periphery of Capitalism. By Roberto Schwarz.
Durham: Duke UP, 2001. Hansen, Joao Adolfo.
Dom
Casmurro-.
Simulacrum and Allegory.” Machado de Assis.
on a Brazilian Master Writer. Ed. Richard Graham. Austin:
Jobim, Jose Eufs, ed. Brasileira
A
Biblioteca de
Machado de
Assis.
U
of Texas
P,
Reflections
1999.
Rio de Janeiro: Topbooks/Academia
de Eetras, 2003.
Eacoue-Eabarthe, Phillippe. Musica Ficta (Figures de Wagner).
Paris:
Christian Bourgeois, 1991.
Eukacs, Georg. “Dostoyevsky.” Ensaios sobre Literatura. Ed. Eeandro Konder. Rio de Janeiro: Civiliza^ao Brasileira, 1968.
Mac Adam,
Alfred. “Review.” Hispanic Review
Csdi
(Winter 2000).
!
.
THE AUTHOR AS PLAGIARIST - THE CASE OF
Merquior, Jose Guilhcrmc.
“Cicncro
e
cstilo
MACHADO DE
ASSIS
XXX ix
Memorias postumas de Bras Cuhas."
nas
Cohkjuiol Letms [hhhoA] (1972): 12-20.
Param, Charles. “Jealousy
in
the Novels of
Machado de
Assis.” Hispania 53.2 (1970).
INTRODUCTION
Rouanet, Sergio Paulo. Machado de Assis e a subjetividade shandeana. Oxford: Centre for Brazilian Studies,
Oxford
“Machado
Rushdie, Salman.
University, 67-2005.
iniciou pedigree sul-americano.” Folha de Sdo Paido
July 2005. w'W'wl .folha.tiol.com.hr/fsp/ilustrad/fql
Sa Rego, Enylron de.
calundu
e
a panacaa. Machado de
Assis,
a
sdtira
menipeia
e
a tradd'do
Rio de Janeiro: Forense Universitaria, 1989.
lucidnica. .
O
Ilustrada, 12
207200525.html
Preface
—Warning: Deadly Humor
By Machado de
Assis. Trans.
at
Work.” The Posthumous Memoirs ofBrds Cubas.
Cregory Rabassa. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1997.
Salinas Portugal, Francisco. Entre Prospero e Caliban. Literaturas Africanas de
Lingua Portuguesa.
Caliza: Edicions Laiovento, 1999.
Santiago, Silviano.
Cazzola.
The Space In-Between. Essays on Latin American Cidture. Ed. Ana Lucia
Durham: Duke UP, 2001.
Santos, Boaventtira de Sousa. “Between Prospero
and
and Caliban: Colonialism, Postcolonialism,
Inter-Identity.” Luso-Brazilian Review?)^).! (2002).
Santos, Irene Ramalho. Atlantic Poets. Fernando Pessod s Turn in Anglo-American Modernism.
Hanover: Sarlo, Beatriz.
UP
of
New
England, 2003.
Una modernidad
periferica:
Buenos Aires 1920 y 1930. Buenos Aires: Nueva
Vision, 1988.
Schwarz, Roberto.
A
Master on the Periphery of Capitalism. Trans, and
intro.
John Cledson.
Durham: Duke UP, 2001. .
Misplaced
Ideas. Essays
on Brazilian Culture. Ed. and
intro.
John Cledson. London:
Verso, 1992.
Sontag, Susan. Where the Siissekind, Flora.
Stress Falls.
“Machado de Assis
New York: e a mtisa
Farrar, Strauss
and Ciroux, 2002.
mecanica.” Papas colados. Rio de Janeiro: Editora
UFRJ, 1993.
Bluma Waddington. “Escrita e leitura: cita^ao e autobiografia em Mtirilo Mendes Machado de Assis.” Diss. Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, 2001
Vilar,
e
Acts of Reading
Machado de Assis' Reception and the Transformation of the Modern European Novel
Earl E. Fitz
Abstract. This essay
evolution of the
is
concerned with Machado’s contribution to the
modern
My
novel’s form.
thesis
Machado now needs
innovations that he wrought,
of the modern novel’s great masters. In making three points: that he
1)
knew
did improve
that
in his it,
Machado knew
breaking
new ground
rank Machado de Assis novel and that
we can
among
argument,
could improve
for
its
it;
stress
I
form and structure 3) that
as the
and
Machado
2) that
in a series
we should now
the greatest practitioners of the
him
one
to be considered as
this
1880 and 1908; and
regard
because of the
the European novel very well
own mind how he
of works published between
that,
is
modern
“missing link” between Flaubert
and Proust.
My comments
in this essay center
on Machado de
a literary form. In the course of this discussion,
the particular techniques that as
he undertook what
Machado
believe
I
was
I
Assis’ sense of the novel as
shall also focus
on some of
either invented or surgically altered
his systematic
and
entirely deliberate
transformation of the European novel, which was, at the time, the genre’s
dehning of
critical context.
theme or
tivist (see
I
am
characterization,
not, therefore, primarily concerned with Issues
two of Machado’s
Nunes), except insofar
as these
ciated efforts (except, of course,
modern
narrative fiction.
Machado changed
My
by
greatest strengths as a narra-
aided and abetted his under-appre-
Brazilianists) to redefine the nature of
argument
is
twofold in nature:
the development of the late nineteenth-
and
first,
that
early twenti-
eth-century novel, and, second, that only now, by means of a comparative
44
PORTUGUESE LITERARY & CULTURAL STUDIES
we
methodology, can
my own as
13/14
see precisely
how
modern
revised view of the
he achieved
this goal. In terms, then,
development,
novel’s formal
Machado
see
I
of
providing the missing link between Flaubert and Proust, the writer whose
best
work
we have
presents us with the
most profound and most imaginative
transition
Western tradition from Realism to Modernism.'
in the
But when we claim that Machado transformed the modern novel, what, does
exactly, first,
that
mean?
this
responding to
In
Machado was keenly
found
and
intellectual
him
novel thus puts
Itself,
in
issues stand out:
exploring
an issue of pro-
as
it
Machado’s formal
artistic significance.
same category
in the
two
interested not just in writing fiction but in
form
actually renovating the novel
this question,
interest in the
such luminaries
as
as Flaubert,
James, and Proust, writers for
whom
impressed by Flaubert, put
was of the highest importance. Based on
it)
the “art of the novel” (as James, deeply solid
evidence regarding Machacio’s reading habits, his languages, and the numer-
we can
ous literary allusions that dot his work,
confidently conclude that he
was deeply knowledgeable about the European novel, even though tion did not, with the exception of Anatole France
(who was perhaps the
European champion of Machado’s work), recognize him It.
The second
vividly
issue
is
demonstrated
this tradi-
as a
that, as a critically discerning reader (a point
in
Machado’s famous critique of E^a’s
we
the European novel quite well, so well. In fact, that he
have
knew how
that he
we add
to this
Machado’s
to transform
own
his extraordinary originality,
to create
what
I
have
come
americana,” nor even the truly
to call not
first
a large extent.
It
is,
It is
it
is
and how
to
improve
“new
certainly
precisely the
easier to see
merely the
how and why he
first
tradition.
I
novelist
John Barth
to praise
do not think
this
is
first
an exces-
—and should—
defend.
oddly anachronistic quality of Machado’s
Machado
45), as a writer better
all,
decided
“nova narrativa latino-
post- 1880 work, both his novels as well as his stories, that led the
Machado
must
narrative” of the Americas, but the
one that we can
see
And when
it.
inventiveness, his iconoclasm, and, above
becomes
“modern” novel of the Western
sive claim; or, if
To
it
it,
in
O primo Basilio),
Machado knew felt
first
major player
as the
American
“proto-post-modernist”
(Fitz,
appreciated now, in the early years of the
twenty-first century (and even in the old irony laden uventieth century), than as a faithful
As
adept of the traditional
scholars like
took him into
Eugenio
realistic novel.
Gomes and
many different
literary
others have shown, Machado’s reading
and philosophical
traditions.
imize the marvelous complexity of his vision, however,
1
Not
believe
to
min-
we should
—
^
THE AUTHOR AS PLAGIARIST - THE CASE OF
on
Focus
European
three particular
traditions,
all
MACHADO DE
ASSIS
which were particu-
three of
45
FITZ
E.
larly
important For Machado and
his sense of
could do with the novel
what
EARL
and the Spanish. Space does not permit
genre: the English, the French,
me
to
attempt the sort of extended comparative reading that seeks to evaluate the
prime novels of these traditions endeavor would require
terms of Machado’s
in
at least a
book and, more
if
only
likely,
work
(such an
an entire lifetime of
comparison need
scholarship). Nonetheless, the salient points of
nized and considered, even
later
to be recog-
rudimentary Fashion. By examining,
in a
Madame Bovary, and Cervantes’s Don better see how Machado’s mature novels com-
then, Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, Flaubert’s Quixote,
pare to I
my hope
is
we can
that
what was being done
will seek to
show how,
in these other,
in effect,
and, in so doing, makes a major
—
contribution to the protean form
We can a novel
Machado
more canonical works. “reinvents” these
almost, as yet, wholly unacknowledged
if
we know
as the
modern
begin by looking at Laurence Sterne’s 1759
that,
as
many
novel.
classic,
Tristram Shandy,
have argued, exerted a considerable influence on
how he
Machado’s growing sense of
himselF might begin to cultivate a
kind of novel (Caldwell 99; Bloom 673-680). Brazilianists
Specifically,
European models
know, many opportunities
The two
new
texts provide, as
For comparative study: a comical selF-
conscious narrator, a constant dialogue with the reader, the role oF death, tex-
prominent
tual digressions (particularly
comes
the time the entire narrative
and numerous Formal
old!),
to
in Tristram’s case, so
much
an end our hero
barely five years
such
surprises,
as
marbled, pages. “Even Bras’ famous pessimistic’ points out,
“may stem from
Corporal Trim: this
“[...]
final sentence,” Fielen
have neither wiFe or child
I
—
I
Caldwell
Toby Shandy’s
valet.
can have no sorrows
in
world” (99).
my intention
But
whom
here
to pinpoint
is
Harold Bloom regards
as
them
as
he does. Basically,
tonal, the structural,
upon
Sterne’s
Machado,
Far
and the
From being
unimaginative recreator oF particularly in terms of
Readers and
critics
in
readerly, all I
think
it
issues
Machado,
“Foremost disciple in the
and how
think these issues
1
work. Indeed,
which of these many
Sterne’s
World” (674), seems most interested
art.
missing words and black, or
uttered by
a remark”
is
so that by
Fall
New
—and why— he changes into three categories: the
oF which show Machado expanding
can be shown quite convincingly that
a passive receptor of his predecessor’s art or it,
an
actually goes considerably further than Sterne,
what we might
call
the epistemological basis oF his
have long applauded the breeziness and slightly
46
PORTUGUESE LITERARY & CULTURAL STUDIES
naughty tone of
13/14
Sterne’s text. In general, Tristram’s tale does evince a basic
geniality, or sentimentality, that
hard to
is
resist.
This sauciness,
in fact, surely
stands as one of the novel’s most attractive features.
Machado’s As Memorias Postumas de Bras Cabas, on the other hand,
up what novel
is
1
think
a
is
—some
much
darker
comedic
certainly
—
American novels ever written
indeed,
say pessimistic
—
ranks as one of the funniest Latin
it
— but under
the smiling visage of
and subtly unreliable narrator/protagonist
scious, ironic,
offers
outlook. Machado’s
it
is
self-con-
its
and
also grim,
never more so than at the end, where our thoroughly defunct narrator famously (perhaps even cynically) declares that
ahead of the game because he,
Because on arriving balance, which
like
when he
died, he
other side of the mystery
at this
—
I
had no children,
I
haven’t transmitted the legacy of our misery to any creature. {Posthumous 203)
1
have long
that
felt
it is
reader
is
ming up
left
with,
and
word of
a verbal sign that
maintained by the Bras Cubases of
morality of capitalism,
this
thus elects to have
the narrative, the last thought the
comes devastatingly
and
the kind of cruel, hypocritical,
elation (which, deriving
Machado
not for nothing that
“miseria” (“misery”) be the final
close to
world.
Stunned by
from unchecked egoism,
with our
head
this chilling rev-
jovial narrator
my
is all
what we have
upbeat note,
just
is
a great put-on, a delight-
had the pleasure of
participating: “L-d! Said
this story
And one
Yorick.
much more
a
seemingly giving us a wink and a knowing nod of the
which we have
mother, what
pon-
wonder
needs to be reconsidered.
by way of contrast, ends on
in order to signal that
ful farce in
now
and
also calls into question the
socio-political analogue), the reader can only
its
everything that he has said and done Tristram’s story,
sum-
exploitative society erected
der the earlier words and deeds of the seemingly affable narrator and if
little
found myself with a small
I
the final negative in this chapter of negatives
is
was actually a
Corporal Trim, had engendered no children:
just read
A COCK and a BULL,
about?
of the best of
its
kind,
I
said
ever heard” (539). Riven
with cynicism and bleak in terms of its prognosis for our future happiness (or for
our future period, since,
end of the human
knowing wink body blow,
race!).
we
all
took Bras’ position,
us
and
punch
that,
it
would
spell the
funny narrative ends not with
a
and the reader but with
a
of complicity between the narrator
a thematic
wind out of
if
Bras’ similarly
to the solar plexus that unexpectedly
knocks the
suddenly and dramatically, thrusts our face into
^
THE AUTHOR AS PLAGIARIST
what
-
MACHADO
THE CASE OF
later critics will call the sense of despair that characterizes the
condition.
The
DE ASSIS
modern
47
FITZ
E.
darkness that inhabits Bras’ outwardly witty and urbane voice EARL
is,
what
believe,
I
John Barth
led
to see in
Machado’s groundbreaking novel
not only the essence of postmodernism but, more importantly, the road to
more
nihilism, or,
how
precisely,
the road in this direction might, ironically
enough, be negotiated via the comic mode. Barth had wanted to write about nihilism and texts (then just
had found
that he
felt
appearing
in
ture
published novel, eventually
two other very
then,
can be easily identified between the two
ing idea of a page without words
—
know, ends chapter XII of volume by the words,
“Alas,
poor
dominates the entire
to
do with
first
I
with a page that
YORICK!” volume),
texts,
stands out from
all is
(a reference to a
this black,
one the
issues of struc-
many
be played by the reader. Although
role to
—
the
rest.
structural
still
daunt-
Sterne, as
we
totally black. Prefaced
character
whose death
wordless page, in the opinion
and typographical
of Robert Alter, “reduces death to a literary
between
clear differences
Shandy Awd the post- 1880 Machado have
and with the
parallels
first
of The Floating Opera).
title
In addition to tone, Tristram
Machado’s three great middle
English translation) what he thought was the key
in
to achieving this (the novel in question, his
appearing under the
a novel
joke, yet para-
doxically confronts us with death as an ultimate, irreducible fact, the final
opaqueness beyond the scope of language and narrative invention, beyond even the tracery of significant black lines on the white ground of a printed page” (95).
I
agree with Alter in his interpretation of the black page’s func-
tion in the context of Sterne’s novel. But, given the purpose of this essay,
want
to consider for a
to this
famous page,
tunity to break
I
moment what seems to have been Machado’s reaction is, how Machado seems to have seen in it an oppor-
that
new ground,
and, in
fact, to establish
what
I
believe
was one
of his most important contributions to the modern novel form: not merely the role of language in
it
—
that
is,
the question of proper style
— but
the very
nature of language itself
What
I
mean by
this
is
the following: for
Postnmas de Bras Cabas, creates a narrator
overcome by language,
it is
beyond Sterne, showing
transformed by
us, in fact, that
Machado (who,
who it.
language and narrative invention,” not even
it
in
As Memorias
deceased), death
In other words,
nothing
shows us that language and narrative do not they create, shape, and imbue
is
lies
is
not only
Machado
goes
“beyond the scope of
life itself
More than
really describe reality as
with significance. Death
is
this,
he
much
as
death, of course.
PORTUGUESE LITERARY & CULTURAL STUDIES
but
meaning
its
for us
is
Meaning, Machado
tion.
always a function of language and narrative inveninsists,
tion of language, fliis point
Bras Cubas
—and
13/14
is little
more than the production and
comes up repeatedly
in
Machado’s other post- 1880 narratives
in
haps nowhere so pointedly or delightfully
de Adao e Eva” (“The Venerable Dialogue of
Adam and
as well
“O
chapter 55,
as in
recep-
As Memorias Postumas de
— but
per-
Velho Dialogo
Eve”),
which
offers
us a wordless yet elaborate dialogue between our hero. Bras Cubas, and his
equally self-centered paramour, Virgflia. Instead of words, however, gives us punctuation
marks (has any writer ever used the
than Machado?)5 to guide our response to
tively
exchange.
My
point
is
it
to
do (be
whelmed by genre
—
is
a perfect
medium
Machado
reality,
more
effec-
sexually charged
that while Sterne basically says that, in the face of an
event as insurmountable as death, language
want
ellipsis
this
Machado
—
busy developing what
cannot do what we
it
of communication), and that
in
is
that
fails,
a
in effect a
it is
over-
breakthrough for the novel
radical
new
theory of language, a the-
ory that basically argues that nothing overcomes language, and that language essentially defines
much
who and what we
our sense of
are, that
reality
is
not so
imitative (as in the traditional sense of mimesis) but creative. For
Machado, language thus trumps
reality,
and unstable semiotic system;
Machado, language,
siveness,
becomes the
as his sardonic,
for
real subject
rendering
it,
in the process, a fluid
in
all its
semantic elu-
matter of his post- 1880 narratives
—even
metahctive, and exceedingly disengaged narrator. Bras Cubas,
leads us (albeit ironically) to
make some very
serious judgments about the
nature of the world in which he and his characters lived.
For me, the clearest proof of tive
innovation that
this
comes
Machado undertakes
—
in
what
is
the third basic narra-
the role of the reader in the con-
struction of the text’s meaning. Indeed, this development, coupled with his
new
sense of the symbiotic relationship between language and being,
well be Machado’s greatest single innovation in
modern
narrative.
may
Although
the importance of the reader had long been recognized (as in Sterne),
Machado’s revolutionary approach
to the matter
was unprecedented,
ularly in terms of the reader’s response to the relativistic
nature of meaning. Interestingly, this
Bloom, who
is
a conclusion also suggested
writes that the “genius of Machado de Assis
reader, address
him
is
partic-
and quicksilver by Harold
to take hold of his
frequently and directly, while avoiding mere ‘realism’”
(680). In contrast to Sterne,
who,
talk constantly to the reader,
as
we know,
also has his narrator Tristram
Machado, working through the mouth of
his
THE AUTHOR AS PLAGIARIST
THE CASE OF MACHADO DE ASSIS
bourgeois Bras Ciihas, actually makes his reader
the deceased
narrator,
-
49
FITZ
E.
become not merely involved but
actively involved 'm the interpretation of the EARL
The
text.
reader’s role
for the
itself,
first
emerges from out of the
time
in
modern Western
text itself
narrative, as
and thus
what
destabilizing force of dijfemnce in the literary experience.
is
establishes
essentially the
Although Tristram
does occasionally berate his reader for being obtuse or for being too gullible,
Machado’s agenda
is
more extreme, with
the Brazilian master not only berat-
ing his reader but, gradually, as the text progresses, pressing her, like
it
or not,
into confronting the basic semantic mutability of language, into
becoming
part of the text itself and, finally, into accepting responsibility for
any mean-
ing that
may
be adduced from
Sterne’s reader
is
In a nutshell,
it.
I
Machado’s reader
basically passive,
is
engaged, an active accomplice in what Borges would
mediable
artifice of fiction.
and
more importantly, by the marvelous
Virgflia that have preceded
while a reader
able to argue that this
choosing to
demand
hypocritical social that prohibit
who
a scene in
is
—and — get
doing
as
play.
