Machado de Assis: Toward a Poetics of Emulation
308
Machado de Assis: Toward a Poetics of Emulation
308Paperback(1)
-
PICK UP IN STORECheck Availability at Nearby Stores
Available within 2 business hours
Related collections and offers
Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781611861815 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Michigan State University Press |
| Publication date: | 10/01/2015 |
| Series: | Studies in Violence, Mimesis & Culture |
| Edition description: | 1 |
| Pages: | 308 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.00(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Machado de Assis
Toward a Poetics of Emulation
By João Cezar de Castro Rocha, Flora Thomson-DeVeaux
Michigan State University Press
Copyright © 2015 João Cezar de Castro RochaAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-61186-181-5
CHAPTER 1
The Shipwreck of Illusions
To this day, while not considering that the better part of his youthful texts were not known, they were studied with an eye to what Machado de Assis would come to be. The history of his life was read back to front. Here we will attempt to study his youth for its own sake.
— Jean-Michel Massa, A juventude de Machado de Assis
The discontinuity between the Posthumous Memoirs and the somewhat colorless fiction of Machado's first phase is undeniable, unless we wish to ignore the facts of quality, which after all are the very reason for the existence of literary criticism. However, there is also a strict continuity, which is, moreover, more difficult to establish.
— Roberto Schwarz, A Master on the Periphery of Capitalism: Machado de Assis
The mature narratives of Machado de Assis do not present us with open-and-shut stories that might appeal for their intrigue, as is the case with the first phase. Nor do they explicitly lay out the problem they are addressing or the conclusion at which they arrive. Their meaning will always depend on the reader's interpretation.
— Ivan Teixeira, Apresentação de Machado de Assis
There are good motives to suppose that the Machado of the first phase may have harbored ambivalent feelings about paternalism, a protective but humiliating regime that demanded a heavy dose of cunning and hypocrisy from its dependents. As for the worthy, they shall live on the margins or perish.
— Alfredo Bosi, "Brás Cubas em três versões"
While there was no concession in the sense of condescension, a violation of personal convictions or the cheapening of ideas, it seems undeniable that Machado de Assis gave in to the tastes and expectations of the reading public that he imagined and/or desired for his works, and that this attention and sensitivity to the public may be one of the pillars of the grandeur of that same work.
— Hélio de Seixas Guimarães, Os leitores de Machado de Assis
A Year Like Any Other?
The year 1878 was not an easy one for the writer Machado de Assis.
However, everything seemed to indicate otherwise.
In January, he began publishing Iaiá Garcia, his fourth novel, in O Cruzeiro. First released as a serial, the plot kept audiences entertained from January 1 to March 2 in near-daily installments. Ironically, the last sentence of the novel might well describe the dilemma faced by its author: "Something escapes the shipwreck of illusions" (I, 509). In the book, the narrator is applauding the sincere grief of Estela, the widow of Luís Garcia — father to Iaiá Garcia, the character who lends her name to the title. In the case of the writer's life, the unexpected approached while he marched steadily down the path he had laid out for himself, enjoying growing renown and apparently immune to the vicissitudes of literary life.
Iaiá Garcia was the fourth novel of a sequence whose rhythm reveals the author's discipline and determination. The first of the series, Resurrection, came to light in 1872. In the preface, a solicitous Machado forged the image of the writer as laborer; an image, one might add, crucial for the interpretation I propose. Let us listen to his words:
I do not know what I ought to think of this book; above all, I am ignorant of what the reader will think of it. The benevolence with which a volume of short stories and novellas, which I published two years ago, was received, encouraged me to write it. It is an essay. It will be delivered unassumingly to the hands of critics and the public, who will treat it with whatever justice it deserves....
My idea in writing this book was to place into action that thought of Shakespeare's:
Our doubts are traitors, And make us lose the good we oft might win, By fearing to attempt.
I did not wish to write a novel of manners; I attempted to sketch a situation and the contrast between two characters; with these simple elements I sought out the thrust of the book. The critics will decide whether the work corresponds to the aim, and, above all, if the laborer is suited for it.
This is what I ask, with heart in hand. (I, 116)
Machado was referring to the collection Tales from Rio. The year 1870 also saw the publication of a book of poems, Falenas, which included "Flor da Mocidade" [Flower of Youth]. The poem's final verses advise:
When the earth is more jovial
All good seems to us eternal
To harvest, before the advent of evil
To harvest, before the coming of winter. (III, 41)
The winter took almost a decade to arrive: in February 1878, it announced itself to the author of Dom Casmurro. As for the poem, Machado added a revealing note to it in 1901, in the edition he prepared of his Poesias Completas [Complete Poetry].
