{"id":145612,"date":"2020-06-16T11:00:55","date_gmt":"2020-06-16T15:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=145612"},"modified":"2020-06-16T14:02:57","modified_gmt":"2020-06-16T18:02:57","slug":"machados-catalogue-of-failures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/06\/16\/machados-catalogue-of-failures\/","title":{"rendered":"Machado\u2019s Catalogue of Failures"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.<\/p><\/div>\n

Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis had already published four novels when he wrote The <\/em>Posthumous Memoirs of Br\u00e1s Cubas<\/em>, which was serialized in 1880 and appeared in book form in 1881. It received mixed reviews, some readers feeling that it lacked plot, that the characters were uninteresting, that it was more a philosophical treatise than a novel. This is a criticism already foreseen by Br\u00e1s Cubas, who apologizes to those readers who \u201clove direct, sustained narrative, a regular, fluid style.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2026 whereas this book and my style are like a pair of drunkards: they stagger left and right, start and stop, mumble, yell, roar with laughter, shake their fists at the heavens, then stumble and fall \u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The first English translation, by William L. Grossman, did not appear until 1953, which was not surprising in view of the fact that Machado was virtually unknown in Europe and North America until after World War II. And it was only some years later, primarily in the sixties and seventies, that critics inside and outside Brazil began to recognize the novel as a work of extraordinary originality. <\/p>\n

Critics often say of Posthumous Memoirs<\/em> that it came out of the blue and was nothing like Machado\u2019s previous work. True, his earlier novels were fairly conventional in tone and style and subject matter, but many of his short stories are wildly eccentric, and show a particular liking for the fantastic and the grotesque, e.g., \u201cThe Alienist,\u201d \u201cA Visit from Alcibiades,\u201d \u201cThe Canon, or the Metaphysics of Style,\u201d or \u201cCanary Thoughts\u201d; and Br\u00e1s Cubas\u2019s familiar way of addressing the reader is already there in \u201cMiss Dollar,\u201d which dates from before 1870. The stories also share a fascination with madness, of which there is a great deal in these Posthumous Memoirs<\/em>, for instance: Br\u00e1s Cubas\u2019s delirium when ill; his hallucinatory vision of Virg\u00edlia following his encounter with the ruined Marcela; the madman on the ship carrying Br\u00e1s Cubas to Portugal; and, of course, Quincas Borba\u2019s slide into insanity. To anyone who knows Machado\u2019s short stories, the world of Br\u00e1s Cubas seems quite familiar.<\/p>\n

The literary models Machado mentions in his preface are Laurence Sterne, Xavier de Maistre, and Almeida Garrett, but behind the title there may also be an ironic reference to Chateaubriand\u2019s M\u00e9moires d\u2019outre-tombe<\/em> (Memoirs from Beyond the Grave<\/em>), published posthumously in 1849 and 1850. Those memoirs filled two volumes; their author was a diplomat, politician, writer, historian, and supposed founder of French Romanticism. Br\u00e1s Cubas\u2019s posthumous memoirs (which are written from beyond the grave) fill a scant two hundred pages and the narrator is, by his own blithe admission, a complete mediocrity whose life can be summed up by a series of negatives. Echoes of Sterne, Maistre, and Garrett are definitely all there in the brief chapters, the oblique chapter titles, the non sequiturs, and the half-baked philosophy, and yet in many ways the book is also a straightforward nineteenth-century realist novel, with its jabs at the hypocrisy of middle-class society, and the standard themes of adultery, money, marriage, miserliness, and profligacy. Machado manages, seamlessly, to combine realism and the fantastic, and the novel\u2019s fragmentary, allusive style and its frequent inclusion of us, the readers, strikes us now as very modern, as does Br\u00e1s Cubas\u2019s insistence, more than once, that this is not a novel at all.<\/p>\n