Thus,
so.
a religiously
not about to undertake an
has strong feminist views cheers at being
which
a strong,
determined
sexual freedom for herself
mores that allow
women from
55 by means of punctu-
every reader supplies the interpretative
it,
devout reader wants to see Bras and Virgflia affair,
forced to be active and
later describe as the irre-
characterizations of both Bras
words that she or he most wants to have come into
adulterous
that while
This explains why, although Machado guides his
reader’s response to the wordless dialogue of chapter
ation and,
would argue
men
like Bras to
Working with
have
the very
and
woman
is
to defy the
illicit affairs
but
same language
as
the narrator works with, the reader has to provide the missing meaning. Put
another way,
Machado
the interpretive act
As tive” est
early as
1
structures his novel
—
itself
880, then,
and builds the reader into
rather than the story
Machado de
but a “new reader” as well and
Assis
this,
I
is
—
it
so that
begins to reign supreme.
creating not only a
believe, constitutes
“new
narra-
Machado’s great-
innovation, his most definitive contribution to the art of fiction. Machado’s
final
word on
Critic”), in
pects tive”
is
which
seems to come
.
.]
in chapter 138,
a hitherto patient narrator,
“A
Um
Crftico” (“To
now exasperated with what
A
he sus-
not just the reader’s failure to grasp the requirements of his “new narra-
but the failure of the
My [.
this
dear I
critical
establishment to do so as well, writes:
critic,
don’t
mean
that I’m older
now
than
when
I
began the book. Death doesn’t age
50
PORTUGUESE LITERARY & CULTURAL STUDIES
one.
do mean
1
that in each phase of the narration of
Good
sponding sensation.
Overall, then,
appreciated
all
he recognized
13/14
Do
Lord!
1
was innovative
that
how
would
I
like
think
1
now
to offer a
Cervantes’
Don
how
sense of
larly difficult to
in Tristram
how
Shandy,
than
also
compare.
clear that
radicalized Sterne.
novels,
Partly, this
novel than
Flaubert’s
the parallels between
is
because
Madame
Madame 1
Tristram Shandy,
Flaubert as being
as a vehicle
seems
he might extend and deepen
few observations about two other highly
much
regard
and
work of Art (Nunes
by means of which
a story
Bovary as a
his
rela-
its
particu-
is
more
artisti-
partly because
I
see
issues, particularly
as narrative
72), as
influ-
Bovary and
Machado and
it
on some key
alike
Romanticism and Realism
and, 2) a belief in the novel as a
a reader.
it
recognized and
protean genre might be further refined. In terms of
cally sophisticated
1)
Machado
clear that
tionship to Machado’s mature work, the case of
two:
experience the corre-
Quixote, both of which were important for
this
Machado and
I
and thematic breakthroughs achieved by
Machado
and canonical European
ential
it is
he might go further,
several of the structural, stylistic,
Sterne. In short,
life
have to explain everything? {Posthumous 183)
think that while
1
my
an
modes,
form rather
art
could be told to and received by
Disillusioned with Romanticism and contemptuous of Realism
(which for him was too closely associated with the hated bourgeoisie), Flaubert, like ing,
and
the page
Machado, understood
that Art
that “composition, the achievement of the finely cadenced sentence,
wrought
like poetry, the
book
taining unity” was the creative activity trate.
was the only goal worth pursu-
as internally
on which the
balanced and self-susartist
should concen-
Content would never again be separable from form. For both Machado
and Flaubert,
“art alone”
could
offer,
and
be,
something
something
else,
higher and better than the middle-class culture whose crass and meretricious values
dominated the worlds of both Flaubert and Machado. To paraphrase
an argument advanced by Stephen Heath concerning the French Flaubert, like
Machado,
“initiates a subversion of the novel
—of
the bourgeois appropriation of the world, of the expression of ‘reality’”
As
its
coherent
(Heath 31, 147).
a point of distinction
between the two
be noted that while both Flaubert and realistic
writer,
the genre of
novel as a form,
unreliable narrators,
writers, however,
Machado undermine,
Machado, expanding
and reader response,
his
it
must
also
or “subvert,” the
experiments with irony,
also subverts the bourgeois notion
THE AUTHOR AS PLAGIARIST
-
THE CASE OF
of language as a stable, objective, and hilly controllable
new concern with language
nication. This radically
MACHADO DE ASSIS
medium of commu-
51
FITZ
E.
(and, specifically, with the EARL
semantic instability of language) rather than with a particular literary form constitutes a major difference between Flaubert lights the latter’s singular
While
importance to the
our Western tradition Flaubert
in
of literary Realism and, at the
tem of
artistic creation
“reality
is
from
good;
his
own
isn’t
identical, the positions of Flaubert
novel) suggest, to
me
at least, that this
would have found
Flaubert
it.
We
novel form and to
question. Then, too,
would
Madame
as
we know
do
to
as
But should we
so.
it is
fascinating to imagine a con-
this
still
vis-a-vis
imperfectly understood
work was
well
known
to
both Romanticism and
what Flaubert was trying
to
critics,
Dom
(In
terms of the art of the novel),
Indeed, Silviano Santiago, one of contemporary has written that
Machado kept Madame Bovary
in writing the text that
would eventually
Casmurro (Santiago 47).
really say that
think not. Rather,
Machado
aes-
they relate to the crafting of the
situation
mind” while engaged
become known
of the
Machado and
ground, had they been able to
that Flaubert’s great
own
his
the
he would have understood what Flaubert wanted to achieve
most acute
I
and Machado
Bovary and, more importantly
“Intact in his
Bovary\
common
ques-
reality,
for the art
an issue on which
certainly have appreciated
And
why he wanted
ways,
is
that,
are far
this decisive
between language and
two of them regarding
Machado, who, given Realism,
claim to
Coutinho,
to Afranio
and Machado on
status as Art. Indeed,
its
versation between the
accomplish.
a lot of
its
need more rigorously comparative examinations of the
thetic views of Flaubert
Brazil’s
and of
problem of verisimilitude, and what these mean
aesthetic
in
it
both the creator
worth anything.” Although they
tion (the nature of Realism, the relationship
discuss
for being
skepticism of Realism as a sys-
by declaring, according
Realism that
it’s
famous
high-
it
novel’s peculiar ethos.
same time, disdainful of
we have Machado showing
veracity,
is
and Machado, and
modern
I
Dom
think
Casmurro
we should
is
an imitation of
Madame
say that, in several important
actually surpasses Flaubert, exceeding him, or diverging
from
him, in certain areas of narrative experimentation. For example, as Maria Luisa
Nunes
argues, at a time
when
writers such as Flaubert
and Henry James
were insisting on the “disappearance” of the narrator, Machado was actually experimenting with
new forms of unlimited omniscience (Nunes
omniscience that could be more unlimited, or that of a gimlet-eyed
dead bourgeois
at least
like Bras
more
21)
—an
unfettered, than
Cubas! While Flaubert, by
52
PORTUGUESE LITERARY & CULTURAL STUDIES
means
13/14
of his famously “objective” indirect style {le style indirect libre), neither
praises nor
condemns Emma’s
what we must regard
as a
Machado
actions,
more complex
the text
itself
emerges
as the
trolled, perfectly balanced,
reign supreme.
If,
as
main
character,
and one
in
Casmurro,
one that
narrative structure,
and theme, one
erately anti-realistic in style, structure,
Dom
creates, in
is
delib-
which the play of
in
which
con-
a carefully
and continuously decentering ambiguity comes
Tony Tanner contends,
two conflicting semiotic systems
Emma
to
is
caught not between
(reality vs. unreality)
“but [between] two
ways of using language, two different modes of constituting ‘meaning,’” Machado’s more
tragic narrator,
embittered old
man who,
expressed
—
Casmurro,”
that at an earlier period in his
and caused the death of
rectly
“Dom
is
an
just the opposite,
— never
by an inner
perhaps destroyed
fear
interpreted something incor-
life //c
several innocent people,
he begins his very self-conscious narration of just
how
painfully aware as
is
profoundly language
can be manipulated. Eor Tanner, the “fog” in Emma’s head “can be attributed to a large extent to her
vague and hopeless yearning for a kind of meaning
which she was born seems
that the existing language into religious
and romantic vocabularies,
deliver or bestow” (59). For
Dom
in
enced
Casmurrds
crafty, calculating
(in this case, himself),
he knows
full well that
meaning
theme. Meaning,
text’s
in
it
in close consort
reception, slowly emerges as the
Machado shows
us,
turns out to be entirely
the process of signification requires that the signifier
tle,
illusion
what we make
is
working
this absolutely revolutionary vision,
Dom
no such
head; a career lawyer, and thus experi-
malleable, a function always of time, place, circumstance,
so too does
can no longer
it
there exists
its
of any given case in ways that benefit his client
with the role the reader plays in the novel’s great
but that in fact
Machado, however,
in presenting the facts
out to be, and
etc.),
promise (with
to
and
and the
desire. Just as
signified differ,
Casmurrds supposed “master discourse” undercut, disman-
or deconstruct itself via the several secondary discourses that are inscribed
it,
one of which, of course,
he wants to create along with chapters in
Dom
is
his
“new
Machado’s
many ends up
ideal
new
reader, the
narrative.” This explains
Casmurro deal not with one of the
the craft of fiction writing and that for
that of
why so
several plot lines but
the reader’s necessarily active role in
challenging the account of what happened as
it,
out by the narrator.^ So while Flaubert’s text simply refuses to judge
it is
character’s actions,
claim to
Machado’s shows us
know anything with
why we
cannot
absolute certainty, and
why
its
why we in the
one
many with
a role
spun
main
cannot
end we
are
THE AUTHOR AS PLAGIARIST - THE CASE OF
effectively lost in the “prison
house of language,” trapped
tem
that (prefiguring Kafka)
we can
Not
to put too
MACHADO DE
in a
ASSIS
semiotic sys-
53
FITZ
E.
comprehend nor
neither fully
control. EARL
I
come away
Hue
a point
feeling, as
I
on
it,
but whenever
suggested
reread
I
Machado
these days,
our Brazilian master discov-
earlier, that
ered the essence of dijferance long before Derrida coined the term. Although
he would have eschewed the jargon that accompanies poststructural thought,
Machado would have immediately recognized
MacAdam
“Flying in the face of Realism,” Alfred
most
its
basic
principles.
“Machado chose
writes,
fantasy” and, in so doing, “found a structure he could adapt to a representa-
more
tion of Brazilian reality with
attempted to rewrite than
this,
Madame
Machado de
which language
success than he
would have had
Assis wrote the
first
he had
novel in the Western tradition in
and mutable force that
the real protagonist, the elusive
is
if
Bovary in a Brazilian setting” (17-18). More
shapes characters, that determines their actions, and that leads the reader to
make
judgments about
certain
thinks about
it,
In the space
(judgments
then begin to interrogate their 1
have remaining,
about Machado and
whose
all
it
tragic sense
Don
I
would
own
by saying
like to finish
Quixote, another text that
the reader
reliability).
few things
a
Machado knew
well
and
of loss, of failure, infuses Qiineas Borba (1891), the second
Machado’s so-called mature period and
great novel of
more
that, the
a text that continues his
experimentations with metacritical allegory, with anti-realistic narrative, and
with the reader’s role in tragedy
— though no
world’s saddest that
Quixote
it
we not
hero,
that
whose
we
get at the
basically
Well
—
if,
reality),
and then again
by
a baser one?
And
Cubas, you
and no. Although
that equates the defeat of idealism in
were with us today, and
it
at the
if
is
this
is
a
to be the 1
mean is
is
forced
end,
when Don
The
defeat of a
not essentially the
end of Quineas Borba, with the expiration of our
and rapacious society
— Qiineas Borba— deep down yes
Qiixote
than Dostoevsky once declared
in the tradition of Bras
question
Don
was about disillusionment. What
good but perhaps naive
exploited by the deceitful
own
not arguing that
witnessing the death of idealism?
higher, nobler kind of existence
same ethos
am
enters into the castle of the cruel dukes (and
dreams degraded into dies, are
I
less a figure
book because
when Don Quixote
to see his
all.
it
I
know
it
am Don
I
is
in
aspirations are hopelessly
which he
will
permit
finds himself?
me
to
answer
attracted to this reading
my
—one
Quixote to Rubiao’s demise in
not entirely
justified. If Aristotle
he had read these two novels, he would point out
immediately that Cervantes’s hero and Machado’s hero are two very different
54
PORTUGUESE LITERARY & CULTURAL STUDIES
creations,
end up
and
though not entirely lacking
that their stories,
—
bring this reading up
1
am wondering
I
that animates
Machado wanted
the very kind that
So why do
Don
and
Machado,
if
if
in
to create.
do not even
I
socially
believe in
myself?
it
recognizing the source of the power
Quixotes famous conclusion (his crushing disillusionment
saw
in the castle of the dukes),
a
—an
way
dying Cervantes’s great novel, of rewriting as
in similarities,
eliciting very different responses in the alert, questioning,
aware reader
Well,
13/14
ironic way, to be sure it
for his
—of
own time and
paro-
place.
If,
Araripe Junior, John Gledson, and David Haberly have suggested, Rubiao
represents the Brazil of
Dom
Pedro
and the Empire, then
11
much
does not provoke a sense of tragedy so that the
Empire collapsed because,
one “held together by
tion,”
different situation than the lels
its
as
bathos and frustration, a sense
words,
in Elaberly’s
was
it
H”
central character, Pedro
one Cervantes
his pathetic death
(xv).
really a “fic-
This
is
a very
although again, the paral-
creates,
are not altogether wanting, particularly in terms of the social significance
that the
two
texts exhibit.
Quixote does
in
One might
some way symbolize
violent world, then the death of
however, that
say,
if
the death of
Don
the defeat of idealism in a deceptive and
Rubiao turns
around, emphasizing,
this
instead of the death of idealism, the utter victory of both “savage capitalism”
and of what Santiago describes
hypocrisy. Yet
world,
there
if
is
we would have
And life
—
it is
conclude it is
and economic
perhaps
all
slavery
and
of this
that, in the end,
fatally
—
defeat.
If
too
fails
because, as
the invidious, anti-heroic nature of
mouths
Borba. Although he does not recognize
else.
it
nineteenth-century Brazil. ^
it
after
Don
we
finish reading
as such, Rubiao’s
of the Empire, may, the reader finally feels, be
dukes than anything
of exploitation and
“misplaced,” ill-suited to the toxic
realities of late
that puts the bitter taste in our
comes with the
modernization” (121), the
deceit,
a bit of idealism struggling to survive in Rubiao’s
to
Roberto Schwarz has shown, social, political,
as “savage Brazilian
and
utter victory of materialism
more
modern Quincas
world, the world
like the castle
Quixote leads us to
feel
of the
the pathos that
defeat of idealism, then Quineas Borba leads us to feel just
Eeaden and depressing. As Machado’s narrator resignedly opines
the end of the novel,
commenting
to the reader
on the
deaths of Quincas Borba, the man, and Quincas Borba, the faithful dog:
I
should
like to
speak here of the end of Quincas Borba,
ceaselessly, ran off
unhinged
in search of his master,
who
at
significance of the
also
fell ill,
whined
and was found dead on the
THE AUTHOR AS PLAGIARIST - THE CASE OF
Street
one morning three
MACHADO DE
But on seeing the death ol the dog told
clays later.
ASSIS
55
FITZ
in a sep-
E.
you
possible that
arate chapter,
it’s
who
book
will ask
me
whether
he or his
it is
namesake
late
EARL
gives the
its title
and why one instead ol the other
with questions that would take us recent deaths
you have
il
fiir
along
you have only
tears. II
Come
[...].
is
The
so high
up
that
it
sense ol these lines,
which bring the novel
Weep
now!
behold
to
can’t discern the laughter or tears
pregnant
a c|uestion
laughter, laugh!
rhe Southern Cross that the beautilul Sophia relused her
—
It’s
as
two
lor the
same
the
thing,
Rubiao had asked
of men. (271)
to
its
exudes a near
close,
palpable sense ol existential despair, ol futility and ol impotence in the face ol a seemingly indillerent universe.
And
if this is
not exactly the cathartic
purging of emotions that Aristotle looked for in tragedy, then be read
least,
as a call for action, for the creation
and more equitable form of governance reader
may
for Brazil.
be justified in feeling that Machado,
might,
it
at
of a new, more authentic,
Read
in this fashion, the
in his inimitably ironic and
modern
Brazil
must not
be allowed to become yet another dreary version of the dukes’
castle,
the place
metaphoric
style,
is
where dreams come
telling us, in Qtiincas Borba, that
to die.
In conclusion, then,
let
me
say that
I
main
believe there are three
areas in
which we can say Machado transformed the European novel of his time: the
nature of the narrative voice,
metafictive,
and the
the
—
vital link
between the
and the reader
text
and
sense of the relationship between language
may
be viewed as the
fairly
first full
legitimate precursor to both structuralism
the creation of a
new kind of
reader,
expression
I
believe
was seeking to give ideas
it
Iser,
we can
more
wings, elevating
its
with
that,
new con-
its
(of
Logos terrible
modern world (and
as a
poststructuralism), and, three,
much
Riffaterre in
develop-
later
of the work of
particular.
clearly that, in larger terms,
liberate the traditional novel
narrated
is
we have of the
in general but
and Michael
also see
one
one who anticipates the
ment of not only reader-response theory Stanley Fish, Wolfgang
and
ironic,
typically
established; second, a
is
reality,
disillusionment that underscores our sense of the
together,
—
and our concept of truth
stant probing of both verisimilitude itself),
Machado
for
and unreliable vehicle by means of which the story
first,
Taken
Machado
from the bondage of Realism and
status as a self-referential art
about both epistemological and ontological
issues
form
—
built
chief
on new
among
these
being Machado’s concerns over language, being, truth, and knowledge. In thinking about
Machado and
his reception
of the European novel,
I
hope
that
.
56
PORTUGUESE LITERARY & CULTURAL STUDIES
may
these categories
13/14
be of some use to us
as
narrative art into the larger discussion of the
ment. To the extent that
something that
we can
we
seek to integrate Machado’s
modern
novel’s formal develop-
we
achieve this goal,
will
have accomplished
not only eminently justified but long overdue as well.
is
Notes See Fitz 1990.
'
1880 and 1908, believe that
I
should also add
think
1
Machado continues
^
refers to the
this
same reference
moment As
more
having any children
it
it
at the
me
(in conversation),
time of his death also func-
hearkens back to the child that Virgflia
takes
it
narrative” that he (see
up the problem
is
intrinsic,
rator himself,
and not
“Dom
to create the
LaCapra),
of
how
eventually plays the role
who
of, first,
is
trial
portion of
Madame
a
Dom
judgment, about what happened
prosecutor, for example,
i.e.,
is
the nar-
seeking a particular verdict (guilty) from the reader,
defense attorney (gradually
—
i\\ 2lX.
Casmurro. For Machado, however, this
The
coming
evidence and, on the basis of her or his reaction to
the alleged adultery of Capitu
Bovary
the novel should be read, with the roles of prose-
extrinsic, to the text itself
Casmurro,”
the
it is
to develop.
to subject that
cannot be “convicted” on the basis of circumstantial evidence alone) and then listens to the
for a
and questioning response “new reader” that Machado felt
was simultaneously seeking
cutor and defense attorney having parallels with
who
open
and, perhaps, consider other possible meanings.
and thus helps
As Dominick LaCapra notes
“trial”
lost
serves to build the reader’s active, engaged,
“new
crucial to the
most obviously
who
oversight that
become pregnant.
so that the reacier will contemplate
directly into the text itself
was so
also
“Influence”; “John Barth’s.”
Fitz,
mechanism, then,
a
critical
I
an inter-
in
In terms of punctuation, of course, the ellipsis serves to keep a thought
5
between
that
study the novel
of Yale University has pointed out to
to Bras’ not
(apparently by Bras) she had
See
is
following passage: Tristram Shandy, lV.4.220-221
tions as a kind of ironic double negative in that
when
who
overlooked by scholars
that this amounts to an egregious work should now be correcting.