The classic French poets often used this form, which they called triolet. After long disuse, some poets of this century have resuscitated the triolet, without scorning the older models. I do not believe that it has been used in Portuguese, nor may it merit the transfer. The form, meanwhile, is elegant and finds no obstacles in our language, in my opinion. (III, 181)
Two elements of my reading of Machado's work stand out here: the reference to Shakespeare, and the reference to the resurrection of classical forms, without scorning the older models. The omnipresence of the English dramatist and the reclaiming of literary practices, after long disuse, are two sides of the same coin and afford a new understanding of this decisive moment for Machado de Assis as a writer, the moment in which he reinvents himself in writing The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas. I refer to the literary technique of aemulatio.
In order to allow the reader to follow the discussion, I ought to clarify the term straightaway. The standing artistic practice prior to the Romantic explosion, aemulatio implied the adoption of models enshrined by tradition, and even the deliberate imitation of a given aspect of a masterpiece. Nevertheless, artists always sought to add elements to the model that had been lacking; to emulate tradition, not simply perpetuate it. If I am not wrong, Machado ends up inventing the voice of the deceased author after assiduously visiting this discursive territory of the past — a deliberately anachronistic visit, all the same, which produces significant differences from the model at hand.
Back to the project of the writer as laborer.
These were not idle words set down merely to seduce the public and entice critical complacence. The fledgling novelist took the metaphor of a worker of letters seriously, and, with enviable constancy, published a new title every two years. In 1874, he released The Hand and the Glove; in 1876, Helena; finally, in 1878, Iaiá Garcia.
Nor should you imagine that the laborer limited himself to writing novels. He worked across all genres: from criticism to crônicas, from poetry to theater, from short stories to novels, from political commentary to translations, from prefaces to speeches, from crônicas in verse to fantasy, from paraphrasing to imitations, from apologies to dialogues, from correspondence to the reports he wrote as a theater censor for the Conservatório Dramático. In all these genres, he debuted with the modesty befitting the apprentice preparing himself to surmount his limits.
It would not be unjust to say that, with the exception of literary criticism, Machado's debut efforts were somewhat fumbling.
His first stories are simply interesting exercises — promising, no doubt, but often tinged by a moralizing tone that would certainly surprise the reader of The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas.
The first books of poetry are not much more than training in literary technique, an effort to try out the various forms of linguistic expression. One should note, however, that they were the first to garner any acclaim for Machado.
The plays never managed to excite his contemporaries; nor are future Machadians attracted to his dramatizations.
The first crônicas echo a light tone, "as the pen runs," in Almeida Garret and José de Alencar's words. Machadinho would define the stories published in Histórias da meianoite [Midnight Stories] (1873) thus: "A few narratives are collected here, written as the pen runs, with no other pretension than to occupy some measure of the reader's precious time." Shortly thereafter, he transforms the note to the reader into a page of acknowledgments, referring to the esteem garnered by the writer-laborer: "I shall take the opportunity to thank the critics and the public for the generosity with which they received my first novel, brought forth some time ago" (II, 160).
Indeed: even past age thirty, he was affectionately called Machadinho.
From his very first articles, however, his critical gaze was clearly promising, revealing a shrewd reader bent on acquiring a knowledge of tradition: the two sides of the coin that would cement the writer's posthumous fame.
Let us examine the nineteen-year-old who publishes the essay "The Past, Present, and Future of Literature" in two installments in A Marmota, during the month of April 1858. The study fulfills conventional formalities. Machadinho reviews Brazilian colonial literature, identifying its gravest flaw: in rigorously following a European mold, "literature became enslaved instead of creating a style of its own, so that it might later weigh in the literary balance of America" (III, 785). This balance would also call for a study of the classics, not merely flashes of local color:
But after the political fiat ought to come a literary fiat, the emancipation of the intellectual world, faltering under the influential action of a literature from overseas. But how? It is easier to renew a nation than a literature. For this, there are no declarations of independence; modifications come about gradually; and no result is achieved in the space of a moment.(III, 787; italics mine)
As if announcing his own rhythm, the youth analyzes the "present," which he beholds with some reservations — "Today's society is surely not compassionate, [and] does not welcome talent as it ought to" (III, 787) — and analyzes the future, which he envisions as a task — "While part of the nation is still shackled to old ideas, it falls to talent to educate them" (III, 789). This oscillation between conventional criteria, which guaranteed Machadinho's insertion in society, and flashes of criticism, which would be developed by the Machado of the Posthumous Memoirs, would long fetter the prose and the vision of the young writer — which also reduced the reach of his critical work. The critical vocation may only win out when one frees oneself from the obligation of fulfilling what is expected of a respectable man of letters. Only then can the deceased author be brought forth.
After all, no result is achieved in the space of a moment.
Recalling the words of Mário de Alencar: he believed Machado gave up literary criticism because of the risk involved in the task, a considerable one in a timid intellectual environment such as that of Brazil during the imperial court.
Most likely.
In his review of Mãe, a play by José de Alencar, the author himself confirms such misgivings. The text was published in Revista Dramática on March 29, 1860:
Writing criticism and theater criticism is not only a difficult task, but also a perilous business.
