Quincas Borba (Library of Latin America)

QUINCAS BORBA

LIBRARY OF LATIN AMERICA

General Editor
Jean Franco

Series Editor for Brazil
Richard Graham, with the assistance of Alfredo Bosi

Editorial Board
Antonio Cornejo Polar
Tulio Halperín Donghi
Iván Jaksić
Naomi Lindstrom
Eduardo Lozano
Francine Masiello

QUINCAS BORBA

A Novel by
JOAQUIM MARIA MACHADO DE ASSIS

Translated from the Portuguese by
GREGORY RABASSA

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY DAVID T. HABERLY

AND AN AFTERWORD BY CELSO FAVARETTO

Oxford University Press

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Copyright © 1998 by Oxford University Press

First published by Oxford University Press, Inc., 1998

First issued as an Oxford University Press paperback, 1999

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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
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Library of Congress Cataloging–in–Publication Data
[Quincas Borba. English]
Quincas Borba / a novel by Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis:
translated by Gregory Rabassa : with an introduction by David T.
Haberly: and an afterword by Celso Favaretto.
p. cm. —(Library of Latin America)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN o–19–510681–4
ISBN 0–19–510682–2 (Pbk.)
I. Rabassa, Gregory, II. Tide. III. Series.
PQ9697.MI8Q5I3 1998
869.3—deal 97–27706

1 3 5 7 9 1 0 8 6 4 2
Printed in the United States of America

Contents

Series Editors’ General Introduction

Introduction
DAVID T. HABERLY

Quincas Borba

JOAQUIM MARIA MACHADO DE ASSIS

Afterword

CELSO FAVARETTO

Series Editors’ General Introduction

The Library of Latin America series makes available in translation major nineteenth–century authors whose work has been neglected in the English–speaking world. The titles for the translations from the Spanish and Portuguese were suggested by an editorial committee that included Jean Franco (general editor responsible for works in Spanish), Richard Graham (series editor responsible for works in Portuguese), Tulio Halperín Donghi (at the University of California, Berkeley), Iván Jaksić (at the University of Notre Dame), Naomi Lindstrom (at the University of Texas at Austin), Francine Masiello (at the University of California, Berkeley), and Eduardo Lozano of the Library at the University of Pittsburgh. The late Antonio Cornejo Polar of the University of California, Berkeley, was also one of the founding members of the committee. The translations have been funded thanks to the generosity of the Lampadia Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

During the period of national formation between 1810 and into the early years of the twentieth century, the new nations of Latin America fashioned their identities, drew up constitutions, engaged in bitter struggles over territory, arid debated questions of education, government, ethnicity, and culture. This was a unique period unlike the process of nation formation in Europe and one which should be more familiar than it is to students of comparative politics, history, and literature.

The image of the nation was envisioned by the lettered classes—a minority in countries in which indigenous, mestizo, black, or mulatto peasants and slaves predominated—although there were also alternative nationalisms at the grassroots level. The cultural elite were well educated in European thought and letters, but as statesmen, journalists, poets, and academics, they confronted the problem of the racial and linguistic heterogeneity of the continent and the difficulties of integrating the population into a modern nation-state. Some of the writers whose works will be translated in the Library of Latin America series played leading roles in politics. Fray Servando Teresa de Mier, a friar who translated Rousseau’s The Social Contract and was one of the most colorful characters of the independence period, was faced with imprisonment and expulsion from Mexico for his heterodox beliefs; on his return, after independence, he was elected to the congress. Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, exiled from his native Argentina under the presidency of Rosas, wrote Facundo: Civilización y barbarie, a stinging denunciation of that government. He returned after Rosas’ overthrow and was elected president in 1868. Andrés Bello was born in Venezuela, lived in London where he published poetry during the independence period, settled in Chile where he founded the University, wrote his grammar of the Spanish language, and drew up the country’s legal code.

These post-independence intelligentsia were not simply dreaming castles in the air, but vitally contributed to the founding of nations and the shaping of culture. The advantage of hindsight may make us aware of problems they themselves did not foresee, but this should not affect our assessment of their truly astonishing energies and achievements. It is still surprising that the writing of Andrés Bello, who contributed fundamental works to so many different fields, has never been translated into English. Although there is a recent translation of Sarmiento’s celebrated Facundo, there is no translation of his memoirs, Recuerdos de provincia (Provincial Recollections). The predominance of memoirs in the Library of Latin America series is no accident—many of these offer entertaining insights into a vast and complex continent.

Nor have we neglected the novel. The series includes new translations of the outstanding Brazilian writer Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis’ work, including Dom Casmurro and The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas. There is no reason why other novels and writers who are not so well known outside Latin America—the Peruvian novelist Clorinda Matto de Turner’s Aves sin nido, Nataniel Agame’s Juan de la Rosa, José de Alencar’s Iracema, Juana Manuela Gorriti’s short stories—should not be read with as much interest as the political novels of Anthony Trollope.

A series on nineteenth-century Latin America cannot, however, be limited to literary genres such as the novel, the poem, and the short story. The literature of independent Latin America was eclectic and strongly influenced by the periodical press newly liberated from scrutiny by colonial authorities and the Inquisition. Newspapers were miscellanies of fiction, essays, poems, and translations from all manner of European writing.