As Professor K. F2avid Jackson however,
my basic point, which
and
the great Brazilian’s
Caldwell
underpinning
Assis rather radically transformed the novel genre,
to be
national and comparative context
we who know
that,
Machado dc
it,
juror, the
must render
real self-destruction
of the narrator,
person
a decision,
our interpretation of the novel’s two basic
and the very
Capitu
conflicts,
his transfor-
mation from the callow youth. Bento Santiago, into the self-centered monster,
“Dom
Casmurro.” ^ See
Schwarz.
Works Cited Alter, Robert. “Sterne
Harold Bloom. Assis,
Machado
de.
and the Nostalgia
New York:
for Realin^” Laurence Sterne
s
Tristram Shandy. Ed.
Chelsea, 1987. 87-105.
The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas. Trans. Cregory Rabassa. Oxford:
Oxford UP, 1997.
—
.
Quincas Borba. Trans. Gregory Rabassa. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1998.
—
s
THE AUTHOR AS PLAGIARIST
.
Dom
-
THE CASE OF
MACHADO DE ASSIS
57
Casmurro. Irans. John Chcdson. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1997. FITZ
Bloom, Harold. “Joaquim Maria Machado de
New
Exemplary Creative Minds.
Machado de
Caldwell, Helen. California Fit/.,
—
(May
Machado de
Machado de
of
A.ssi.s
on John Barths The Floating OperaT The
New
World 2.\-2 (1987): 123-1.38.
Boston: CE K. Hall, 1989.
Eiterary History
in
XVI 11.36 (July-December Haberly, David
U
1986): 56-66.
Assis.
as (Proto)
Type of the Modernist Novel:
A
and Interpretation.” The Latin American Literary Revieiv
1990): 7-25.
“Introduction.” Cluincas Borba. \Nns. Gregory Rabassa. Oxford: Oxford UP,
E.
1998.
Heath, Stephen. Gustave Flaubert:
Madame
LaCapra, Dominick. “The
Modern
Trial.”
MacAdam,
Alfred
U
Chicago:
J.
Bovary. Cambridge:
Cambridge UP, 1992.
Critical Interpretations: Gustave Flaubert'
New York:
Bovary. Ed. Harold Bloom.
Madame
Chelsea, 1988. 11 1-130.
Textual Conf'ontations'. Comparative Readings in Latin American Literature.
of Chicago
P,
1987.
Nunes, Maria Euisa. The Craji of an Absolute Winner. Characterization and Narratology in the Novels ofMachado de
Assis.
Westport, CT: Creenwood, 1983.
Santiago, Silviano. The Space In-Betiveen: Essays on Latin American Culture. Trans.
Ana
Lucia Gazzola, and Gareth Williams.
Tom
Burns,
Durham: Duke UP, 2001.
Schwarz, Roberto. Misplaced Ideas: Essays on Brazilian Cidture. Trans. John Gledson. London: Venso, 1992.
and Opinions
Sterne, Laurence. The Life
of Tristram Shandy.
A
Gentleman. Oxford: Oxford UP,
1983. Tanner, Tony. “The ‘Morselization’ of Flaubert
Earl E. Fitz University,
sWzdzmz
is
United
Emma
Bovary.”
Bovary. Ed. Harold Bloom.
Modern
New
Critical Interpretations'. Gustave
York: Ghelsea, 1988. 43-60.
Professor of Portuguese, Spanish, and Comparative Literature at Vanderbilt
where he teaches courses on Brazilian
parative approach to the States.
development of
Professor
Fitz
is
the
literature
and courses
literature in Brazil,
that take a
com-
Spanish America, and the
author of Brazilian Narrative Traditions in a
Comparative Context (MLA, 2005) and Sexuality and Being in the Poststructuralist Universe
of Clarice
Lispector:
projects involve
The Difference of Desire (Texas, 2001). Professor
modern
Brazilian
E. EARL
Memorias Postumas de Bras Cuhas
.
Mosaic of One Hundred
The Brazilian Master and His Novels. Berkeley:
“John Barth’s Brazilian Connection.’’
Problem
A
1970.
P,
Comparatist 10
.
Genius'.
York: Warner, 2002. 67.3-680.
Assis-.
Earl E. “'Fhe Influence of
.
Assis.”
and Spanish American
of inter-American literature as an emergent
field.
literature
Fitz’s
current research
and the development
E-mail:
[email protected]
i
>(
Dress and Female Intelligence: Intertextuality in
Esau and Jacob
Pedro Armando de Almeida Magalhaes
Abstract. Within the Brazilian tradition, Esau
and Jacob
invites
comparison with Joaquim Manuel de Macedo’s Memorias do sobrinho de
men
tio,
a satire describing the
to the larger
Machado,
In
life
and
career of a politician.
Western tradition, the novel as
much
Macedo and
as in
of similar metaphors around the use of willingness to
compromise
When analyzing the critics
ideals
from
benefits can be derived
issue
parallels Balzac’s
Balzac,
dress,
whenever
we can
which
political
is
With
Le pere
regard Goriot.
see the recurrence
used to signal a
and economic
it.
of politics in Machado de Assis Esau andJacob
suggest a conformity between
two apparently opposed
political parties
through a metaphor related to the main characters, the twins Pedro and Paulo, well as through the secondary character reflects a typically individualistic
as
D. Claudia, whose cynical discourse
and unconscientious bourgeois behavior.
be emphasized that the metaphor and D. Claudia’s posture place Esau
It
must
and Jacob
broader literary tradition. This paper aims to examine the intertextuality of
in a
these
two components and
Esau and Jacob
is
their effect
The
polarization of the
they
become
is
[Their] beards did not fingers,
Assis’ novel.
about the birth, childhood, and youth of twins Pedro
and Paulo, who were fortunate
adults,
on Machado de
two
is
to be
born into a wealthy, bourgeois family.
predicted at the beginning of the story and, as
established as they join
want
to
come, much
as
opposed
political parties:
they tugged at their chins with their
but political and other opinions formed and flourished.
They were not
60
PORTUGUESE LITERARY & CULTURAL STUDIES
13/14
com-
exactly opinions, as they did not have large or small roots, d hey were (a had
parison) like neckties of a particular color, that they wore until they got tired of the
color
and another one came along. Naturally each one had
believe that the color each
In this quote, the to
show
one wore suited
tie is a
metaphor
own.
his
his personality.
{Esau
One could
and Jacob
also
53)’
makes use of the narrative voice
that
the superficiality of the opposition between the
two young men. As
Pedro aligns himself with the ideas of the Monarchists, Paulo adopts the ideas of the Liberal Republicans, leaving
almost the whole of the
two and
them permanently
the narrative.
rest of
The
in
disagreement for
identical appearance of the
their socio-political context, however, reveals the inconsistency
their political contrast.
of
This opposition therefore goes no further than a piece
of cloth tied round the neck, a garment that actually hides their resemblances.
The
tie
indicates
more the need
for self-imposing individuality
the frailty of the distinctions between political points of view than belief based
on
ideas
The metaphor
and philosophical
ideals.
of the tie extends itself to the twins. Their relation
one of stage acting than of
some
characters.
his bourgeois
the end of the Emperor’s power.-
The
As such, the
name, but
is
more
the dissimulation in the
real difference. It reveals
novel, in the political attitude of
Agostinho Santos, ennobles
and
does the
it
is
twins’ father,
not especially shaken by
recent acquisition of the
of baron
title
does not prevent him from accepting serenely the advent of the Republic. well-to-do bourgeois like title
in order to profit
him should not have any
is
the
Batista corroborates that
a tie
same
which
hanging around
reveals Itself
Ball,” Batista finds
When
Batista. Like Santos,
through the metaphor of the at all costs. In
ends up following the advice of his wife, Claudia.
to the Conservative Party
title
his neck.
as his great friend’s,
namely, his constant search for a political career this, Batista
go of a
from new power games. For a wealthy bourgeois, the
would not be much more than Santos’ attitude
difficulty in letting
A
tie,
order to do
He
belonged
during the Monarchy and, before the “Ilha
himself unemployed but anxious to take part in
Fiscal
politics.
the Liberals attain power, he can find no solution to his problem.
Surprisingly,
D. Claudia finds
Conservative in the
Batista,
first
you were never
a
way out by
place:
a conservative!”
alleging that he
had never been
a
THE AUTHOR AS PLAGIARIST
“You were with them,
like
someone who attends
a hall,
MACHADO DE ASSIS
THE CASE OF
-
where
it
is
61
not necessary MAGALHAES
same
to share the
dance the same quadrille.”
ideas in order to
Batista smiled lightly
Me
and quickly.
liked witty images
and
him
to be very witty indeed, so that he agreed right away.
him
to a quick rebuttal.
this
But
one seemed
to
his star inspired
ALMEIDA
DE
“Yes, but people don’t
dance with
“However they dance,
the truth
Remember [...].”
The is
(
ideas, they
that
is
all
dance with their
your ideas were
legs.”
camp.
in the liberal
ARMANDO
the dissidents in the province accused you of supporting the liberals
100)3
PEDRO
round the
strategy aims at getting
a success,
due
it is
ble each other so
difficulty of attaining
power;
if
it
to the inconsistency of the political parties that resem-
much
in their difficulty in sticking to a particular ideologi-
Cunningly, D. Claudia discovers the mask by which she can declare
cal line.
her cynicism.
Her sarcasm
a Conservative because
the “tie” of her discourse. Batista was never
lies in
not necessary to have the same ideas in order to
it is
dance the same dance. D. Claudia comes up with
a solution to her
dilemma: she suggests a change of wording, a change of
“tie,”
husband
s
and
declares
who
discover
the importance of flexibility through the imagery of the dance.
D. Claudia can be included
in a gallery
of female characters
come under
the veiled meanderings of power in works that
In Esau
ist.”
andJacob, D. Claudia
the real implications of the
ing to change, as
social mobility
through her cynical convictions,
evidenced by the metaphor of the dance.
is
justify the
means and money
used by those who, knowing
is
sible,
take advantage of any opportunities that
acter
Nobrega
not
come
gar
who
change
an example of
is
as a surprise.
this
and
get rich
Enchanted by the beautiful proposes marriage and stand
how anyone
is
must be
from the
of the novel, he
is
a beg-
twins’ mother, Natividade, to
to this situation,
surprised by the refusal.
could refuse a wealthy
ill.
at the start
to use in
more
he becomes a
favorable capitalist.
Flora, the daughter of Batista and D. Claudia, he
money, he does not understand that she
all-powerful,
how to adapt as quickly as posmay come their way. The char-
by putting the money
economic circumstances. Thanks
is
kind of upward mobility, which should
Poor and nameless
uses the donation he receives
his luck
name of “real-
mechanisms of power: the importance of adapt-
which the ends
In a world in
expresses,
the
life.
Nobrega does not under-
Because his values are tied to
Flora’s decision,
coming
to the conclusion
62
PORTUGUESE LITERARY & CULTURAL STUDIES
The
13/14
andJacob, Pedro and
attitudes of the characters in Esau
Paulo, Batista
and D. Claudia, and Nobrega, mirror the position adopted by the narrator in
A
Meu
Carteira do
Sobrinho de
Meu
Tio {Memories
ics.
Nephew does not
two periods
A
narrator in
Letter
nowadays underestimated by
from
Uncle and Memories of My Uncle's
who
He
and the small commitment
support his personal
demnable
As
“Me
to fragile party ideologies
simply to
both works he comments ironically on con-
interest. In
indeed very successful.
is
in the society described in
assumed
the
practices that are harmful to society, in order to follow a political
which he
career, at
member of
my
of the time, such as disregard for the
states the political attitudes
law, injustice,
criticizes the lack
of the time. “The nephew of
politicians
uncle” declares his individualism by claiming to be a Party.”
is
These two deci-
of a Brazilian politician.
in the life
My
crit-
here, the tone
political issues.
agree with his compatriot Paciencia,
and cynicism of the
ol ethics
is still
what concerns the country
sive satires represent
The
and Memorias do
which predate the novel being analyzed
In these works, in
Uncle, 1855)
of My Uncles Nephew, 1868), by Joaquim
Manuel de Macedo, an author who
openly ironic
My
Tio {A Letter from
drive Macedo’s
to
Esau and Jacob,
protagonist.
behavior on the part of the hero.
One
The “nephew”
money
the motivation
is
cannot hope for
idealistic
celebrates the current values
of the bourgeois world. Moreover, his wife, Chiquinha, bears quite a resem-
blance to D. Claudia in her cunning and wit. She also adopts points of view that suit her, trying to adapt to circumstances. Like Batistas wife,^ is
Chiquinha
not politically naive:
—
I
know,
need to teach,
and we
eat,
by
your philosophical ideas concerning the material and moral
for example,
although unjustly but happily excluded from
ladies,
men: we, among the guests touch with our served,
we
nature.
The
lips
eat as
intelligent thing to
cooks, and then
banquet
table,
and even
is
as
is
necessary,
however
that
secretly, to satisfy the
eloquent and wisely applied to philosophy and to
do
show
is
to eat as
much
as possible
life,
political
at the family table, barely
one chicken wing; but before the lunch or dinner
much
lesson
at the
political
moral lessons to philosophical and
practical example, the wisest
is
regularly
demands of politics.
The
behind the larder door with the
sobriety before laymens eyes, or in front of the public.
[...]
Cousin Chiquinha was tle,
a
meddling Machiavellian, dressed
black patent leather shoes. (131-132)5
in a
hoop
skirt
with
lit-
,
THE AUTHOR AS PLAGIARIST
Just as Claudia
knows how
to be flexible
who
in
THE CASE OF
absence of any distinctive identity
among
63
MAGALHAES
large upheavals
time, demonstrating great adaptability to “the latest
his
(Macedo
to Talleyrand
unharmed through
survived
MACHADO DE ASSIS
under changes of power, always
compared
advising her husband, Chiquinha can be 510), the French diplomat
-
whim.” The
ALMEIDA
the Brazilian political parties, sugDE
Machado,
gested in
is
explicit in
Macedo, who
metaphor
prefers to use the
of ministerial uniforms to that of ties in order to express the concealed ideo-
ARMANDO
logical allure: PEDRO
luckily, for the
[...]
flock
belong,
I
whose
ideas,
[...]
men
sound mind,
of
no true
there are
leaders only
become
political parties in Brazil, that
so through ideas
and through
loyal disposition to realize those ideas in power, sine
signify.
[...]
find
I
much
it
make uniforms ders of
human
make them
are only groups
to
hang on the shoul-
coat hangers. (317-318)^
indeed a tendency of the bourgeois world
novel Le phe Goriot {\S5A)
Honore de
However, he does not
as well as collec-
moved by money.
refer to ties, like
political
men-
in his treatment
of the
modern
Machado
Macedo;
of Pedro and Paulo, or uniforms,
prefers
order to establish a comparison. Vautrin
shirts
in
Si j’ai
who
goes out of his
way
encore un conseil a vous donner,
opinions
qua
vos paroles.
les
il
n’y a
en ligne droite, un
S’il
y avait des principes
les
il
n’y a pas de
evenements
et des lois fixes, les
nous changeons de chemises. (172-173)
a
is
demandera, vendez-les.
homme
niais qui croit a I’infaillibilite.
que des evenements;
I’homme superieur epouse
rather,
lois,
il
n’y a
II
Un homme
qui se charge d’aller
n’y a pas de principes,
que des circonstances;
et les circonstances
pour
les
conduire.
peoples n’en changeraient pas
he
type of
ange, c’est de ne pas plus tenir a vos
qui se vante de ne jamais changer d’opinion est un toLijours
like
to tempt the hero Rastignac:
mon
Quand on vous
In the
Balzac, through his cynical character
political attitudes
Mephistopheles
of
and
better to dress in the fashions of the time: the tailors don’t
for ministers to dress ideas; they
Vautrin, also mentions garments while discussing the tality.
parties
to the ideas that those
This non-compromise of ideas and opinions, individual tive, is
is,
their capacity
qua non, there
and gangs who take names without giving importance
names
whose
for the political speculators to
comme
64
PORTUGUESE LITERARY & CULTURAL STUDIES
Manuel de Macedo’s
Like Joaquim Talleyrand,
who
learned
ranclis qiie
[...]
I’humanire pour
empeche on
le
lui jette
hommes! tetes
la
how
narrator, Vautrin praises the Prince of
to adapt to circumstances;
prince auquel chacun lance sa pierre, et qui meprise assez
le
lui
cracher au visage autant de serments qu’elle en demande, a
parrage de
de
13/14
la
France au congres de Vienne: on
houe. Oh!
Suffit. J’aurai
connais
je
les affaires,
une opinion inebranlable
moi! le
lui
doir des couronnes,
J’ai les secrets
ou
jour
j’aurai
de bien des
rencontre
trois
d’accord sur I’emploi d’un principe, et j’attendrai longtemps! (173)
Besides the criminal Vautrin, the hero Rastignac counts on the help of the aristocrat
Madame
de Beauseant,
his cousin,
who
belongs to the upper eche-
lons of the exclusive Saint-Germain neighborhood.
Both of them, each
in his
own
way, look for help in their struggle to find a place in the Parisian
The
Viscountess of Beauseant seems to be as astute as D. Claudia and
Chiquinha when she
reveals her strategies for reaching the top
Plus froidemenr vous calculerez, plus avant vous craint.
vous
N’acceptez
les
laisserez crever a
hommes chaque
vous, vous ne serez rien id
vous
fatit
et les
relais,
si
trdor; ne
As can be seen
in
le laissez
vous arriverez
Mais
si
ainsi
les
au
um
chevaux de poste que
faite
femme
vous avez
of society:
Frappez sans pide, vous serez
femmes que comme
vous n’avez pas une
jeune, riche, elegante.
comme un
irez.
elite.
de vos
desirs.
Voyez-
qui s’interesse a vous.
sentiment
II
vrai, cachez-le
jamais soupc^onner, vous seriez perdu. (135)
Machado, Macedo, and
Balzac,
women
which seemingly
struggle for social advance, revealing that
are allies in the
distinctive cloth-
ing conceals and preaching the dissimulation that serves the ambitious behavior
of the bourgeoisie. In Esau and Jacob,
in social climbing, the affirmation
grand not
ideals,
let itself
she also suggests a
of
if
the
woman
is
one’s greatest ally
political versatility to the
detriment of
much more complex romanticism
be seduced by superficiality,
ties,
that does
or other disguises.
Notes ^
The
os dedos,
original reads: “As barbas
mas
as
nao queriam
vir,
por mais que
opinioes, nao tinham raizes grandes
nem
pequenas.
chamassem o bu^o com Nao eram propriamente
eles
opinioes poh'ticas e outras vinham e cresciam.
Eram (mal comparando)
gravatas de cor
THE AUTHOR AS PLAGIARIST
particular,
quc
-
THE CASE OF
ao pcsco^), a cspera qiic a cor cansasse e vicsse
cles aravani
cada urn tinha a sua. lanihem sc pode crcr que
de cada uni
a
MACHADO
oiitra.
DE ASSIS
65
Naturalmcnte
mais ou menos, adequada a
era,
MAGALHAES
pessoa” {Esau e Jaco 62-63). ^ Santos’
Assis,
worry
lasts
only a
little
LXVI seems
while, as chapter
to demonstrate.
Esau and Jacob 100. Ihe original reads: ALMEIDA
“
—
voce ntinca
Batista,
conservador!
foi
DE [...]
—Voce icieias
estava
com eles, como a gente mesma quadrilha. amava
Batista sorriu leve e rapido;
mas
tanto que concorciou logo;
baile,
onde nao
e preciso ter as
mesmas ARMANDO
imagens graciosas
as
sua estrela inspirou-lhe
a
— Sim, mas gente nao dan^a com que — Dance com que
ideias, clan^a
a
verclade e
for, a
que os dissidentes na
acusavam
provi'ncia
^ See Esau e Jaco, chapters 5
nurn
esta
para danq:ar a
a
c aquela pareceu-lhe graciosissima,
uma
com
rekita^ao pronta.