The reason is simple. On the day when the pen, faithful to the precept of censure, touches on a blot and momentarily neglects a laudatory stanza, enmities rise up all at once, armed with calumnies. (III, 837)
In the frequently quoted "The Critic's Ideal," an article published in the Diário do Rio de Janeiro in October 1865, the subject returns, with slightly more refined diction:
With such principles, I understand that it is difficult to make a living; but criticism is not a rosy profession, and if it is, it is so only as regards the intimate satisfaction derived from telling the truth. (III, 799; italics mine)
Mário de Alencar was right, at least in part.
The young writer's path was not an easy one. Mulatto, born in quite humble circumstances, an agregado during his childhood and adolescence, he went to work at Paula Brito's typography shop at age fifteen and became a typographer's apprentice at the National Press at age seventeen, a position he held for two years. He would later become an exemplary public servant, under the monarchy as well as the republic. Given Machado's beginnings, any chance of literary or social success in the slaveholding, patriarchal Brazil of the nineteenth century would have seemed an extravagant, romantic fiction.
The burden of his humble circumstances, however, should not be exaggerated; that is only fitting for panegyrics. Thanks to Jean-Michel Massa's study, A juventude de Machado de Assis, 1839–1870, we have learned that his difficulties were no greater than those of other talented mulattoes in nineteenth-century Brazil, some of poor extraction, who were also able to ascend socially. After all, this was the century of college graduates and mulattoes, as Gilberto Freyre declares in The Mansions and the Shanties.
Recognizing this is important in order to avoid the shallow repetition of clichés about Machado's existential journey. However, going from one extreme to the other is hardly productive. In the end, the obstacles tied to the condition of the agregado (which were sometimes insuperable) form a dominant theme in Machado's works, omnipresent in the novels up to Iaiá Garcia. Moreover, the worldview of a senator's son — the case of José de Alencar and Joaquim Nabuco, for example — necessarily differs from the perspective of the son of a mulatto housepainter.
Mário de Alencar was right, in part: why should he risk himself even more? In any case, one may as well ask: rather than abandoning criticism, didn't Machado channel it into his fiction, especially after the Posthumous Memoirs? In doing this, he began to overcome his obstacles as a writer — clear limitations in the first group of novels, which were perfectly punctilious but nothing more, culminating with the innocuous Iaiá Garcia.
The reader will likely object: despite what I promised in the introduction, I just declared that Machado's beginnings were faltering without analyzing a single line from the author of Esau and Jacob, except for a few brief passages of literary criticism. I strung together a veritable necklace of adjectives, but I did not put myself to the true test of critical activity: examining the author's texts.
I accept the objection and correct the course of my prose, undertaking a somewhat formal study of Machado's first four novels, to then contrast them with his production posterior to the Posthumous Memoirs. The force of the transformation in Machado's work will thus be clarified.
The Key to the Writing
Machado's first novels have conventional conclusions, which clarify the driving theme of the plot and address all of the reader's doubts. The narrator even offers edifying conclusions, showing himself to be perfectly in step with the precepts of the time — good manners and high morals, to put it bluntly. In terms of form as well as content, what stands out is the excessively cautious, even conservative bent of the author-laborer in his first efforts.
It is important to consider this hypothesis. Nothing hobbles the understanding of Machado's existential and artistic crisis more than a comfortable hagiography incapable of recognizing the obvious limits that Machadinho imposed on his work for at least two decades.
The texts from the so-called second phase, meanwhile, contain enigmas that remain unresolved at the end of the story, provoking endless discussions that stimulate generation after generation of readers. Formal ambiguity and a critical vision of the world fade into one; in both cases, the dominant note is one of uncertainty.
I may put this in explicit terms by analyzing the endings of the first four novels, demonstrating concisely the rupture that explodes in Machado's work after the watershed year of 1878.
In the last paragraph of Resurrection, the reader is presented with a summary of the narrative, with a moralizing maxim to boot:
Blessed with all the means that might make him fortunate, in society's estimation, Felix is essentially infelicitous. Nature placed him in that class of cowardly and visionary men befitting that reflection from the poet: they "lose the good they oft might win," by fearing to attempt. Not content with the exterior happiness that surrounds him, he yearns for that other happiness of intimate, lasting, and consoling affections. This he will never attain, because his heart, while it reappeared for a few days, had forgotten in its grave the feeling of trust and the memory of illusions. (I, 195)
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Machado de Assis by João Cezar de Castro Rocha, Flora Thomson-DeVeaux. Copyright © 2015 João Cezar de Castro Rocha. Excerpted by permission of Michigan State University Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Translator's Note,Preface,
Acknowledgments,
Introduction. The Paradox of the Ur-Author,
Chapter 1. The Shipwreck of Illusions,
Chapter 2. In the Middle of the Way There Was an Author,
Chapter 3. Toward a Poetics of Emulation,
Chapter 4. The Decisive Years,
Chapter 5. Forms of Emulation,
Conclusion. Echoes of Paris?,
Notes,
Bibliography,
Index,