As in Machado\u2019s stories and other novels, there are frequent references to classic texts, especially the Bible and Shakespeare. The biblical references\u2014the road to Damascus, the beatitudes, the parable of the wedding feast, Adam and Eve, Moses\u2014are all used to bathetic effect. For example, Br\u00e1s Cubas\u2019s great revelatory \u201croad to Damascus\u201d discovery is that he cannot possibly marry a girl who is lame, even if he loves her. With his many Shakespearean quotations and allusions, we are frequently reminded that the author is far cleverer than we are, or is he perhaps leaving clues for the more alert among us? One example: when Br\u00e1s Cubas, in a melancholy mood, alights on and embraces a line spoken by Jacques in As You Like It<\/em>\u2014\u201c\u2009\u2019Tis good to be sad and say nothing\u201d\u2014he does, it seems, entirely fail to notice Rosalind\u2019s riposte: \u201cWhy then \u2019tis good to be a post.\u201d That is left for us to pick up on\u2014or not. When Br\u00e1s Cubas starts doodling the opening lines of Virgil\u2019s Aeneid<\/em>, \u201cI sing of arms and the man,\u201d he is at his least heroic, ready to do exactly as his father wants and agree to an arranged marriage and an arranged career, too.<\/p>\n

Another regular feature in Machado\u2019s work is the use of not-quite-accurate quotations. Quincas Borba is particularly fond of tinkering with the texts of other philosophers\u2014Pascal and Erasmus are two examples\u2014to suit his own purposes and perhaps to give himself the appearance of being superior to other scholars. Or is this a further example of Br\u00e1s Cubas\u2019s theory of man as a thinking erratum? Or another way to trip up the unwary reader?<\/p>\n

As for the historical and social context of the novel, the first point to note is that in 1805, the year of Br\u00e1s Cubas\u2019s birth, Rio de Janeiro (founded in 1565 and given its name \u201cJanuary River\u201d because the Portuguese had first landed there on January 1, 1502) was a colonial city, and since 1763 it had been the seat of the viceroy who ruled the whole of Brazil on behalf of the Portuguese monarch in Lisbon. In 1808, as the infant Br\u00e1s Cubas begins his domestic tyranny, the city underwent a remarkable transformation with the unexpected arrival of the entire Portuguese royal family and government, forced to flee Napoleon\u2019s invasion of Portugal. Rio de Janeiro thus became for a brief time the capital of the entire Portuguese Empire, and rapidly acquired most of the trappings of a fully fledged capital city\u2014a government, a royal court, lavish public buildings, even a central bank. This process seemed destined to be reversed following the downfall of Napoleon in 1814, but the Portuguese king, Dom Jo\u00e3o VI, refused to leave Rio, despite the increasingly desperate pleas of his own government. The standoff was eventually resolved in 1822 when Jo\u00e3o VI\u2019s son, Dom Pedro I, declared himself emperor of an independent Brazil and the link with Portugal was finally broken. Some of these key dates and events are mentioned in the novel, but because Machado mentions so few one feels inclined to wonder if they are, in fact, significant. For example:<\/p>\n

In 1805, Br\u00e1s Cubas is born; this is also the year that soldiers of African descent wore medallion portraits of Jean-Jacques Dessalines, who had led the Haitian Revolution that inspired black slaves throughout the world to fight for their rights. And the very day after Br\u00e1s Cubas\u2019s birth (we are given the precise date), Napoleon loses the battle of Trafalgar and thereby supremacy of the seas, a major factor in his eventual downfall. In 1806, Br\u00e1s Cubas is baptized and a very elegant party is held; this also marks the start of the British military attacks on the River Plate region, initiating a long period of British interference in Brazilian affairs that is echoed throughout the novel. In 1814, Br\u00e1s Cubas\u2019s father holds an extravagant party to mark Napoleon\u2019s final downfall, the emphasis being on the party. In 1822, Br\u00e1s Cubas falls in love with Marcela; meanwhile, Dom Pedro declares Brazilian independence. In 1842, Br\u00e1s Cubas meets Virg\u00edlia again and they begin their affair; at the same time, various liberal rebellions are swiftly quashed by the government. In 1869, Br\u00e1s Cubas dies; the same year, a pro-Brazilian government is installed in the capital of Paraguay during the closing stages of the long and bloody war between Paraguay, Brazil, and Argentina.<\/p>\n

One might argue that Machado\u2019s mention of these historically significant dates is to show how little the events impinge on the lives of the novel\u2019s totally self-centered characters, all of whom are comfortably well off. Those who are not well off, like Eug\u00eania or Dona Pl\u00e1cida\u2014both tainted by the stain of illegitimacy\u2014are rejected or used and, ultimately, relegated to lives of abject poverty.<\/p>\n