PEDRO
pernas.
todas as suas idchas iam para os liberais; lembre-se
voce
apoiar os liberais
cic
[.
.
.]”
{Esau
e Jaco
1
03-104).
XLVII and LXXVIII.
My translation. The original
reads:
“
— Eu conhe^o, por exemplo,
moral do comer,
relativas a necessidade material e
lelizmente excluidas da vida politica,
damos na
e
as suas ideias filosoficas
nos as senhoras, embora injusta mas
pratica material
da nossa vida a mais sabia
liejao
moral aos homens filosofos e
politicos:
nos a mesa dos convidados ao banquete, e ate a mesa da
com
os labios
em uma
tocamos
familia apenas
comemos
jantar regularmente servidos, satisfazer as exigencias
da natureza.
cumpre comer o mais
possiVel atras
e ostentar
A
A
asinha de Irango; mas antes do almocjo ou do
embora
tanto quanto e preciso,
as escondidas, para
li^ao e eloqtiente e sabia aplicada a filosofia e a poh'tica:
da porta da despensa,
e
de inteligencia
com
os cozinheiros,
sobriedade ante os olhos profanos, ou diante do publico.
prima Chiquinha era
um
Maquiavel metido
em
saia
de balao,
e
com
sapatinhos
cie
duraque preto” (Macedo 131-132). ^
The
original reads:
“[...]
politicos a cuja grei pertenejo, Brasil, isto e, partidos
de
lelizmente para os
ou nao
ha,
como
ideias, cujos chefes so
homens de
juizo, para os especuladores
sustento, verdadeiros partidos politicos
o sejam pelas ideias
e pela
capacidade e
disposi^ao de as realizar no poder, sine qua non, e ha somente bandos e seqiielas que se
por simpatias e certos homens, e por oposi^ao a outros bandos e
sem dar importancia a
moda do tempo:
as ideias
que
esses
nomes
significam.
[...]
seqiielas, e
no leal
unem
que tomam nomes
Eu acho muito melhor
vestir-me
os alfaiates nao fazem fardas de ministros para vestir ideias; fazem-nas para
pendura-las nos ombros de cabides
humanos” (Macedo 317-318).
Works Cited Assis,
Machado .
Esau
Esau and Jacob. Trans. Elizabeth Eowe.
de.
e Jaco.
Balzac, ITonore de.
2000.
Oxford UP, 2000.
Rio de Janeiro: Gamier, 1988.
Le pere
Macedo, Joaquim Manuel Eetras,
New York:
Goriot. Paris: Eibrairie de.
Generale
Memorias do Sobrinho de
Pranq:aise,
Men
Tio.
1995.
Sao Paulo: Gompanhia das
66
PORTUGUESE LITERARY & CULTURAL STUDIES
Pedro
Armando
13/14
de Almeida Magalhaes
the State University of
is
a
PhD
candidate in Comparative Literature at
Rio de Janeiro (UERj), and teaches French Language and
Literature at the Alliance Fran^aise. His current research focuses
between
literary
and
historical discourse in
Machado de
Assis’
Esau
Yourcenar’s ECEuvre au Noir. F-mail:
[email protected]
on the relationship
e Jaco
and Marguerite
Readings of Balzac
Twentieth-Century
in
Brazil:
The Case of Machado de Assis
Gilberto Pinheiro Passos
Translated by Steve Smith
Abstract. Balzac, one of the most popular authors of the nineteenth century, developed themes (arrivism, the
mode
(the reappearance
beyond France. was one of
I.
It is
power of money) and
a narrative
of the same characters) that were relevant
the contention of this essay that
Balzac’s finest
and most perceptive
Machado de
far
Assis
readers.
Balzadan diffusion
Unlike Stendhal, whose greater number of readers arose only
at the
end of the
nineteenth century, Balzac enjoyed enormous success in his
own
time. This
brought him the displeasure of seeing some of authorization or the interest in benefiting
his novels
published without
payment of royalties, such was the extent of from
publishers’
his success.
Because he was such a popular and
prolific writer,
always present in news-
papers and magazines, he was considered for a long time as a literary figure of the
same
stature as Paul Feval (1817-1877), Paul de
Eugene Sue (1804-1857), lic.
Time
all
or
of whom were also widely recognized by the pub-
passed and the perspective of history allowed
duction of each writer more
carefully,
digmatic author. There
a natural
is
Kock (1793-1871),
critics to
evaluate the pro-
with Balzac reaching the interest
in
level
of a para-
studying his reception in
nineteenth-century Brazil, a time in which the presence of the author of Gobseck
was intensely
among
felt,
contributing to the expansion and maturity of the novel
Brazilian writers
and
readers, as well as their familiarization
with
it.
68
PORTUGUESE LITERARY & CULTURAL STUDIES
In 1841, there
under the
title
was already present
Algumas
from
Paris a
from Portugal,
and
Brazilian periodicals.
Not
coincidentally,
Jose da Rocha, a legally trained journalist
who
arrived
few years prior (one of the leaders of the 1833 Revista da
Sociedade Filomdtica [Philomathical Society Review), a collective student at the
grin,
Law School
under the
Rochas
in
title
As we know,
Europe and
luva misteriosa
in this period the
(
The Mysterious
As
journalistic interest.
Glove), in
1
836.
mystery novel was very successful both
a matter
who
of
fact,
one should not forget that
helped to create the serialized novel,
Marlyse Meyer points out: “The magical lure of ‘continued next
issue’
ated along with the serialized novel. Lazarillo de Tormes was the
1836, and,
this treatment, in
in
This led to Justiniano Jose da
in Brazil, via translations originals.
expressly requests
work
Sao Paulo), published an adaptation of La peau de cha-
A
Balzac was one of the authors
undergo
Life)
evidence of previous translations of his publica-
is
tions in Portuguese newspapers
young Justiniano
in Brazil a translation
da vida particular [Some Scenes of Private
scenas
(Rodrigues 101). There
the
13/14
at the
from an author, Balzac,
end of the same
year,
as
cre-
is
to
first
Girardin
a novella to be released serially.
La
vieille file’’ (31).'
This
one of the reasons
is
SLich as Sainte-Beuve,
literature” raries, all
who
and used them, of
whom
for the strong criticisms
classified the serialized
we know,
as
from commentators
productions
as “industrial
to equate Balzac with his
contempo-
today have practically disappeared. However, in
Brazil,
throughout the nineteenth century, they became an obligatory reference,
works on science,
history,
and
philosophy, was part of the atmosphere of modernization in the country
fol-
partly because the French novel, together with
lowing independence. 2
It is
worth remembering, moreover, that the study of
middle- and upper-class reading habits in Brazil
and beginning of the twentieth
Ordem
e Progresso
continually
[Order and
Progress),
end of the nineteenth
by Gilberto Freyre
in his
shows that only the work of Balzac
“Gomo about
a novelist”), tells us
e
por que sou romancista”
his arrival at the
(“How and
Sao Paulo Academy and
the fascination that Francisco Otaviano’s library held for the academics:
housemate was one of Otaviano’s tage of his literary opulence.
the
is
remembered by those interviewed.^
Alencar, for example, in
why 1 am
at the
centuries, published
volume of
Balzac’s
Belgian typographers
friends,
and
I
was allowed
That was how one day
I
saw
“My
to take advan-
for the first time
complete works, in that loose-leaf edition that the
made
available at a
modest
price” (35).'^
The
future
THE AUTHOR AS PLAGIARIST
command
author of Iracema did not
-
THE CASE OF
MACHADO DE ASSIS
69
French well enough to enable him to PASSOS
read the original Huently, hut even so he did not get discouraged and,
by
little,
little
he penetrated the readings of Dumas, Chateaubriand, and Victor
Hugo. Fhe narrated
that Balzac will obtain
and
foretell the
vogue
throughout the century, becoming a constant
in the
facts take place in the mid-forties
PINHEIRO
GILBERTO
concerns of authors and Titke, for
critics.
example, the case of the novel
and Machado de than suggested.
Assis’ criticism of
The work
it
in
O primo Basilio by E 9 a de Queiros
878. In these, Balzac’s presence
1
author of
carries, as the
upon contact with
exclaims, “But this
is
more
Ressiirreigao {Resurrection)
indicates, the strength of the plot of Eugenie Grander, acters,
is
when one
of the char-
and
the details of the lives of Luisa
Basilio,
the plot of Eugenia Grander, Sebastian! You’re describ-
ing Balzac’s novel to me! This
is
Eugenia Grandet^E (Queiros 135).^
For the Portuguese and Brazilian public, therefore, the French text must have been widely known, given that the novelist, in an interesting intertextual turn, uses the public’s
Machado de
memory
as
an integral part of
his literary craft.
Assis next discusses the “moral figure” of Eugenie
Grander and
establishes clear-cut differences with relation to Luisa.
This
is
the dialogue between Brazil
through France,
given that
Machado
is
reflecting,
possibilities of transplanting
summary of
effects,
Balzac especially interests
while dealing with the novel, upon the
must have been inspired by Balzac
his
work
{Dreams of Gold, 1872),^ which goes so found inspiration not
Of these,
forms and themes. Brazilian criticism points
out, moreover, that Jose de Alencar
order to propose the
necessarily
complex triangular relationship with varied
in a
always connected to great literary figures. us,
and Portugal, passing
in Balzac,
in the preface to
far as to affirm that
in
Sonhos d’ouro
our author had
but in the preface written by Zola for
Rougon- Macquart of 1871.
We
arrive then at other textual parallels,
which seem
original
especially because they appear in authors aware of the limits
of Brazilian
literature.
and
fruitful
and intentions
Both Jose de Alencar and Machado de Assis
reflected
appropriately on Brazil’s literary development, either in articles that
may
be
consulted with great benefit (such as “Instinto de Nacionalidade” [“Instinct
of Nationality”] and the polemic around or in the context of their
We fectly
must not
own
O primo
Basilio
mentioned above)
works.
forget that in the letter-postface to Senhora, Alencar
is
per-
aware of the social situation of the Court (with his expression, “tama-
70
PORTUGUESE LITERARY & CULTURAL STUDIES
nho da sociedade Huminense” learned in Balzac, which
up on
gives so,
Alencar
is
— apparently— insists
13/14
[“greatness of Rio society”])
that of the “philosophical” narrative,
in favor
of the “dramatic,” a
la
which he
Shakespeare. Even
on the connection between man and environment,
manner of inserting
related to the
and of the lesson
characters in social
life,
clearly
a lesson also theo-
by Balzac;
rized
As
for
Fernando, you are even more unfair. The simple description of the living
space draws
we
already
its
inhabitant,
know him
domestic poverty. Fhe
You
call this
and when the author presents him, lying on the
sofa,
morally by the contrast of his external elegance and his details of clothing
photography;
it
must
be,
and furniture have no other purpose.
however of the character, revealed more
in
“Note
to
these small accidents of intimacy than in the social apparatus. (Alencar,
Senhora” 342)^
So, in Balzac, description loses
its
ornamental
quality, integrating itself to
the action in order to help portray the characters, as critic of
to
shown by an
insightful
the relationship between literature and the representation of society:
him every milieu becomes
a
moral and physical atmosphere which impregnates
the landscape, the dwelling, furniture, implements, clothing, physique, character,
surroundings, ideas,
activities,
and
fates
historical situation reappears as a total
of men, and
at the
same time the general
atmosphere which envelops
all its
several
milieus. (Auerbach 473)
If
we wish
to gather a representative example,
rator into the paradigmatic prietor,
whose description
we should accompany the
Vauquer boardinghouse
in order to observe
its
obliges us to anchor her deeply in the wretched
nar-
pro-
and
asphyxiating perspective of a typified world, because “route sa personne explique la
pension,
comme
la
pension implique sa personne” (Balzac, Goriot5^).
Similarly, the reader’s trast
between the
encounter with Fernando Seixas, through the con-
brilliance
of the clothes and the poverty of the environ-
ment, already establishes the drama that the matter: the universe of
money
will
will follow
and
gets to the heart
with one of the most well-known Balzacian themes, that of the
arriviste,
of the driving forces of Machado de Assis’ Senhora and of A
e
Hand and the
of
have a dominant role in the plot, along
Glove), as critics have highlighted.
mao
one
a luva ( The
— THE AUTHOR AS PLAGIARIST - THE CASE OF
II.
MACHADO DE
ASSIS
71
Thematic convergences and a shrewd reader of Balzac PASSOS
The primacy types
money
of
disgusted Jose de Alencar,
end up avoiding the monetary empire,
either
whose
preferred character
by an escape through time
PINHEIRO
or space or through spiritual redemption (as in the case of Fernando Seixas). In
Machadian oeuvre knows how
contrast, the
to advantageously
manipulate the GILBERTO
Introjectlon of at
power
that
economic
Machado’s creative work and
Brazilian literature, adapting
enables.
life
It is
time to take a closer look
his incessant struggle for the universalization of
and transforming foreign elements belonging
to
the novellstic tradition or recently suggested by popular novelists.
its
The power
of
consequent
social projection are part of Bras
ciary of
money, or
better, the
triumphalism of economic power and Cubas,
a conscious benefi-
power, or Bentinho, whose narrative can also be seen as an
its
encounter of classes.
What
ure in Esau e Jaco {Esau
to say about the banker Santos, an important fig-
and Jacob),
whose monetary
cian Tristao,
or about the disturbing and crafty politi-
activity
—
the basis for his return to Brazil
does not go unnoticed under the wise eyes of Counselor Ayres?
So that we can go ence,
it
would be
a little further in this field of Brazilian fictional experi-
interesting
between two Machadian
now
arrivistes
work with an extraordinary dispute
to
and
to try to
determine
how much
This book deals with the slow and grad-
evocation there
is
ual absorption
of property by Cristiano de Almeida e Palha
Rubiao,
who
in Qiiincas Borba.
in relation to
brings to Rio de Janeiro a fortune obtained in an unexpected
way, thanks to the inheritance from Quincas Borba. All of this then, by the desire to shine in the big
rounded by
“its
city,
cient
means
is
Wealth and
with
where he would find himself surgirls
newcomer
of a socio-cultural nature, because he already possesses
its
accompanying new
its
referents,
sta-
suffi-
social position unleash a process
of dis-
making France supreme, decorating the
nar-
operatic brilliance, of course, but always in opposition to the
“gauche” nature of Barbacena’s interests us
enhanced,
for success as a “capitalist.”
mantling of provincial rative
is
enchantment, movement, theaters everywhere, pretty
dressed in the latest French fashions” {Quincas Borba 24). Fdis tus, therefore,
Balzacian
more narrowly,
verify the inverse
unknown
professor.
Thus, even here Balzac
thematic source, given that
we
can, at
first,
connection to Rastignac, the poor country bumpkin
who
as a
arrives in the metropolis. In this case Paris, following a torturous process of
apprenticeship and social climbing. Another character, Lucien de {Illusions perdues). In his first trip to the
French
capital,
Rubempre
unaware of Rastignac’s
72
PORTUGUESE LITERARY & CULTURAL STUDIES
moneyed end,
13/14
world of theater and venal journalism.
finds himself in a
impossible not to
remember
this
at
moment
a figure like
Quincas Borha), the self-interested journalist, causing us to
It is
Camacho recall so
(in
many
scenes from Illusions perdues. In Quincas Borha, Brazilian social novelty
is
personified in the presence of
the commercial arriviste (Cristiano).
Machado abandons
tranquil terrain of the old bourgeois
and landed nobility
world of the metropolis to Barbacena.
We
is
more
solid
and
relationships.
The
the
enriched with behaviors distinguished in relation
are dealing with
something new and insidious, which
escapes Rubiao’s distracted understanding. Differently from Rastignac, he
not undertake the apprenticeship necessary for
will
but savage,
a cosmopolitan,
society.
The Rio de tionships.
life in
The
Janeiro depicted
is
far
removed from the old
patriarchal rela-
controlling code will no longer impose sanctions and rewards
based on respect for blood
ties
or the sworn word, but rather on the oppor-
tunism of the lucid vision of the true businessman, Cristiano, into whose wealth goes part of the it,
but
III.
A
who somewhat
money
extravagantly spent by one
fortuitously inherited
who
did not earn
it.
Balzacian suggestion
Such thematic readings gain greater consistency and appropriateness pay attention to an invaluable
factor,
found
if
we
specifically in the preface to the
third part of Illusions Perdues'.
II
y a trois causes, d’une action perpetuelle, qui unissent
I’ambition L’esprit,
du
fargent et
[...]. II reste
I’ambition
noble, le
grand
nom
a faire Thistoire
du negociant
viennent chercher
du bourgeois
ne veut pas tester au milieu des temoins de
personnage a
As one can itself at
Paris. (Balzac, “Preface”
see, the
a historic
enrichi,
in
province a Paris:
du
poete.
sphere qui leur est proper
enrichi a qui sa province deplait, qui ses
commencements
et espere etre tin
765)
suggestion was in the
moment
la
la
I’ambition
air.
which the self-image
Parodically, Brazil
of Rio de Janeiro
found
drew
closer to Paris, according to the accounts of many authors of the period. 9
it
The
countryside in our case was called Barbacena, just as the French capital comes to be called
Rio de Janeiro, the stage of the Francophile Court. Here the
name Pedro Rubiao de Alvarenga might not
ring true
— notwithstanding
its
THE AUTHOR AS PLAGIARIST
reminder of the reigning emperor
—
-
THE CASE OF
Fhe
Napoleon
the
mastically
—
his origi-
III. PINHEIRO
same name
Lucien con-
hero of Illusions perdues, recaptured to
as the
transplanted in time and in space, helping to establish
last detail,
—ono-
the connection with the French work, Balzac’s presence then
between the
lines, that
total lack of success
himself higher than mere mortals:
it
is
could have provided the
in the suggestion that
is,
foundation for the novel, constructed
theme. Thus the
like a Brazilian version of the
proposed
and, at the same time, the need to raise
not enough to be in Rio/Paris,
is
it
is
necessary to be emperor, not the Brazilian one, Pedro de Alcantara, but the
French one,
The
in turn a pale reflection
of his uncle, the great Napoleon
relationship between the country
connected to
and the
city,
a Balzacian
I.
theme
social climbing, finds in this case a fatal application, because
Machado’s pen colors
it
with insanity, which surrounds Rubiao from the
beginning of the book.
IV.
A
If the
narrative process
themes work together in an attempt to shape
Brazil, starting
from French
elements, another very relevant part should be noted: Machado’s second phase brings novels in
which one
way and according
of characters. This configures, in our
sees the return
to the limits already foreseen with precision
by Jose de
Alencar with regard to the “greatness of Rio society,” the continuum of our society with
its
own
features,
which owes
a lot to the French author.
In Balzac, the relationship between people creates an intricate web, in
which what stands out short that
number
which helps
are the to
names, the positions occupied, the origin,
anchor the individual
of characters so great that
author’s intent
is
to create a
it
in the social net.
competes with the
civil
With
registry,
broad and tormented picture of beings
in
a
the
who
debate each other in the so-called “Fiuman Comedy.” This “inferno” does not prove transcendent
Divine
theater, the
gaming
alienate themselves
painful
(as
would be the
Comedy), but on the contrary
this public: Paris, the
case of
its
inspirational source, the
offers itself as the evident reality
of
countryside, the newspaper, the Stock Exchange, the
tables, the
from the
and quotidian
73
PASSOS
him
parallels contintie. In the Brazilian novel, the suggestive
fronts us with the
ASSIS
because, according to Rtibiao, a French
barber, Lticien, a resident of Rio de Janeiro, should return to nal face, that of
MACHADO DE
amorous connections. Readers can no longer reality that
spectacle, in
surrounds them, changed into a
which the only notable lack
is
that of the
GILBERTO
74
PORTUGUESE LITERARY & CULTURAL STUDIES
working
(I)erville),
new
to a
The
submerged
class, still
and
13/14
as a
theme by the bankers (Nucigen), attorneys
great businessmen (Grandet),
whose culture
correspond
narrative expedient of character reappearance allows us, therefore, to
create expectations without, in truth, the author’s having to
on
will
code of conduct.
