Volume 49, Number 12 · July 18, 2002
Master Among the Ruins
By Michael Wood
BOOKS DISCUSSED IN THIS REVIEW
The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas
by Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis,translated from the Portugueseby Gregory Rabassa
Oxford University Press, 219 pp., $25.00; $12.95 (paper)
Quincas Borba
by Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, translated from the Portuguese by Gregory Rabassa
Oxford University Press, 290 pp., $25.00; $13.95 (paper)
Dom Casmurro
by Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, translated from the Portuguese by John Gledson
Oxford University Press, 258 pp., $25.00; $12.95 (paper)
Esau and Jacob
by Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, translated from the Portuguese by Elizabeth Lowe
Oxford University Press, 276 pp., $35.00; $16.95 (paper)
A Master on the Periphery of Capitalism: Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
by Roberto Schwarz, translated from the Portuguese and with an introduction by John Gledson
Duke University Press, 194 pp., $54.95; $18.95 (paper)
Machado de Assis: Reflections on a Brazilian Master Writer
edited by Richard Graham
University of Texas Press, 134 pp., $25.00; $11.95 (paper)
The works of Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis are full of melancholy wisdom, or what looks like melancholy wisdom: slightly weary, slightly bit-ter, highly amused. Jokes, fables, epigrams, and analogies flourish so profusely in these pages that they certainly add up to a signature. But do they add up to a voice? And if so, whose voice? Antonio Candido, the great Brazilian critic, suggested long ago that in Machado 'the most disconcerting surprises' appear 'in inverse ratio to the elegance and discretion of his prose.'[1] Thus in the novel Quincas Borba, a poor woman is sitting, weeping, by her still-burning cottage. A drunken man comes along and asks if it's all right if he lights his cigar from the flames. We draw the moral readily enough—about indifference to distress that is not ours, about exploiting the misery of others—and we think we know where we are. Machado draws this moral too, although he scarcely pauses over it before he is on to another, far more unexpected one. The drunkard, he says, shows true respect for 'the principle of property—to the point of not lighting his cigar without first asking permission of the owner of the ruins.' Is this a joke about property or about the worship of the principle?
Review, 4111 words
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