The subject of slavery is present throughout the novel, but Machado\u2019s message is carefully hidden behind cool understatement or apparently blas\u00e9 indifference\u2014after all, Brazil did not abolish slavery until 1888, some eight years after the novel was first published, and Machado was himself the grandson of a freed slave. At times the slaves seem almost invisible: they are part of an inheritance, the preferred mount of a spoiled child, not to be trusted but berated, spoken of as if they were mere chattels or livestock. Here\u2019s Quincas Borba pondering the chicken wing he is eating for his supper:<\/p>\n

I need no further documentary proof of the sublime nature of my system than this chicken right here. It was fed on corn, which was planted by, let\u2019s suppose, an African imported from Angola. This African was born, raised, and sold; a ship brought him here, a ship built of wood cut from the forest by ten or twelve men, and propelled by sails sewn by a further eight or ten men, not to mention the rigging and other bits and pieces of nautical apparatus. Thus, this chicken, which I have just eaten for my lunch, is the result of a multitude of efforts and struggles undertaken with the sole aim of sating my appetite.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And when Br\u00e1s Cubas encounters his former slave Prud\u00eancio, now a free man, beating the slave that he, in turn, has bought, Br\u00e1s Cubas is shocked, but then reaches a strangely celebratory conclusion:<\/p>\n

It was Prud\u00eancio\u2019s way of ridding himself of all the beatings he had received, by passing them on to someone else. As a child, I had ridden on his back, put a bridle between his teeth, and thrashed him mercilessly; he could do nothing but groan and suffer. Now that he was a free man, in full possession of himself, his arms, and his legs, he could work, rest, or sleep unfettered by his former condition, and now he was turning the tables; he had bought a slave and was paying him, with hefty interest, for all that he had received from me. See what a clever rascal he was!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The harsh treatment meted out to slaves by Bras Cubas\u2019s insufferable brother-in-law, Cotrim, is excused by the fact that he is in the business of smuggling slaves, and besides, \u201cone cannot honestly attribute to a man\u2019s original nature those aspects that are purely the effect of his position in society.\u201d The message seems to be that violence and abuse breed more violence and abuse, a trenchant message that resonates to this day.<\/p>\n

No one escapes Machado\u2019s scathing view of humanity, which is ruled by greed and ambition and egotism. From his position beyond the grave, Br\u00e1s Cubas is free at last to be totally honest about himself and about others, to write, as he himself says, \u201cwith the pen of mirthful mockery and the ink of melancholy.\u201d Perhaps the only moment of unmediated emotion comes with the death of Br\u00e1s Cubas\u2019s mother and Br\u00e1s Cubas\u2019s apparently genuine grief, from which, however, he recovers very quickly indeed, as if grief were just another obstacle to him having fun.<\/p>\n

The book is a catalogue of failures: Br\u00e1s Cubas fails to marry, fails to produce his antimelancholia poultice, fails to become a government minister or a newspaper publisher; Lobo Neves fails to become a minister, let alone a marquis; Eug\u00eania fails to marry anyone; Eul\u00e1lia fails to rise in the world, fails even to live past seventeen; and Quincas Borba fails to publish his book of philosophy and doesn\u2019t even manage to be totally insane. Machado presents us with an almost entirely nihilistic view of life and humanity. And yet, narrator and novel draw us in because the narrative voice is so beguiling, so funny, often outrageous, and always utterly frank. And do we perhaps recognize our own flawed selves in the narrator and the other characters? And is that perhaps the question the novel is asking the reader?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The award-winning translator Margaret Jull Costa lives in England. Read her Art of Translation interview<\/a>, which appears in the Summer 2020 issue<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

The award-winning translator Robin Patterson lives in England.<\/em><\/p>\n

Excerpted from <\/em>Posthumous Memoirs of Br\u00e1s Cubas: A Novel<\/a>. \u00a9 2020 by Margaret Jull Costa and Robin Patterson. Used with permission of the publisher, Liveright Publishing Corporation, a division of W.\u2009W. Norton & Company, Inc. All rights reserved.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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