Maxime de
their characterization.
opprobrium and
spend more time
Trailles will always bring his load
affective exploitation,
and Vautrin the disquiet of
dition as a profound connoisseur of vices and crimes, while
employee of the
still
his
of
con-
being an
police.
Reproducing the preferably contemporary world, Balzac not only makes characters reappear, but also gives consistency to this world through the
embodiment
of figures gravitating
around central plot elements, always with
the intention of thickening and condensing the representation of social reality.
The
part
and the whole answer each other such
lawyer, the usurer, the
young
arriviste, the
more or
neur, the banker, the venal journalist, the criminal,
man
immense
are the solid bases of this
that the courtesan, the less
successful entrepre-
and the indebted noble-
fictional undertaking,
which crossed
the frontiers of his country and, with the export of French culture, radiated
through the Western world. In Brazil, this novelistic mixture will find in
both attentive and
—
Brazilian reality. In
as
we
—concerned with adapting
said
Assis a reader
foreign sources to
Memorias postumas de Bras Cubas, the reader meets an
eccentric figure, Quincas Borba, ical,
Machado de
who
leaves for Minas, crazy
returning to die in Rio de Janeiro, at the
Between the departure
home of the
and philosoph-
narrator.
Barbacena and the return to the Court, the
for
next novel, Quincas Borba, begins. Here Rubiao plays the role of friend, nurse, secretary, disciple, and, finally, unexpected heir to the belongings of a
dog, also called Quincas Borba. As can be seen,
that Bras tric
Cubas
figure of
is
as
Not by chance, as
he himself
Borba,
tells
are dealing
with the same fact
practically incidental, leaving us, however, with the eccen-
who enchanted and haunted
Quincas Borba,
defunct narrator
we
Comedie hnmaine, although varied by the
fictional aspect present in the
much
as the
therefore,
it
our famous,
poor provincial professor.
occurred to
Machado
to continue the process,
us in the prologue to the third edition (1899) of Quincas
commenting on
the possibility of establishing another extension
and
transposition of characters, in this case the beautiful and mysterious Sofia,
along the lines of the French
series:
.
THE AUTHOR AS PLAGIARIST
An
illustrious h iend
and conhere
insisted that
I
THE CASE OF
-
follow this
MACHADO DE
ASSIS
75
hook up with another. PASSOS
“Along with Memorias Postumas de Bras Cubas, from which should make all
a trilogy,
to herself.” For
now
these pages
and the
some time
thought that
say no. Sofia
I
is
is
you
derived,
from Quincas BorbaWxW have the third part
Sofia
I
this
might be
possible, but as
I
reread
here completely. Fo have continued her
would
it
PINHEIRO
GILBERTO
have been repeating
her,
and that
repetition
Following the interregnum of
same
return to the case of Esau
the former,
a sin.
{Quincas Borba 3)
Casmurro, Machado, however, does
now more complex and
recourse,
embracing:
this
is
the
and Jacob and Memorial de Aires {Counselor Ayres Memorial)
we meet Ayres
at
having returned to
retired,
Dom
would be
observes the
life
two points
Brazil.
in his
at first
life,
In
later
In contact with the Santos family, he
two twins, Pedro and Paulo, above
of
young and
all
with regard to their
passion for Flora and to concerns for the political beliefs that they hold, tied to
monarchist and republican convictions. Curiously, Machado’s
last
novel
is
made up
mat, covering a relatively short period
of a diary written
the twins from the earlier novel, but only the growing in the
widow
be seen, this
Fidelia
is
a
seeks companionship.
the result of a motivation that goes
V.
and ambiguous
and the accompaniment of her passion
man who
by the diplo-
- 1889 ), without any mention of ( 1888
The
interest
forTristao.
As can
interest in others really
Is
beyond the mere condition of solitary man.
Convergences
Ayres
is
interested in hearing the diverse characters
register their opinions,
the country during
in a historically singular
At
Is
This role places him
in
quite propitious to being an arbiter or confidant,
when
Brazil abolishes slavery and, the fol-
of the Republic
after
more than
three centuries of
slavery.
a crucial
social point
thirty years’ absence.
period
year, sees the birth
monarchy and
to
but also to capture the changes that have occurred in
more than
a narrative situation that
lowing
around him, not only
moment
for nationality,
from the economic,
political,
and
of view, the credibility of a chancellery worker became urgent.
Here there might echo
traces
of Derville, Balzac’s lawyer and notary, the
mindful retainer of secrets and counselor to French families. This
is
a the-
matic convergence, both coinciding with a certain institutional expectation. In order to go
beyond the localism
worth turning our attention
of Derville, tied only to France,
to another character in
it is
an even more meaning-
76
PORTUGUESE LITERARY & CULTURAL STUDIES
fill
way, because he
13/14
present specifically in Illusions perdues 2ind
is
Not by chance, we
nationalist visions.
are dealing with
fit
for inter-
someone connected
The
binomial
Derville/Chatelet can help to better understand Counselor Ayres,
who shows
elements of both: from them he inherits the talent to
stay quiet,
to
diplomatic
the
life,
besides being invited
—
to
du
Sixte
like Derville
functions of Ayres in Esau
The connection
clever
—
Chatelet.
listen
and
remake family peace (one of the
to
and Jacob).
diplomacy
—
we have emphasized
as
— becomes fundaWe
mental and leads us to some textual details indicative of the relationship. see, in the case of Sixte
du Chatelet, the
Monsieur du Chatelet, venu an monde pretendait fort en diplomatie,
profonds par
letir
demontre par discrets, elle
I’exercice
meme
de
We
commode, en
ce sens qu’elle se
hauts emplois; que voulant des
ses
rien dire,
I’homme
sa tete au-dessus
semble alors conduire, ce qui devient Illiisiom
se
[...]
science de ceux qui n’en ont aucune et qui sont
tete mysterieux; et qu’enfin
nage en tenant
Bruyere:
la
Chatelet tout court
Sixte
vide; science d’ailleurs fort
permet aux ignorants de ne
hochements de est celtii qui
la
true “portrait” a
du
tine question
hommes
de se retrancher dans des le
plus fort en cette science
fleuve des
evenements
qu’il
de legerete specifique. (Balzac,
49-50)
turn
now
to the Brazilian text,
diplomatic activity and transforms to dissimulation: “this too
up. All diplomacy
is
it
which
sharpened his
in these
Moreover, Machado de Assis
two
like the
gift for
and
uncovering and for covering
related verbs” (Assis,
insists
French one minimizes
into something related to curiosity
Esau and Jacob 242).
on elements connected
to discretion
and
to the ability to not get involved:
[Ayres] did not play a
prominent
role in this world:
the diplomatic career and was pensioned
You need only know
that he
every occasion, just the right
was
a pleasure to hear
and
off. (3)
wore the protective
approving smile, the bland and cautious
amount
he went through the steps of
style
shell of his profession,
of speaking, the
of expression,
all
air
the
appropriate to
so well distributed that
it
see him. (38)
Ayres did not think anything, but he understood that the others thought something.
THE AUTHOR AS PLAGIARIST - THE CASE OF
and
lie
made an ambiguous
When
gesture.
MACHADO
DE ASSIS
77
they insisted, he did not choose either PASSOS
kumd
oh the opposing opinions, hut hotli sides, a rare thing
his
another,
compromise opinion
with compromise opinions
Ayres gave
that satisfied
opinion of
this
PINHEIRO
with delicate pauses and circumlocutions, wiping his monocle on a
kerchief, letting
drop profound or obscure words, turning up
hand-
silk
his eyes, as if in search GILBERTO
of a recollection,
For such a
which he found and used
is
great necessity of a country that
dates (Abolition It is
sympathy of the person
and Republic),
is
—
facing
as
importance conferred by
again,
traits,
pivotal
in disagree-
without the
diplomacy and with the
his privileged position, so that
the position of guarantor of confessions
— two
and society
necessary that the character inherit the French
Differently
he sums up the
we have noted
families split apart,
differ-
narrating, even
and Jacob.
Balzac’s creation,
bitterness of the Balzacian vision with respect to
Once
one fundamental
is
the possible creator of the novel Esau
from the tangential nature that surrounds
ment.
off his opinion. (39-40)
however, there
festival of staging,
ence: Ayres has, for himself, the
because he
round
to
he can be elevated to
and equalizer of disputes.
Machado de Assis demonstrates
that the use of foreign sources
should be done in accordance with the pressing necessity of his narrative econ-
omy, that
is,
Counselor story.
with the transformations that the Brazilian works demand. To the
falls his
There
is
own
development of the
characterization, as well as the
nothing more appropriate for an international character, versed
in the subjects related to secrets
and confessions, than the diary form ( Counselor
Ayres Memorial) or attribution to hidden authorship {Esau
The
and Jacob).
recording of facts in his personal notebook “hides” actions, just like
and engine
the novelized form of the twins’ narrative serves as framing
“double-edged” gestures. Carefully, Ayres’ decorum and tact act with the depicted political situation of the country. Diplomacy the family counselor as an indispensable complement. There
French narratives, the stimulus of adultery. Everything
happens
money
lavishly spent,
— contemplates,
dence of those around him, and knows that
concert
linked to
not, as in the
nor the scourge of
stealthily, as befits a narrator
into the inner circle of families
is
in
is
for the
who
— introduced
observes, gains the confi-
his style
should be reserved,
almost nebulous.
This theme of a society in need of both help and counselors allows the connections
we make.
Derville, Sixte
ineluctable similarity following
du
Chatelet,
and Ayres maintain an
on the “representation”
of the country.
That
78
PORTUGUESE LITERARY & CULTURAL STUDIES
is,
each one in
13/14
own way and
its
in
accordance with the particular sense of
each work “stages” the history of the country and the families
comprises,
it
with Sixte du Chatelet being almost a magician. In France, the characters fill
their role in the traumatic events
ful-
of the Restoration, a period that unsuc-
cessfully tried to put a stop to the conquests
of the French Revolution.
Society was obliged to incorporate social malcontents, bourgeois financial solutions,
and the constant
threat of regime change. In Brazil, Ayres’ time
is
the most complex from the point of view of sociopolitical institutions. For this,
the two authors took advantage of types inclined to the dance of insti-
tutional about-faces of varied kinds.
One
can
without the shadow of a doubt, that the young Pedro and
say,
Paulo see their illusions
with no fear of
lost
with the advent of the Republic.
and Tristao
error, that Fidelia
illusions of the Aguiars,
but everything
of Counselor Ayres, the narrative choice of
but
care for emphasis,
who must
destroy,
filtered
is
One
once and
can affirm, for
all,
through the meditative
Machado de
Assis,
who
the
style
did not
have been pleased by translating, in
Brazilian terms, readings of an author like Balzac.
Notes ^
O
“Esta criado o magico chamariz ‘continua no proximo numero’ e o roman-feuilleton.
Lazarillo de Tormesioi o primeiro a receber esse tratamento,
ano, Girardin
encomenda expressarnente
a
um
em
1836,
logo no fim do
e,
autor, Balzac, Lima novela para sair
em
mesmo
serie.
La
vieille filled
2
Trade.
See Hallewell
^ See Freyre
^
“Mas
literaria.
isso e
casa era dos
um
Foi assim que
edi(;ao
Publishing
em
amigos de Otaviano, dia
vi
no direito de usufruir volume das obras comple-
e estava
pela primeira vez o
folha que os ripogratos da Belgica vulgarizam por pre^o modico.”
o enredo da Eugenia Grander Sebastiao! Estas-me a contar o romance de
Balzac! Isso e a Eugenia ^ See Assis,
ofithe
Press, 1982.)
181-260.
de Balzac, nessa 5
26- 1 27. (Originally published as Books in Brazil: A History
“Meu companheiro de
sua opulencia tas
1
Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow
GrandetT
“O Primo
Basi'lio”
^ See Broca, Romanticos 257.
remembering Lima
156-157.
On
the reception of the author of Eugenie Grandet,
Barreto’s confession, cited
look for his sources of inspiration in
by Broca, according
Machado de
Assis,
to
it is
worth
which one should not
but in others, including Balzac. See
Broca, Papeis 165. ^
“Quanto
a Fernando, ainda es mais injusta.
seu habitante, e
moralmente pela
do vestuario
e
quando o autor o
apresenta,
antitese de sua elegancia exterior
mobflia nao tern outro fim.
Chamas
A
simples descriQo do aposento desenha o ja
o conhecemos
sua pobreza domestica.
Os pormenores
recostado ao sofa,
com
nos
a isso lotografias; serao,
porem do
carater,
o
THE AUTHOR AS PLAGIARIST - THE CASE OF
MACHADO DE ASSIS
79
qual se revela mais nesses niinimos acidentes da intimidade, do que no aparato social.”
By way of example: “este Rio de Janeiro e o Paris da America” ol America”) (Macedo 42). Also see Passos, O Napoleao.
Paris
(“this
Rio de Janeiro
is
the
“Vi rudo por varias linguas.” With regard to other European elements, see Passos, As siigestoes.
The
^ '
original reads: “Ihe agu^oii a vocac^ao de descobrir e encobrir.
Toda
PASSOS
PINHEIRO
a diplomacia esta
dons verbos parentes.”
nestes
GILBERTO
Works Cited Alencar, Jose de. “Note to Senhora." Senhora!Romance Brasileiro. 3rd ed. Sao Paulo: Edic;6es
Melhoramentos,
“Como
.
Assis,
Machado
n.d.
e por
que sou romancista.” Salvador: Eivraria Progresso, 1955.
“O
de.
Paulo/Porto Alegre:
Primo BasHio por E^a de Queiroz.” Critica
W. M.
Esau and Jacob. Trans. Helen Caldwell. Berkeley:
.
—
Qidncas Borba. Trans. Gregory Rabassa.
.
New
U
of California
Honore
Rio de Janeiro/Sao
P,
1965.
York: Oxford UP, 1998.
Auerbach, Erich. Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Trask. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1953. Balzac,
literdria.
Jackson, 1937.
Literature. Trans.
de. “Preface de la Troisieme Partie.” Illusions Perdues. Paris:
Willard R.
Gamier
Freres,
1961. Illusions Perdues. Paris:
.
Le pere
.
Broca,
Brito.
Gamier
Freres, 1961.
Goriot. Col. Textes et Contextes. Paris:
Magnard, 1989.
Coord. Alexandre Eulalio. Col.
Papeis de Alceste.
Repertorios.
Campinas:
Unicamp, 1991 .
Romdnticos, Pre-romdnticos, Ultra-romdnticos: Vida Literdria e Romantismo Brasileiro.
Col. estetica: serie obras reunidas de Brito Broca Gilberto.
Freyre,
Ordem
e Progresso:
Processo
1.
Sao Paulo:
Polls; Brasilia:
INL, 1979.
de Desintegra^do das Sociedades Patriarcal
Semipatriarcal no Brasil sob o Regime de Trabalho Livre: Aspectos de Transigdo do Trabalho Escravo Para o Trabalho Livre e
um
e
Quase Meio Secido de
da Monarquia para a
Repiiblica.
4th
Rio de Janeiro: Record, 1990.
ed.
Hallewell, V. Laurence.
O Livro
no Brasil: Sua Historia. Trans. Maria da Penha Villalobos and
Lolio Lourengo de Oliveira, revised and updated by the author. Col.
Estudos brasileiros
6.
Sao Paulo:
T. A. Queiroz; Editora
Coroa Vermelha:
da Universidade de Sao Paulo,
1985.
Macedo, Joaquim Manuel Elores.
de.
Rosa/0 Rio do Quarto /Uma Paixdo Romdntica/0 Veneno das
Sao Paulo: Eivraria Martins, 1945.
Meyer, Marlyse. Eolhetim:
uma
Passos, Gilberto Pinheiro.
As
Historia.
Sao Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1996.
Sugestoes do Conselheiro /
A
Eranga em Machado de Assis / Esau
e
Jaco e Memorial de Aires. Col. Ensaios. Sao Paulo: Atica, 1996. .
O Napoleao de Botafogo.
Paulo:
Presen^a Erancesa
em Quincas Borba de Machado de Assis. Sao
Annablume, 2000.
Queiros, E^a de.
O primo
Basilio.
Col. Classicos de Ouro. Rio de Janeiro: Edi^oes de Ouro,
1971. Rodrigues, A. A. Gonsalves.
A
Tradugao
em
Portugal (Translation in Portugal). Lisbon: Instituto
80
PORTUGUESE LITERARY & CULTURAL STUDIES
de Cultura
c
Lingua Fortugucsa/Ministerio da Educa^ao, 1992.
Gilberto Pinheiro Passes
is
a professor in the
University ol Sao Paulo, Brazdl.
He
Brazilian literature, notably in the
other
texts:
Memorial de
As
13/14
sugestoes
work of Machado de
do conselheiro
/
A
Franca
Aires (Sao Paulo: Atica, 1996);
(guineas Borba de
Department of Modern
Letters at the
has dedicated his research to the French presence in
Machado de Assis (Sao
her fatal / Andlise da presenga francesa
em
O Napoledo
Paulo:
Dom
Nankin, 2003). E-mail:
[email protected]
Assis.
He
em Machado
is
the author of,
among
de Assis / Esaii e Jaco e
de Botafogo. Presenga francesa
Annablume, 2000); and Capita
e
Casmurro de Machado de Assis (Sao
em
a mulPaulo:
The Shandean Form: Laurence Sterne and Machado de Assis
Sergio Paulo Rouanet
Many
Abstract. Tristram
have pointed to material similarities between
critics
Shandy and The Posthumous Memoirs
such similarities affinities are of a
is
this
paper
of Bras Cubas.
it is
No
doubt
suggested that the main
formal nature in the sense that both novels can be seen
as realizations of the
such form
however, in
exist;
same
literary
form.
The study and
characterization of
the aim of this essay.
The Shandean form
Many
critics
have pointed to material similarities between Tristram Shandy
and The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas. yet
I
suggest that the
main
both novels can be seen
Some
No
doubt such
similarities exist,
of a formal nature
in the sense that
as realizations of the
same
authors have remarked that this form
Menippean
satire,
with
and serious elements. ^ has
affinities are
*
some
its I
literary is
form.
related to the so-called
typical mixture of literary genres
have myself hinted
and of comical
at the possibility that this
characteristics of the Baroque, with
form
which Sterne had become
acquainted through his reading of Montaigne, Burton, and Cervantes. These characteristics
would include the sovereignty of the
subject, corresponding to
the political absolutism of the age; fragmentation, as an expression of the
anatomical dismemberment of the corpse; a non-linear view of time, ing the conception of history as natural history; choly, as a reaction to the carnages of war,
and
and of laughter,
as
against mourning. ^ But in general, writers belonging both to the
and
to the
baroque traditions have concentrated on
reflect-
a blending of melan-
satirical
an antidote
Menippean
poems, come-
82
PORTUGUESE LITERARY & CULTURAL STUDIES
13/14
dies, tragedies, philosophical dialogues,
and not on the novel,
the eighteenth century. This
what Sterne
precisely
is
tionship to his predecessors, there creator of a
new
literary
Shandy
we
arose in his rela-
that in this sense he
was the
Curiously enough,
it.
in the very first lines of a
this
was done by Machado
book published 132
— The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas.
years after Tristram
In Bras Cubas’ foreword,
read:
It is,
ish it
work,
in truth, a diffuse
form of
free
a Sterne or
in
which
1,
Bras Cubas,
if
I
have indeed adopted the
of a Xavier de Maistre, have possibly added a certain peev-
optimism of my own. Quite
possibly.
The work of a man
already dead.
