Instead, they frequently deviate slightly from the original text. Some literary critics have suggested that these deviations were the result of the alleged fact that Machado de Assis quoted from memory, not always remembering correctly the passage he was citing. The same argument—lack of memory—was used to explain Erasmus’ misquotations in his Praise of Folly and Robert Burton’s in his Anatomy of Melancholy, two books that belong in the same tradition of jestful encyclopedic erudition as these Posthumous Memoirs.

It is not known whether Machado de Assis was acquainted with Burton’s book, but he certainly knew the Praise of Folly, since he makes Brás Cubas quote it in Chapter CXLIX, and since he even wrote a parody of it, his “Praise of Vanity.” Moreover, in one of his short stories Machado de Assis justified this practice of slightly misquoting, explaining the difference between literal quotations—which simply invoke someone else’s authority—and the really artistic quotations—which creatively rewrite the quoted authors.

In one of his pieces of literary criticism, Machado de Assis also discussed the subtle interplay between originality and appropriation of other texts, making use of an interesting culinary allegory: any writer has the right to look for “spices” in the work of any other writer, but the “final sauce” has to be of his or her own making. In these Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas Machado de Assis gives a good example of the banquet he can serve to the reader. If the reader does not suffer indigestion and survives this exuberant and ironic, display of encyclopedic erudition, he or she will be gratified, for the result is indeed humorous.

These memoirs are humorous, but they are also serious, if we remember the seriocomic aspect: of this kind of satire. Brás Cubas himself describes his book in. Chapter IV as “a supinely philosophical work, of an unequal philosophy, now austere, now playful, something that neither builds nor destroys, neither inflames nor cools, and, yet, it is more than a pastime and less than an apostolate.” As a philosophy this does not seem to be very powerful, but it certainly is a good definition of art as practiced by Machado de Assis: more than mere pastime—since for him art is a serious human activity, but not so serious as to become preachy, since it should not be dogmatic.

Some readers will identify in Machado de Assis’ unorthodox philosophy the old tradition of cynicism; others will probably see him as a radical skeptic; others still may recognize in his novels the presence of an old literary tradition called Menippean satire; some could even say that his novels, written in the nineteenth century, are more modern than many modern novels, and that they could even be considered postmodern. Whatever classification we choose, his is indisputably a position of unmitigated disbelief toward all philosophical systems and categorizations, some of which he deliberately mocks through one of this book’s characters, the philosophizing Quincas Borba. His medium, however, is not the well-reasoned philosophical or scientific treatise, but the lighter form of the novel. Since any novel presupposes a social context, other readers will probably enjoy what has been called Machado’s deceptive realism, a kind of realism that allegorically describes, in a very devious and disguised way, the social realities of nineteenth-century Brazil, or, in a still more indirect way, the reality of our own times.

But who was this Machado de Assis, this strange nineteenth-century Brazilian writer? As I promised in my opening lines, this is the last surprise to the readers—the last, that is, before the best surprise, the book itself.

Machado de Assis was born in 1839, in Rio de Janeiro. His father, a poor house painter, was the son of freed slaves. His mother was a servant from, the Azores who worked in a wealthy household on the outskirts of the city. She died when her son was nine years old. Machado’s father was remarried to a poor black woman, and then died a few years later. Machado de Assis, therefore, grew up a poor, mulatto orphan, the grandson of slaves in a country where slavery would continue officially to exist until he was fifty years old. He had no formal education and probably never attended school.

Machado also had some other problems: he was frail and shy, terribly myopic. He almost went blind at forty, and he stuttered and was epileptic. Despite all these social and personal disadvantages, he acquired French and English, read voraciously in several languages, worked as a typesetter and journalist and from his youth onward dedicated his life to literature. At thirty-one, he married a Portuguese woman five years his senior. She died in 1904 and he, four years later. As founder and president of the Brazilian Academy of Letters, he was recognized as the most important and famous writer of his time. He wrote nine novels, a few plays and volumes of poetry, some literary criticism, many journalistic columns, and also published a few excellent translations from French and English.

Some literary critics, both in Brazil and abroad, have tried to explain Machado’s production in terms of his biological and psychological history. Some have suggested that he wrote in a fragmented style because he stuttered. Others have focused on the influence of his epilepsy and his eye problems on his approach to life and literature. Others still have suggested that his racial origins determined the content of his literary production.

This search for an ultimate scientific cause for Machado’s literary genius is ironic, given his radically skeptical views of all-encompassing explanations of human behavior, especially those of the reductionist kind. Whatever the reason for his greatness, it is surprising that a man who was born in poverty, had no formal education, and faced so many physical and social disadvantages was able to become such an impressive writer. His novels—and most of all these Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas—have been admired, studied, analyzed, and even carefully dissected by many critics, some very sympathetic and some less so. But even those who are not amused by his style and his message do not deny his importance for Brazilian and world literature.

But I fear this introduction is becoming too long. As Brás Cubas himself says in his first words to the reader, “the best prologue is the one that says the fewest things or which tells them in an obscure and truncated way … The work itself is everything.”

So you have been warned, dear potential reader of this book: enjoy it, but beware, because there is in it some deadly humor at work.

—Enylton de Sá Rego

THE POSTHUMOUS MEMOIRS OF BRÁS CUBAS

To the Worm
Who
Gnawed the Cold Flesh
of My Corpse
I Dedicate
These Posthumous Memoirs
As a Nostalgic Remembrance

 

Prologue to the Third Edition

 

The first edition of these Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas came in sections in the Revista Brásileira during the 1880s. When they were put into book form later on I corrected the text in several places.