Machado de
Assis adds a third
name
de Maistre, that of Almeida Garrett, and explains: eled, Xavier
to that
William Grossman’s of Sterne and Xavier
“All these
people have trav-
de Maistre around his room, Garrett in his country and Sterne
somebody
around
else’s
country.
life.” Finally, in
the
As first
to Bras
Cubas, we can say that he traveled
chapter Cubas draws attention to the liber-
he had taken with chronolog}c instead of beginning his narrative with his
birth,
he had begun
it
with his death
These quotations make this
wrote
a union. (“To the Reader” 3)
In the prologue to the third edition, not included In translation,
ties
I
with the pen of Mirth and the ink of melancholy, and one can readily foresee
what may come of such
in
as
form.
But he did not define de Assis,
no doubt
is
it
Whatever
did.
form has
rator,
it
(1.3-5).'^
clear that
we
are dealing with a form^
at least four characteristics: 1) the
underlined in the text by the words
“I,
and
that
emphatic presence of the narBras Cubas”; 2) a “free” tech-
nique of composition that gives the text a “diffuse” aspect
—
that
is,
digressive,
fragmentary, non-discursive; 3) the central place assigned to time (the para-
doxes of chronology) and space
(travels);
and
4)
the interpenetration of
laughter and melancholy.
Machado de call it
Assis defined the form, but he did not
the “Shandean form.” In this article
question of the affinities between Sterne and perspectives
I
would
name
like to
Machado
it. I
propose to
re-examine the
in the light of the
new
opened by the concept of the Shandean form.
Hypertrophism of subjectivity
The Shandean
narrative, always in the
first
person,
is
characterized by the
THE AUTHOR AS PLAGIARIST - THE CASE OF
extreme volubility of the narrator, and by
his arrogance,
MACHADO DE
sometimes
ASSIS
83
direct, ROUANET
sometimes masked by an apparent deference. Tristram Shandy
is
the prototype of
all
voluble narrators.
He
on
dissertates
PAULO
He
everything, without forgetting studs and buttons. his father, Walter,
of
who
named
opinions
as
has ideas about Lockes psychology, about the influence
names on the destiny of individuals (but
have been
as full of
is
Trismegistus), about the shape of noses,
and about education
He
(he decides to write a Tristapoedia for the education of his son).
veau riche oi world literature.
He
would
for a sad mistake, Tristram
parades his knowledge of
all
is
centuries
a
nou-
and
all
countries in an extravagant display of scholarship, which goes from Cicero and
Quintilian to Rabelais, Montaigne, Cervantes, Montesquieu, and Voltaire.
He He
obeys no rules
disposes of
for in writing
neither those of plausibility nor those of aesthetics.
narrative conventions: “1 should beg Mr. Horace’s pardon,
all
confine myself neither to his rules nor to any man’s rules
shall
1
—
He
that ever lived” (1.4.7).
is
sadistic in his relationship
with the reader.
Tristram plays with the reader, insulting him, humiliating him, pretending he is
establishing a dialogue with him, but interrupting the conversation
time, arbitrarily.
companion”
—
The tone
(1.6.10)
starts respectfully
— but immediately
the reader
afterwards he
is
is
all
the
“dear friend and
dunce and
“a great
a
blockhead” (1.11.26). Sometimes the narrator gives to his unhappy victims the illusion that they are free: “I can give
you no
better advice than that they
skip over the remaining of the chapter” (1.4.7). But this advice, if a
mentor?
when he
thee in
lines afterwards
“How could you. Madam, The
ter?” (1.20.58).
even
few
my
it
— but
just
to
pen has now gained over
no
illusions:
last
chap-
he has us in his power, and
another form of whim. “‘Tis enough to have
make
thee,
dare follow
be so inattentive in reading the
narrator leaves us
spares us
power
who would
he will be scolded by his ruthless tor-
use of the advantage which the fortune of
would be too much”
(VII. 6. 503).
sion “fortune of the pen” lays bare the master-slave relationship:
The
expres-
a
parody
it is
of the term “fortune of arms,” the right of the conqueror to reduce the
defeated
enemy
to serfdom. In short, the narrator
is
neither a constitutional
no Magna Carta, nor a despot of the ancien regime, XIV was bound by custom and by tradition. He is rather
king, because he respects
because even Louis
an Eastern Sultan, omne
As
for Bras
Schwarz has
lege soluto.
Cubas, volubility
observed.'’
from one position
He
is
to another,
is
his
most obvious
attribute, as
Roberto
the voluble narrator par excellence. Bras shifts
from one philosophical system
to another.
He
SERGIO
PORTUGUESE LITERARY & CULTURAL STUDIES
expresses his opinion
And
love.
don’t
him but he
yon
13/14
on everything. He thinks jewelers
him, because
a thinking errata, since each station ot life
From
vious ones.
Not only
believe that he has not read Pascal.
also disagrees with
Pascal he goes to boots:
has he read
not a thinking reed but
is
an edition that corrects the pre-
is is
man
are indispensable to
com-
there any pleasure that can
pare to taking off a tight pair of hoots? Naturally there
is
only one step from
who has not discovered an important truth found out by solidarity of human boredom. Moral conscience? A system of win-
hoots to Aristotle, Bras, the
dows
that open, while others are closed. But let us
tional subject of feminine indiscretion.
know
everybody
that he. Bras,
is
come
more
to the
sensa-
Sensational, yes, but vulgar.
Let
capable of profound thoughts that could
have been conceived by Solomon or Schopenhauer.
The
narrator’s relationship
with the reader goes through
from seeming deference
of sadism,
to
all
the variations
open aggression. The
ironic regard
appears in expressions such as “beloved reader” (49.88) or in passages in
which he seems “I
am
(1.7).
to treat the reader as a
He
briefly.
Let
his
him judge
judgment:
for himself”
goes to the extreme of attributing to the reader clever comments,
which he has not made, and of instance, chapter
52 has no
curl his lip at
me
The
is
merely because
of these memoirs” (4.10).
He
is
to collaborate in the book.
chapter 35 has no
and the
reader
him
inviting
title,
reader, as to provide the title a deceptive respect.
who
grown-up, deferring to
going to explain the matter to him
text.
text:
be so good, dear
But, as in the case of Sterne,
infantilized.
we have not
“There yet
no need
is
come
For
it is
him
for
to
to the narrative part
even more repressive with a sensitive reader
dares to disapprove of Bras’ behavior: “Withdraw, then, the unfortunate
phrase that you used, sensitive soul; discipline your nerves, clean your eyeglasses” (34.72). in a corner,
The
narrator doesn’t leave us any choice but that of sulking
sucking our thumb.
undisguised brutality of a bully.
When
dropping
He may
his pretences. Bras has the
punish his readers with
of the fingers” (“To the Reader” 3) or threaten that does not conceal a homicidal intention:
them with
“Such an
insult
snap
would have
be washed away with blood” (34.72). Bras’ abuses are vociferous. is
just “a
death, with a sneer
obtuse and ignorant (49.89). With such incompetent readers,
The
how
to
reader
can one
expect his book to be a good one? Bras washes his hands, transferring to the reader this
all
book
responsibility for the shortcomings of his work: “the great defect of is
you, reader” (71.117).
He
scorns
all
narrative conventions.
intervenes constantly in the narrative, interrupting
its
He
flow according to his
THE AUTHOR AS PLAGIARIST - THE CASE OF
He
caprice.
is
almighty and can perform miracles, such
MACHADO DE
ASSIS
85
as that of writing a ROUANET
book
He
after his death.
ple, for, like
identifies himself
Moses, he has described
with Moses, the founder of a peo-
own
his
death.
He
is
even slightly supePAULO
Moses,
rior to
from
at least
a literary point of view, since in relating his death
beginning Bras’ work gained “in merriment and novelty”
at the
secular level, he of disobeying
Digressivity
all
is
a caliph, an absolute sovereign,
and
logical
tor
—
with
endowed with
the
the power
aesthetic canons.
for studying the digressions in
main
to isolate the
narrative
—
the
life
Tristram
procedure
is
that the
hook without knowing episodes of his pre-natal
main
narrative
practically anything life,
is
Shandy
and opinions of the narra-
and to decide that everything else would be digression.
this
On
and fragmentation
The most obvious manner would be
(1 .5).
quite laconic.
The problem
We
finish the
about Tristram, except some
the flattening of his nose as a result of the incom-
petence of a doctor, the unfortunate fact of his being christened Tristram, his
two
accidental circumcision, his premature breeching, the
trips
he made to
France, and the fact that he had a mysterious lady-friend he calls “dear Jenny”
and
no
a
less
obscure male-friend
take a
modest second place
father,
Walter Shandy. All
in the
much
We
book,
this fits in a
pages in the Everyman’s edition, is
named Eugenius. As as
compared
to the opinions of his
few pages, and
we must conclude
to his opinions, they
as the
book has 674
that the digressive matter
richer than the narrative matter.
find
many
types of digression, according to the nature of interpolated
material.
Most
They holes.
digressions are
on “opinions,”
as
can be expected from the
title.
cover an astounding variety of subjects, including whiskers and button-
We have already
dealt with these opinions as illustrations of the narra-
tor’s subjectivity.
There
are digressions
Sorbonne theologians,
unborn
babies; a
acters of the
composed of ready-made
in old French,
material, such as a text
by
about the legitimacy of the baptism of
sermon read by corporal Trim, attributed
to
one of the char-
book, the parson Yorick, and actually written by Sterne himself as
part of his duties as clergyman;
and the Latin
text
of a curse written by bishop
Ernulphus, the best and most comprehensive of curses, according to Walter.
A
third type of digression
narrative digressions.
There
is
formed by
parallel stories.
They can be
called
are isolated narratives, such as a short story attrib-
SERGIO
86
PORTUGUESE LITERARY & CULTURAL STUDIES
13/14
to the scholarly Dr. Slawkenbergiiis, partly written in Latin, designed to
iitecl
importance of large noses
illustrate the
word
to the
Queen
And
“nose.”
There
—whatever meaning we choose
of Navarre, dealing with moustaches, and
there
and the nun,
the story of the abbess
is
to give
of the
also a historiette taking place at the court
is
of
full
bawdy innuendos.
in France,
who
faced with
the need to use obscene language in order to persuade a pair of mules to go
forward, decide to dilute their sin by each of them pronouncing one syllable
of the forbidden word. But
two narrative
tinguish
on the
tering
The
ing
who
Toby contains
the episodes of the
all
Le Fever, an
rative of is
in the
war
officer
nursed by Toby
life
of uncle Toby and another cen-
of
first
all
the story of his
Netherlands until
in miniature models.
who
falls
ill
as
he
to an abrupt
the
is
more
above
it.
It
wounded
marrying the widow of
even a
was never
who
tale that
which Trim
castles,
are digressions
told, the story of the
about the book
itself,
of objectivity.
We
are far
le
is
moi
book
hai'ssable
digressions, the
is
most
—
how
now and
They
self-reflexive nature.
in order to create
and from the
an
illusion
naturalistic pro-
medium through which
real-
proud
to
show
machine, the gears and cog-
to the reader.
typical ones are the digressions
Among
the self-reflexive
about digressions. From
pages, he asks the reader’s indulgence for his digressive
should seem
his
in vain.
the contrary, Sterne makes a point of saying that his
a subjective construction, a beautiful
wheels of which he
first
On
includes
including digressions about digressions.
of transforming the author into a neutral
ity represents itself
the
from
It
King of Bohemia and
again and again
tries to tell
Sterne disdains to efface himself from the
work
nurses
knee and even
a Jewish sausage-maker.
But the most characteristic digressions are of a
gram
at the
includes also the story of Trim’s brother, jailed by the Lisbon
Inqtiisition after
seven
her sus-
delicate organs.
and massages him
at the knee,
and
most famous
Trim’s cycle includes the story of his relationship with a nun, is
the nar-
widow Wadman,
Wadman shocks Toby with
end when Mrs.
picion that his groin injury might have affected
him when he
is
join his regiment,
Le Fever’s death. Third, there
Lintil
of reproduc-
Second, there
tries to
from the
life
his decision
episode of the book, the story of Toby’s courtship of the
which comes
dis-
by uncle Toby’s servant. Trim.
wounded
he was
one on the
cycles,
stories told
cycle of
moment
we can
in addition to these isolated stories,
then to
trifle
upon
the road
[...]
method: “If I
don’t fly off” (1.6.10-
can anyone with a minimLim of imagination travel in a straight
11).
For
line,
instead of exploring
all
possible detours?
How can
one
ride
from
Rome
— MACHADO DE
THE AUTHOR AS PLAGIARIST - THE CASE OF
without inserting
to Loreto, for instance,
ASSIS
87
deciphering inscriptions,
stories,
ROUANET
and convening people? At every upon, and
to be looked
state of the
[...]
documents, and endless genealogies
records,
rolls,
journey “there are archives
PAULO
in short, there
[...]
Tristram
no end of
is
tries to justify his
it”
(1.14.37).
myself
Giving up
(VI. 33. 482-483).
promised that he
from now on
will
on
digressions: “a
could be inserted to keep up that
without which digression
necessary,
is
way
for
strange creature
had planned already
it.
He
No
sooner has he
try to avoid digressions,
he relapses and
good quantity of heterogeneous matter balance between
just
wisdom and
a single year.”
And
folly
since a
is
made
feels
When
mortal man!”
movement
he arrives
his frisky digression,
method
of rotation
The
a text in
is
and of
digressions, including
particularly stupid.
(IX. 12- 14.640-644).
it
new
does so by writing
make
to
and takes advantage of the intermediate chapters
when he
Tristram explains his has a
lost
should be “a good frisky one, and upon a frisky sub-
it
later,
of shaving
his habit
am
I
12.640). But Tristram decides to insert this frisky digression
ject too” (IX.
only three chapters pave the
see,
hope of explaining himself through
all
book would not hold together
a
of digressions
full
“And now you
language, he draws diagrams and geometrical figures.
again digresses
which
digressions with
digressions are sometimes so
that the narrator gets hopelessly confused. ”
The
at the
But
alas,
to
one on
“what
a
chapter in which he
he remarks sadly that he had canonical digression in which
which he
says that just as the earth
work
translation, his
has a
movement
of
progression and of digression: “Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine
they are the
you might
life,
the soul of reading. Take
as well take the
the beginning of this, titious parts
digressive
of
can
narrative
main
the
and
I
[.
.
.]
have constructed the main work and the adven-
with intersections, and have so complicated and involved the
it
is
now
other, that the
been kept a-going” (1.22.73-74).
in general, has
understand the diabolical complexity of the work.
The main
cut whenever a digression occurs. In turn, the digressions are cut by
narrative
and by other
as the cuts are multiple, the
As
a loyal Shandeist,
of Bras Cubas
2LS
ematic sense.
He
cal
see,
for instance
For which reason, from
and progressive movements, one wheel within the
whole machinery,
We
you
them out of this book,
books along with them.
digressions.
Each cut generates two fragments,
segmentation process
Machado de Assis
an assemblage of fragments, almost uses
works of universal
and
is
virtually endless.
constructs his Posthumous Memoirs as a
montage, in the cin-
recycles alien fragments, extracted
literature,
from the
which he plunders without any
classi-
inhibition.
SERGIO
88
PORTUGUESE LITERARY & CULTURAL STUDIES
own
In addition, he produces his ratives into pieces.
This
13/14
fragments by breaking sentences and nar-
We
the job of digressions.
is
find in the
book
all
the
kinds of digressions created or used by Sterne. First of
thing,
sions
and
on
come
all
tight boots,
Digressions
chapter
the opinions. Like Tristram, Bras has opinions
in the spirit of true
on the
made up
of the nose and on the equivalence of windows.
of ready-made materials appear in the aphorisms of
would-be
main narration
main one
the
the parallel story of
is
this parallel narration
is
a
fragment splitting
into other fragments. But in addition to the story of
Quincas Borba there brief vignettes in the
Nha-Lolo.
bride,
to the narrative digressions,
Quincas Borba. Each episode of the
on every-
volubility he offers the reader digres-
19 and in the epitaph of chapter 125, which replaces the descrip-
1
tion of the death of Bras’
As
tip
Shandean
are small narratives, short stories of
form of apologues, or
contes moraux.
an edifying nature,
They
are self-con-
who
tained fragments of their own. Such are the episodes of the captain writes verses while his wife is
rewarded
is
young Bras and afterwards
tartar that
But he
it is
he believes he
man
book
is
beaten by the
own, and, linked
to this story, ingests so
Tamerlan, king of Tartars.
is
a glass
materials, correcting the
is
most Shandean. There
workshop, within which the
keeps hammering, smoothing with a
and discarding
who
madman, Romualdo, who
in the self-reflexive digressions that Bras
in his real element. F^is
is
is
helps the narrator and
Prudencio,
beats slaves of his
the fragment of a fragment, the tale of a
much
who
dying, of a muleteer
in a miserly way, of the black
crafts-
forging junctions, choosing
file,
work, starting anew.
If
the glass
is
not
transparent enough, the narrator does not hesitate to clear up compositional details,
by writing
letters to the critics, for Instance:
The book
explain everything?” (138.190). process of
The tone fuse
and
its is
own, which Bras
is
an
“Good God, do
artifact,
I
have to
with a production
invites the reader to inspect, stage
by
stage.
given from the prologue, in which the narrator explains the dif-
free
manner
of the
work and
in
which he makes
logues in general, asserting that the best format
is
reflections
on pro-
the one he has chosen. Fie
amuses himself with self-congratulatory remarks. The book, composed with an “extraordinary method” (“To the Reader” (4.10). art,
I
And what
make
an
artistic talent!
“Observe
3)
the biggest transition in this book.
No apparent seams or joints.
[.
tem and method without the
.
.]
Thus
the
was “supinely philosophical”
now
with what
[...]
book has
skill,
Did you note all
with what carefully?
the advantages of sys-
rigidity that they generally entail” (9.23).
But
THE AUTHOR AS PLAGIARIST - THE CASE OF
Bras
is
nor incapable of self-criticism. “The book
is
tedious,
MACHADO
it
DE ASSIS
89
smells of the ROUANET
tomb,
has a rigor mortis about
it
from chapter
alternate
(71.117). Self-praise and self-criticism
it”
One
to chapter.
chapter contains a
wisdom
that
had PAULO
escaped Aristotle (chap. 81). Another one has a splendid ending; “Blessed be
what an impressive
the Lord, says
sad
is
close for a chapter!” (99.153).
another
(23.56),
He
now and
then he
He
He
emphatic” (25.58).
unbecoming, because
He
continuously explains his
am writing and me as author” “Hold on! There goes my pen forget that
1
the pen
1
paper, with grave detriment to
hates emphasis, he loves simplicity.
to the
He
does not
after all his
useless
control himself to avoid prolixity, though
tries to
“Sometimes
fails.
moves along, eating up
chapter he
profound (132.185), another
not
(136.188), and another repetitive (145.196). preferences as a writer.
One
book
anything that
like to say
is
slipping
morally
is
chaste, at least in intention (14.36).
had had before
hints at the several love affairs he
(22.55).
Virgilia,
but he only
allows his pen to enter his house after a process of moral purification. “Badly
bred pen, put a fashionable waistcoat;
and then
hammock”
(47.86).
of the chapters. acter.
One
yes,
The
At times
of them
is
your
tie to
and clothe
style,
it
with a
less
drab
come with me
to this house, stretch yourself in this
narrator never
tires to
their title
is
enough
to
explain the order and content
make
clear their digressive char-
called “Parenthetical” (1 19.173), another “Interposition”
(124.180), and another “To insert in chapter 129” (130.184).
Among
the self-reflexive digressions, the most fascinating ones are the
digressions about digressions, in a constructive process. gory. Bras ion,
The many
proud of having the
is
which the narrator allusions to
style
left,
they guffaw, they threaten the sky, they
kind of style his style to
is
this?
my
style
Gamboa. Wine,
my style
they slip
start
and
is
If
this
fruit,
afternoon snacks
compotes.
to this cate-
are like a pair of drunks;
Barthes
We would
I
when
compared
had
eat, to
roar,
(71.117-118). But what Bras compares
my
analogy seems indecorous to you,
like the
digression as
and they mutter, they
fall”
discourse:^ “I have already
progress of a drunk.
another:
“method” belong
We are reminded of Roland
amorous
on
of a drunkard, walking in zigzag fash-
going back and forth. “This book and
they stagger to the right and to the
reflects
style to the let
in the little
me
offer
house in
be sure, but the meal was
always punctuated with sweet nothings, with tender glances, with childish
whims, with an infinitude of these
asides of the heart that constitute the true,
uninterrupted discourse of love” (73.1 19). Admirable metaphor: the meal has its
normal Bow, codified by tradition
—wine,
fruit, sweets.
But the flow
is
SERGIO
90
PORTUGUESE LITERARY & CULTURAL STUDIES
13/14
by erotic commas, which
pLinctLiated
in their intermittent
manifestation are
made of
the real straight line of the heart: disruptive discourse, itself
inter-
ruptions, the transgressive and digressive speech of Eros severing the connec-
by Logos.
tions established
Time and space In Tristram Shandy, chronological time
is
ity.
In this respect, the narrator can he as
on
his side the best atithority
quoted by Sterne
The concept
by the narrator’s subjectivas
he
because he has
likes,
Europe could provide: John Locke. Eor Locke,
in his reply to
the idea of duration, which of our ideas.
refracted
Shandean
is
an imaginary
critic (II. 2. 85),
time
is
an idea,
obtained through a reflection on the sequence
when we
of succession arises
on the appear-
reflect
ance of several consecutive ideas, and the distance between two such ideas in
our mind
is
what we
therefore time
mind. As
may
call
duration. Duration
is
pass very fast or very slowly, according to our states of
a narrator, Tristram operates in the
that of quantitative time.
It is
medium of duration and
He
time that distorts the time of action a
number
—
had
deals with time as he
dealt with the reader, in a completely arbitrary manner.
— through
not in
the succession of ideas of the narrator that deter-
mines the temporal articulations of the book.
story unfolds
and
therefore purely subjective,
He
creates a narrative
which the
the objective time within
of techniques. These
somewhat cinematic
techniques include those of immobilization, inversion, delay, and acceleration.
Immobilization achieves what
an allusion to the
one hundred of
Book
I
fairy-tale in
years.
The
classical
example
and chapter 6 of Book
his sister-in-law
was about
we might
the “Sleeping Beauty effect,”
call
which everybody
II.
is
in the castle falls asleep for
the sequence between chapter 21
Hearing
to give birth, uncle
a noise in the
Toby
makes the gesture of throwing away the ashes of his in that position for forty pages of digressions his call
room
baby’s nose
When
which
pipe.
He
and
remains frozen
and only then does he empty
pipe and complete his sentence: what he thought was that the doctor (1.21.64; 11.6.100).
in
says “I think [...]”
it
his father receives the
was crushed by the doctor, Walter
is
was time
to
news that the
so afflicted that in sheer
despair he remains petrified in bed for fourteen chapters and sixty pages (111.30.224). Tristram decides to let Mrs.
tude of listening
many not
as
at a
door for
five
Shandy remain frozen
minutes, but
it
is
much
digressions that he finally decides to unfreeze her. “I
much
as forgot
my
mother,
as if
am
Nature had plaistered
in the atti-
later
a
and
Turk
me
up,
if
after I
had
and
set
THE AUTHOR AS PLAGIARIST - THE CASE OF
me down naked upon
MACHADO
the bank of the river Nile, without one” (V.
1
DE ASSIS
91
1.382). ROUANET
rhrough inversion, the narrator reversible. In the usual
upon the arrow
acts
making
of time,
it
cinematic procedure, there are flashbacks and HashPAULO
The book
forwards.
The
beginning and finishes before the end.
starts before the
beginning, which should be the story of Walter and Toby, turns out to
be the story of the pre-natal calamities that befall the hero, such as Mrs. Shandy’s untimely interruption of her husband delicate task of begetting his son. rity
and when he begins
The
memoirs,
to write his
Toby’s infatuation with the widow, that
Through sense,
when he was engaged
in the
end, which should be the hero’s matu-
is,
is
the final episode of uncle
four years before Tristram’s birth.
inversion, the past can be recaptured, retrouve, in the best Proustian
and even be subject
which he warns
to the author’s intervention, such as the passage in
long-dead uncle of Mrs. Wadman’s matrimonial schemes.
his
Similarly, the future can be
embedded
in the past: in the
midst of his uncle’s
imaginary “campaigns,” Tristram transports Toby and Trim into a far-distant
which master and servant
future, in
are already dead.
Slowness and rapidity are the two extremes of the narrator’s rhythm.
Sometimes he actions,
all
the need to
feels
reflections
which means that he must turn
right
ing everything, excluding nothing. tell
the story in his
the road” (1.6.10-1
own manner, 1).
This
endless delay. But at other
moves forward example
is
at
everything, to capture
tell
and
From
“trifling,”
two or three episodes, such
left,
go back and forward, describ-
the very beginning, Tristram begs to
manner
upon
filmed by a very slow camera, can
mean
if this
we can
scarcely follow the film.
details are insignificant,
reason
and the consequence
which
is
that here the narrator
is
is
important, and
delay; at the other extreme,
requires a highly selective camera, with
which
and events follow each other with the speed of lightning. In the slow
movement, small episodes and events drag on interminably, with tedious
German word
oughness
(see the
the rapid
movement,
The
best
he was breeched before time and
The
movement. At one extreme, everything lost,
The
whom we know very little, apart from
as the fact that
that he traveled twice to the continent.
pictures
all
moments, the narrator becomes impatient, and
such speed that
nothing should be
objects,
involves “trifling
even
the biography of Tristram, of
prefers the rapid
all
of the external world in the consciousness of the writer,
years
for
thor-
boredom, Langeweile, long duration);
and even decades
are telescoped into a
few
in
lines.
various attitudes toward time reappear in the graphic eccentricities of
the book.
The
idea of temporal immobility, the
empty time during which
SERGIO
92
PORTUGUESE LITERARY & CULTURAL STUDIES
nothing happens, which nique, 1
is
13/14
in the text
appears in the form of the freezing tech-
expressed graphically in the form of blank chapters, such as chapter
Book
8 and most of chapter 19 of
IX.
The
idea of reversible time,
which
the text takes the form of an inversion in the order of events,
now
an inversion
of appearing
in the internal organization of the text: instead
Book
the beginning, the dedication appears in chapter 8 of
ace in chapter 20 of
Book
III.
The
between rapid and slow
Book IV II,
has only two lines
containing the
full text
Shandean space
young to
amiss that a it
This
man
pages.
who went
cities
and
to France
who and monuments: “Now
made
is
clear
Italy in
by Tristram,
I
his
pen
at
every kennel he crosses over” (VII. 4. 499).
Shandean
all
Sterne: “I have not seen the Palais Royal
think
pictures,
statues
and churches. ”7 What
baroque space of the labyrinth, that of the picaresque novel,
full
— nor
It is
very
alone,
space?
Shandean
I
narrator,
It is
say that
where there it is
the space of the flaneur,^ for a lazy stroll
Shandean
whom
no pre-determined also
delights, or
are
no
—
after
all,
encoun-
they are “sen-
rather the non-rectilinear space straight lines, because the road
the fldnerie
road.
Who
is
a kind of
else feels so
traveler-narrator? “If he
he goes along” (1.14.37). But even
Garonne, but he may
perhaps, the
certainly true that such
it is
he will have hfty deviations from a straight
traveler has
the
we have of
an anticipation of the space of early modernity,
away from the main
digressions as a
it,
— nor
of
where each day holds an adventure with bandits
would
always zigzag. In a way,
Is
and unexpected
not rare either in Tristram’s or Yorick’s travels
timental travelers.” But
made even
Luxembourg
the
this
is
of mysteries
or an encounter with ladies in distress?
is
it
it
travelers, Yorick, the alter ego
facade of the Louvre, nor have attempted to swell the catalogues
of the
order
scoffs at the
cannot go quietly through a town and leave
by the prototype of
ters are
we have reflected
does not meddle with him, but that he must be turning about and
drawing clearer
it is
5
more than twenty
of a sermon, has
mania of writing about famous
much
reflected, as
not the usual space of travelers of the Grand Tour,
is
their minds.
when
is
storytelling; but
— chapter of — and abnormally long ones—chapter 17 of Book
sprigs of the British aristocracy
improve
pref-
between abnormally short chapters
also in the alternation
at
idea of duration as a subjective experience,
brief or long irrespective of the actual lapse of time, seen, in the alternation
appears as
and the
I,
in
when he
destination.
line to is
is
a
man
make
urban digression,
much of the
at
home
in
least spirit,
this or that party as
not strolling, but galloping, the
He may
stop at the banks of the
“scamper away to mount Vesuvius, from thence to
MACHADO DE
THE AUTHOR AS PLAGIARIST - THE CASE OF
ASSIS
Joppa, and from Joppa to the world’s end” (VII. 1 .496-497). Whatever
93
its ROUANET
nature, space
becomes
as subjective as time. Just as
The
time, Sterne de-materializes geometric space.
he had done with clock-
characters travel, but in a PAULO
space reconstructed by the writer’s evocations and fantasies; this remembered space corresponds as
little
remembered time corresponds
to objective space as
to objective time.
Machado de
Assis
is
second to none
ing objective into subjective time. This the essence of
Shandean
in the
Shandean
skill
of transform-
coherent with the law of caprice,
is
Cubas
subjectivity: a despot in everything. Bras
wants also to be the master of time. But he the idea of the ephemeral character of cholic, he wants to control time. This
all is
is
also a melancholic,
things.
As
haunted by
a tyrant or as a
what he does
as a narrator,
melan-
subordi-
nating entirely the time of action to narrative time. In so doing, he uses
all
the strategies of temporal disorganization applied by Tristram: immobiliza-
and
tion, inversion, delay,
By
acceleration.
creating a dead narrator,
Machado de
beyond anything
Assis goes
Sterne had imagined in trying to achieve immobilization. Tristram freezes his characters, but does not freeze himself
he was is
alive,
and therefore subject
that after this, his health
head “ached dismally”
from
telling the story
time twelve-month, I’ll
deteriorates
—and might at
(unless this vile
—
all
after writing four
memoirs,
his
living authors.
The
proof
volumes, his
“I take
cough
him
my leave of you till this me in the mean time)
kills
your beards and lay open a story to the world you
dream of” (IV.32.350).
from the very beginning
he began writing
deteriorate even further, preventing
of uncle Toby’s amours:
when
have another pluck
little
had
When
to change, like
In contrast. Bras
is
changeless.
He
is
time beyond time, the time of eternity.
in a
installed
He
can-
not speak about death in the future tense, like Tristram but, being a posthu-
mous
author, only in the past tense. Being dead, he cannot die.
grow
get thinner, because “bones never
thin” (23.56).
He
He
cannot
cannot get
older,
because “death does not age” (138.190). After having put himself beyond time. Bras proceeds to
do the same throughout the book.
ating zones of timelessness by
chapters without a
title, titles
of Bras and Virgflia, has no
He
does so by cre-
means of the usual Shandean mannerisms:
without a
title.
The
text.
reason
Chapter 53, about the is
that
it is
not a
first kiss
real chapter,
but a prologue, the prologue of the adulterous love that will be recounted later.
As
time, an
a prologue, placed before the beginning,
Immovable time of perfect
bliss.
it
“This single
corresponds to a zero kiss
united us, this
kiss,
SERGIO
94
PORTUGUESE LITERARY & CULTURAL STUDIES
13/14
ardent and brief.” But after this time-free prologue comes the story ject to all the vicissitudes
of jealousy,
all
of time:
them paid
of
for in full
come and would swallow up
the
first
sub-
itself,
of anger, of despair,
“a life of nervousness,
by one hour, but another hour would
and everything that went with
leav-
it,
ing only the nervousness and the dregs, and the dregs of the dregs, which are satiety
and disgust
—such was
to be the
logue” (53.94-95). Chapter 55 has a
and Eve”) and the names of the text
is
the sexes,
beyond
words alludes
Become
all
is
everywhere the same.
was the pro-
The words
are unneces-
comedy of
the universal
absence of
in this sense the
“How
of change. Chapter 139,
Did Not
I
a Minister of State,” signihes the zero time of a non-event.
Machado de
Shandean
Assis uses with great virtuosity another
make time
inversion, which, again, allows the narrator to
Bras goes back to chapters already written, as
when he
strategy,
Thus,
reversible.
decides to intercalate
chapter 130 in chapter 129. But the best example of temporal inversion central device of the book. Bras’ decision to start his
and not
his birth.
Tristram Shandy, ity to start
This inversion
which
is
more
finishes before the hero’s birth,
also
common
in the
Acceleration, drastically shortening entire years
I
frankly acknowledged by the narrator. says: “Let’s all get set
When
to raise the devil
on the
hills”
prolix.
3.35).
“No,
let
He
(13.34).
to 1822, the date of Brasil’s political ( 1
in
but has not the audac-
book. Delay
we have
and decades of the
mainly
hero’s
life,
he comes to his school years,
starts to talk
jump
to be hit
about
by them,
his school-
again: “Instead, let us
independence and of
my own
Sometimes he checks himself when he notices he
is
jump
first
cap-
becoming
us not prolong the chapter” (22.55).
without any pre-conceived plan. This
is
I
my
prise,
found myself at the door of the Pharoux Hotel.
me
random,
was thinking about these
people,
were carrying
at
what happens when he walks
mechanically towards the Pharoux Hotel. “While legs
is
already examined.
According to the Shandean tradition, Bras Cubas crosses space
I
his death,
anything attempted
my schoolmates,
mate, Quincas Borba, but then decides to
tivity”
the
and jump over the school, the tiresome school, where
learned to read, to write, to count, to hit
and
is
with the hero’s death.
Delay and acceleration are
he
memoirs with
radical than
obtained through the countless digressions, which
is
but
as dialogue-partners,
It is
and
variations of history,
to the absence
this kiss
(“The Venerable Dialogue of Adam
title
and Bras Cubas
replaced by dots and punctuation marks.
because the script
sary,
Virgilia
book of which
along, street after street, until, to I
was
my
sur-
in the habit of
THE AUTHOR AS PLAGIARIST
dining there; but,
as
on
occasion
this
-
THE CASE OF
had not gone there
1
MACHADO
DE ASSIS
95
deliberately, credit ROUANET
my
for
my
belongs not to me, hut to
arrival
Shandean authors and characters
legs” (66.1 12).
through
relate to space
But
in general,
and not
travels,
PAULO
through automatic perambulations. Traveling
Shandeism was discovered, But we may
as
we have
two ways,
travel in
common
by Machado de Assis himself.
guidebook or
belong to the second group.
travelers
have seen that speaking through Yorick, Sterne
would not describe anything
denominator of
either following a Baedecker
obeying subjective impulses. Shandean
We
seen,
as a
made
it
clear that
he
that usual travelers write about, such as the
Louvre, the Luxembourg, and the Palais-Royal, but only what was of interest to
him. Bras Cubas follows
mental involvements
about serious matters, such
“Of
to other authors. travel diary
my
as the
letter.
He
boasts of his senti-
dawn of Romanticism. This should be
these matters,
and not memoirs, such
life is set
when
example to the
this
Europe, but refuses with great energy to say anything
in
forth” (22.54). Bras
say nothing.
1
as these, in
is
I
left
should have to write a
which only the substance of
unambiguous: space
is
interesting only
evoked, and should enter the narrative only in an impressionistic
it is
manner, determined by the narrator’s associative processes.
Such
is
the space that appears in the book. Like time, space
structed, internalized. Narrated space
memory and
fantasy.
and neighborhoods. Tijuca,
where he
Marcela,
ters
died.
The
The urban It
flirted
is
purely subjective.
is
de-con-
distorted in
It is
space of Rio de Janeiro shrinks to a few streets
reduced to the Rocio, where Bras met Marcela,
is
with Eugenia, to Ourives
Gamboa, where he used
Street,
to see Virgflia,
distance between two points
—
where he re-encoun-
and Catumbi, where he
the trip from Rio to Eisbon, where
he met the captain-poet, from Coimbra do Eisbon, where he met the muleteer, all
from Venice
where he thought about
to Rio,
his mother’s death
—
loses
topographical meaning and becomes only an abstract frame of reference
for the illustration of states
of mind.
But what did Machado de Assis mean when he said that Bras Cubas had traveled
around
life?
Obviously, that Cubas, blinded by the vain
vanity and prestige, had not
demned
to turn
this expression
around
it,
managed
like a
moth around
life itself
the flame.
glitter of
but was con-
At the same time,
reminds us of the astronomical metaphor in chapter 150: “In
the wheel of the great mystery,
days
to plunge into
— unequal,
like Jupiter’s
length” (150.202).
The
man
— and of
translational
both rotates and revolves; he has these he
makes up
his year
movement of Cubas around
his
of uncertain life
resulted
SERGIO
96
PORTUGUESE LITERARY & CULTURAL STUDIES
in a “year”
13/14
of about sixty years, with “days” entirely devoted to
frivolity.
The
astronomical comparison suggests a circular movement, with a return to the
him nowhere. He
starting point. In fact. Bras’ travels led
deal but stayed in
same
the
Thus
place.
gesticulated a great
Shandean
the
characteristic of
motionless time tends to coincide with that of spatial immobility. This
immobility
is
much
travel,
they
Assis, a
the basic vocation of
man who
and
Shandean authors, no matter how
all
of Machado de
this reinforces the self-classification
never traveled, as a scion of the Shandean lineage.
Laughter and melancholy Tristram
is
a melancholic,
time, of death.
by Sterne
rized)
haunted by the ghosts of transiency, of
No wonder is
fleeting
one of the books most quoted (and
plagia-
The Anatomy ofMelancholy, by Robert Burton. But
invari-
that
ably Sterne inserts his melancholic reflections in a context in which they
become comical.
In so doing, he goes back to the tradition of Antiquity,
according to which the philosopher Democritus
alleged to have said to
is
Hippocrates that laughing was the best antidote against melancholy. There
who
no doubt too that he absorbed the lesson of Rabelais, logue to Gargantua that est
de
“
Voyant
de larmes escripre
ris qtie
le
Pour
I
him
Sterne agrees entirely. For
dueil qui vous
que
ce
mine
wrote in the pro-
consomme
in general the
is
I
Mieux
T hommeP
propre de
rire est le
laughter
et
supreme medi-
cine against disease. In the book’s dedication to Mr. Pitt, he says that he
constantly lighting “the infirmities of
ill
health,
when he
laughs,
ter acts in particular
we
it
adds something to
on
this
and other
man
mirth: being firmly persuaded that every time a so,
Was
I
itime
—
of
left,
or a
heart)'
(1.6.
like
1
1)
—and
Sancho Panza,
body
politic as
God would should
I
give
upon
my
the
my
to choose to
And
creating disorders in the blood
the
life,
make
a
kingdom,
penny
as the bilious
But laugh-
—
natural,
[...]
no,
as I
it
it
should not be mar-
should be a kingdom
bad an influence,
should add to
my
I
see,
upon
prayer that
subjects grace to be as wise as they are merry;
and then
be the happiest monarch, and they the happiest people under heaven.
(IV.32.350)
“As
do anything, only keep
and more saturnine passions, by
and humors, have
body
of;
is
by
much more
(v).
ideal subjects:
kingdom of blacks
laughing subjects.
of
produces ideal readers
It
jog on, either laugh with me, or at me, or in short,
your temper”
evils
smiles, but
fragment of life”
disorders of the mind.
is
MACHADO DE ASSIS
THE AUTHOR AS PLAGIARIST - THE CASE OF
The book hook)
whole can he seen
as a
— anything
wrote against
is
panacea against melancholy:
as a
“If (this ROUANET
wrote, an’please your worships, against
‘tis
more frequent and more convulsive
the spleen! in order, hy a
97
and
elevation
PAULO
depression of the diaphragm, and the succussations of the intercostal and
abdominal muscles
and other
in laughter, to drive the gall
hitter juices
the gall-bladder, liver anci sweetbread of his majesty’s subjects, with
which belong
inimicitioLis passions
them,
to
down
from
all
the
into their dtiodenums”
(IV.22.311).
Shandy
Tristram
theory into practice. Every time the theme
this
\.vzns\'A\.(ts
makes
of decay or death turns up, laughter self to his
harmless. Thus, addressing him-
“dear Jenny,” Tristram utters grave reflections that could have
out of Ecclesiastes: “Time wastes too
what rapidity
my
it
my
follows
life
every letter
fast;
I
trace tells
pen; the days and hours of
it,
more
me
come with
precious,
dear Jenny, than the rubies about thy neck, are Hying over our heads like
light clouds of a
upon
windy
day, never to return
us both!” (IX.8.636).
But
more
note
this elegiac
is
[...].
Heaven have mercy
interrupted in the follow-
ing chapter, which consists of only fifteen words, well calculated to provoke a bittersweet
tion
—
I
fit
of fou
would not
Death
“Now,
rire:
for
what the world thinks of
give a groat” (IX. 9. 636).
always turned into a joke.
is
A
good example
which Walter Shandy comments upon the death of Bobby, Philosophy
offers
many
consolations
(V.3.367)
—and
when Walter
the
at
minably about death, but
such
uncle
it
as “to die
is
received the sad news he used
— “he time
same
in
took them
as
is
such a disorderly way that even the
When
all
of
they came”
Magna Carta
Walter managed to say something
the great debt
Toby interrupted with
Walter, death
the chapter in
the result was a terrible confusion. Walter dissertated inter-
entered into his discourse. ble,
is
Tristram’s brother.
consolations for such tragedies, remarks Tristram,
but the problem was that those
that ejacula-
and
tribute
intelligi-
due unto nature” (V.3.367),
eccentric remarks. For the philosopher, says
liberation, because
it
helps
him
get rid of his melancholy: “Is
not better to be freed from cares and agues, from love and melancholy, and
the other hot and cold to his inn, to be
fits
bound
of life, than
like a galled traveler,
who comes weary
to begin his journey afresh?” (V.3.370). Yes, but, as
Tristram duly notes, in saying these noble words Walter had completely forgotten his departed son.
theme nbi
human
siint,
The
great object of melancholic meditation, the
through which philosophers from Antiquity have deplored
mortality and the decline of empires, was conscientiously included in
SERGIO
98
PORTUGUESE LITERARY & CULTURAL STUDIES
“Where
Walter’s reHections: Persepolis
Troy and Mycenae, and Thebes and Delos, and
is
and Agrigenttim?” (V.3.367). But the beautiful
was somewhat marred by the in Greece,
a
13/14
effect
fact that in referring to a certain
of this tirade
voyage made
Walter forgot to inform his brother Toby that he was quoting from
contemporary of Cicero. Thus, not unnaturally, Toby thought that the
had been made by Walter, and asked him
in
which year of our Lord
How
taken place. In no year of our Lord, said Walter.
it
trip
had
so? Well, because
it
Death knocks
at
took place forty years before Christ was born (V.3.369).
The
horror of death
Tristram’s door, but
doubted
his
is
is
similarly neutralized in
Book
who
commission. The reason was that Tristram,
rupted, was at that
VII.
received “in so gay a tone of careless indifference” that he
moment
telling
and of
cied herself a shell-fish,
Like Tristram, Bras
a
monk damned
who
for eating a mussel” (VII.
melancholic, which should
is
hated to be inter-
Eugenius a tawdty story “of a nun
come
no
as
1
fan-
.496).
surprise,
considering that he behaves like a tyrant and that tyrants are especially vulnerable to melancholy
melancholy
are to believe Walter
the illness of the Prince,
is
of the
frailty
we
(if
human
more exposed than anyone
cadenced pace
is
to slowness.
its
rhythm, which the digressive
characteristic of melancholy.
among many
present evertyvhere. Consider, the clock,
whose gloomy less
second to
between two bags, one labeled
But
[...]’”
author, the flight of time,
is
other examples, the metaphor of
tick tock seemed to say at each stroke that Bras live:
life
“I
would imagine an old
devil sitting
and the other death, taking coins from the
former and dropping them into the another gone
else to the
According to ancient authors, the slow and
The fundamental theme of the melancholic
would have one
whom
condition). ^ Melancholy appears in the morbidity that
permeates the whole book, and even in
method condemns
Benjamin, for
latter,
and
saying:
Another gone
[...]
(54.95).
in the authentic
Shandean manner, there
is
laughter too.
Of what
kind? Classical authors recognized two kinds of laughter: pathological laughter,
a
symptom of
Insanity,
body and the mind
illustrated
laughter,
of melancholic humors.
kind in Sterne. In contrast, is
and medicinal
it
There
which could purge the is
ven^
plays an important role in
little
of the
first
Machado. This type
by Pandora’s laugh, the delirium of the narrator: “The
figure
loosed a fierce laugh, which produced about us the effect of a whirlwind; the plants were contorted, (7.18).
It
is
and
illustrated,
a long wail broke the silence of the surroundings”
in the
same episode, by the dying man himself.
MACHADO DE ASSIS
THE AUTHOR AS PLAGIARIST - THE CASE OF
already half-demented: “It was
and
erate
The
idiotic” (7.21).
who began
I
Democritus, Rabelais, and Sterne. Like
ter of
immod-
to laugh, with a laughter
other kind of laughter
is
medicinal
—
99
ROUANET
the laugh-
Machado duly
his predecessors,
PAULO
comedy
provides his reader with
make him
order to
in
he has no illusions about the medicinal effect of
this laughter.
On the contrary,
function seems to be to discredit the very idea that melancholy can be cured
its
at
laugh. But unlike them,
humor
This
all.
and had
failed,
to
might have been able
to cure
a tyrant,
but he was also a clown,
like Tristram,
was the king of buffoons, Yorick. The true vocation of
ego
clown was the
circus.
morning,
was
as
I
This
how
is
through the grounds of
strolling
Hexed
it
I
my
and began
legs
acrobatic feats one can possibly imagine
[...].
it
real
alter
this tyrannical
“One
suburban home, an
used to carry about in
arms and
its
whose
he describes the birth of his fixed idea:
idea took hold of the trapeze that
had taken hold,
him. But
because Bras was not serious enough to produce a
fail,
He was
Invention.
a “plaster” that
is
my
Once
head.
it
do the most daring
to
This Idea was nothing
than
less
the invention of a great cure, an anti-melancholy plaster, designed to relieve
despondency of mankind”
the
(2.7).
The
The
description leaves no doubt.
invention was not sublime, but ludicrous, a juggler’s fancy, an idea so comical that
finished by killing the inventor with a ridiculous death
it
caused by a draught
—
exalted rank requires
no
a fate
worthy of
utes.
man
also of antitheses,
and watches
importance of
a fly
is
The
all
tation
aware ner.
—
condemned
to oblivion,
theme of
at the last
The
affairs
What
The second
and last
life’s
stays
is
time,
that the
all
whole show has
We
him of his boredom.
are almost
medi-
—when we become
liaison
fugacity
the
transience, de brevitate vitae
life’s
minute that
word
is
succeeding each other,
and decides
relieve
other.
to interpret these remarks as classical instances of melancholic
the
The end of Bras’
insects,
time. Bras begins to get tired
scene from the point of view of Saturn?
this
been staged to entertain Saturn, to
tempted
first
by the planet of
for his contradictory attrib-
and an ant grappling with each
he comments on the spectacle of love ephemeral,
a saturnine, ruled
which accounts
Saturn appears twice in the book.
of Virgflia
whose
than assassination by poison or by a dagger.
less
This tyrannical and clownish
melancholy but
— pneumonia
a jester but not of a tyrant
this
theme
is
with Virgflia
a spectacle to
being Introduced in a derisive manis
illustrated
amuse
with melancholy. This
vented the production of the anti-melancholic
is
by the struggle of two
a planet
—
to
make
it
laugh.
not because Bras’ death pre-
plaster,
but because the idea
as
such was ludicrous, an acrobat’s gambol, a pirouette that would never threaten
SERGIO
100
PORTUGUESE LITERARY & CULTURAL STUDIES
13/14
the rule of melancholy. This, however, does not prevent Bras From covering it
with Yorick’s foolscap, for
if
man’s destiny
is
melancholy, man’s dignity
is
to
laugh, even in the face of death, until the final somersault.
Machado’s Shandean mixture of laughter and melancholy appears very beginning. At
book had been written “with the pen
the
all,
Melancholy” (“To the Reader”
Machado makes
ent.
had
It
becomes an was
book was more
pessimistic than
its
Shandean
not to be found in the other authors.
taste”
indirect source of joy.
the face of his dying
mother “was
Of course
but melancholy
itself
melancholy can be for Bras what
it
provoked by the contemplation of a skeleton: less a face
than a
skull. Its beauty, like a bright
had passed; nothing remained but the bones, and bones never grow thin”
(23.56).
The
believe that
period of mourning was his
at the
first
experience of melancholy: “I
was then that the Bower of melancholy
it
morbid flower with
yellow, lonely,
But
of Mirth and the ink of
foreword to the third edition
joy unable to conquer melancholy,
is
for Diirer, a source of sorrow,
day,
in his
of the cups was the same, but the wine was differ-
and sharp
a “bitter
Not only
But
3).
clear that the
its
The workmanship
models.
at the
the two elements seem to be well-balanced. After
first sight,
same time Bras
it
subtle
me
in
began to open,
this ,
and inebriating perfume” (25.58).
discovers that melancholy could be pleasurable.
The j
perfume of the yellow flower was “subtle and inebriating,” and so Bras hugged to his breast his “silent pain, a peculiar sensation,
one
that
might be
>
called the
^
voluptuousness of misery” (25.58). This, incidentally, was what Pandora would
i
promise one day to the dying Bras: the voluptuousness of death.
Laughter Cubas.
book like
It is
is
never
is
from death
in the very title of the
not posthumous because
book, though it
man, the
title. It is
,
The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras
in
in a jesting
was published
Chateaubriand’s Memoires ef outre tombe, the
the original Brazilian
if
far
posthumous
title
becatise
mood. For the
after the author’s death,
of which
it
is
parodied in
was written by
a
dead
of the natural order of things that might have been terrifying
a reversal
book were
a ghost story, btit
becomes comical because of the
objectiv|
ity
with which
it
is
announced. “Fience
I
shall
not relate the extraordinary |
method 3).
that
I
used in the composition of these memoirs” (“To the Reader”
The comical
the fact
Death has
worm
effect arises
from the disproportion between the enormity of
and the soberness of the description.
that
a clownish aspect, beginning with the dedication:
gnawed
mous memoirs.”^
1
my flesh It is
I
dedicate, with fond
“To the
first
remembrance, these posthu-
Baudelaire’s necrophilic tone, with the difference that
1
— THE AUTHOR AS PLAGIARIST
-
MACHADO DE
THE CASE OF
not even Baudelaire dared desecrate death to such an extent.
It
Is
ASSIS
101
not to a ROUANET
worm
that he dedicates his ''fleurs maladives' hut
impeccable, parfait rnagicien des
lettrcs
toTheophile Gautier, pohe ''
finngaisesd
The
reference to “morbid PAULO
may make
Howers”
us shudder, hut not laugh.
de Assis the dedication the
book
to provoke:
melancholy and laughter.
made with
All references to death are
laughter, like
Hamlet holding the
yes, reader,
skull of a fool.
but you are
its
They
a sneer.
tomb, says Bras, hut he adds Immediately
makes us laugh:
The book
main
everything else that
some
After
you had
to
fall,
— but warns
reflection,
we
like
us that there
is
happiness
a plaintive
— “unhappy
my
(71.118)
has an odor of the
He makes
defect.
human
cypress tree,
are associated with
a preposterous afterthought that
allusion to the fleeting character of
tiful”
Machado
the contrary, in
from the very beginning the two reactions that
elicits
whole wants
as a
On
is
lovely
an absurdity in
leaves
of
and beau-
this sentence.
guess that the absurdity comes from the tree cho-
sen for the comparison, for cypresses do not lose their leaves in winter, but this
is
not the point.
The
point
is
that Bras wants to divert the reader’s atten-
tion,
making him abandon the churchyard, where
may
laugh himself to death after solving the riddle.
It
cypresses grow, so that he
should be repeated, however, that the characteristically Shandean blend of
mirth and melancholy works differently in Sterne and in Machado. Sterne uses laughter to escape melancholy
and Machado
to ridicule
all
attempts to escape
melancholy. Tristram’s defining words are the ones he utters in Gascon dialect
when dancing with tristessa!
“I
A I
Nanette, the lovely peasant
had no progeny,
different
I
I
think, to isolate a literary form,
But much work
First,
a
la joia!
Fidon
la
ones of the book:
transmitted to no one the legacy of our misery” (160.209).
that have followed this
Shandean
last
wine
have managed,
Assis.
“Viva
girl:
(VII.43.558). Bras Cubas’ defining words are the
form
— Laurence
is still
Sterne,
its
and compare two creator,
needed to complete these
comprehensive study
is
necessary of
“family,” including, besides Sterne
all
writers
and Machado de
reflections.
the
and Machado
members
of the
de Assis, the
two
—Xavier de
other authors mentioned in Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas
Maistre and Almeida Garrett
—and even
well but did not include in his
Second,
it
list,
such
would be indispensable
to
others that as
Diderot
Machado de Jacques
Assis
knew
le fataliste.
go from form to content, studying
the different realizations of the form in accordance with objective circum-
SERGIO
102
PORTUGUESE LITERARY & CULTURAL STUDIES
stances,
whether of
between
all
Machado de
a personal, local, or historical nature.
pointed to these differences larities
13/14
when he
said that even
and content vary
these authors, the spirit
ship of the cup might be the same, hut the wine
For Machado, the difference lay vailed in the Brazilian novel as
in the
compared
is
—
the
workman-
different.
pessimism and bitterness that pre-
to
European counterparts.
its
Two
confirms the accuracy of Machado’s assessment.
examples
the issue of the blending of laughter and melancholy,
A cur-
Machado
sory glance at the different realization of the form in Sterne and
On
Assis
there are formal simi-
if
will suffice.
we have
seen that
Tristram believes that mirth can expel despondency, while Bras Cubas thinks that ter
any attempt
is
to
mock
to
all
do so
laughable and that the main function of laugh-
is
efforts to cure melancholy.
On
the issue of the fugacity of
time, both authors share the classical attitude of deploring the transience of all
things and of trying to stop time.
schond and Lamartine’s
“O
It is
Goethe’s
“ Veriveile
temps, suspends ton void
But
du
doch,
bist so
their respective
immobilization strategies are very different. Tristram does so by temporarily “freezing” time, whereas Bras
Cubas does
from the sphere of change. In contrast with believed that only death could deliver
his
that the grapes
had been grown
more sanguine
man from
Roberto Schwarz agrees that the wines are is
by removing himself
so
and the “voluble” and
at the
same time,
as
him
different, yet for
in different social
its
and
the reason
historical soils. It
is
the
European bour-
existence to slave labor (Schwarz 200-201).
Whatever the nature of the difference both
“ancestor,” he
cynical subjectivity of a Brazilian ruling class that
modernity but owed
idealized
good
the flux of time.
difference between the optimistic subjectivity of a modernizing geoisie
for
I
—
psychological, sociological, or
believe to be the case
assume that the concept of the Shandean form better understanding of both
Machado de
from which he claimed descent
in
will
Assis
—
it
seems plausible to
be helpful In reaching a
and the
Intellectual lineage
The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas.
Notes among
others,
Gomes, Caldwell, and Senna.
^
See,
^
See especially Merquior, quoted by Sa Rego,
Menippean 3
who
discusses the origins
and nature of the
satire.
See Rouanet,
“Machado de
^ References to cjiiotations
Assis.”
from Grossmans translation of Machado’s Memdrias postumas de
.
THE AUTHOR AS PLAGIARIST - THE CASE OF
MACHADO DE
ASSIS
103
Bras Caibas will be given parenthetically, listing chapter and page numbers. Quotations from Tristram
Shandy W\W be
cited with volume, chapter,
and page numbers. ROUANET
See Schwarz,
^
Um
mestre.
Sec Barthes, Le plaisir and Fragments. PAULO
^ Sterne,
A
Sentimental Journey 89.
Benjamin, Das Passagenwerk.
^
SERGIO
Benjamin, Ursprung des deutschen TrauerspieL Assis, ’
*
“Memorias postumas” 514.
ddie English translation inexplicably omits the words
“com saudosa lembranga.”
Works Cited Assis,
Machado
Epitaph of a Small Winner. Trans. William
de.
L.
Grossman. London:
Bloomsbury, 1997. .
Memorias postumas de Bras Cubas. Obras Completas.
Vol.
Rio de Janeiro: Nova
III.
Aguilar, 1979.
Barthes, Roland. Le plaisir .
du
Editions du Seuil, 1973.
texte. Paris:
Fragments d' un discours amoureux.
Paris:
Editions
du
Seuil, 1977.
Benjamin, Walter. Das Passagenwerk. Ed. Rolf Tiedemann. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1982. .
Ursprung des deutschen TrauerspieL Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1963.
Caldwell, Helen.
Machado de Assis.
Comes, Eugenio. Espelho
U
Berkeley:
of California
P,
1970.
contra espelho. Sao Paulo: Instituto Progresso, 1949.
Merquior, Jose Cuilherme. “Genero e
estilo
em Memorias
Postumas de Bras Cubas." Coloquio!
Le tras {]w\y 1972). Rouanet, Sergio Paulo. “Machado de Assis
e a estetica
da fragmentac^ao.” Revista Brasileira Ease
VII, 1.2 (Apr-June 1995).
O calundu e a panaceia. Rio de Janeiro: Forense Universitaria, 1989. Um mestre na periferia do capitalismo. Sao Paulo: Duas Cidades, 1990. O olhar obllquo do bruxo. Rio de Janeiro: Nova Fronteira, 1998.
Sa Rego, Enylton Jose de.
Schwarz, Roberto. Senna, Marta de. Sterne, Laurence. .
The
Life
A
Sentimental journey. London: Everyman’s Library, 1947.
and Opinions of Tristram
Sergio Paulo Rouanet
member several
em
European
one of
is
of the Brazilian
Brazil’s
Academy
capitals.
Shandy., Gentleman.
most acclaimed
of Letters
cultural critics
and has served
as
and
Library, n.d.
essayists.
He
is
Ambassador and diplomat
a in
His numerous books include: Edipo
e o anjo. Itinerdrios freudianos
A
razdo cativa. As Husoes da con-
Walter Benjamin (1981); Teoria critica e psicandlise
sciencia.
New York: Modern
( 1
983);
de Platdo a Freud (1985); As razoes do lluminismo (1987);
Revoltu^do Francesa atraves de Retifde la Bretonne (1988);
A
comja
O
e o
espectador noturno.
sambddromo (1988);
A A
razdo nomade. Walter Benjamin e outros viajantes (1994); Ideias-Da Cultura Global a Universal
(2003); Intenvgagoes
Os dez amigos de Freud flOOS) E-mail:
[email protected]
—
Machado de
de Queiros
Assis, Critic of Eqa
A Symptomatic
o
Misunderstanding^
Joao Camilo dos Santos Translated by Robert Patrick
Abstract: Writing about E^a de Queiros’ novels
and
O Primo
Bastlio in 1878,
Machado de
Assis
O
Crime do Padre Amur
showed
Machado
Machado da Rosa
little
sympathy
Machado?,
tor the Portuguese author. In his essay E
