By JÉSSICA MACHADO BOEIRA & WESLEY SOUSA*
At the age of 20, Machado wrote his criticisms in small periodicals such as Fluminense marmot, The groundhog ou The mirror
Introduction
It is common knowledge that Machado de Assis constitutes one of the high points of our literary life. Some may not know about his chronicles and literary criticism texts, the comments on dramaturgy productions and the satirical verve in journalistic texts in the vicinity of a skilled reviewer, in the various serials on which he worked in Rio de Janeiro, commenting on Rio's theatrical life from from Shakespeare's stagings, from readings by Lawrence Sterne, La Fontane, Blaise Pascal, etc.
In several writings from Machado's “youth” (1864-1872), they were signed, however, by certain pseudonyms. Recently, some research in the field of literary studies has reestablished interpretations and comments, whether in the discovery of writings by Machado de Assis, or in the reinterpretation of his fortune beyond his already renowned novels (Azevedo, 2015). From everything that has been written and is still being written, much can be extracted to reinforce the idea of a dry humorist, of a visceral rhetorical capacity and a narrative articulation between social content and literary form.
Machado began his life as a writer at around 19 years of age, in a famous bookseller at the time (around 1858). The critical articles entitled The past, present and future of literature, bold theme, broad subject in which the writer showed relative mastery. When did the magazine appear? The future (1862), directed by Francisco Xavier de Novais, the young Machado was chosen to write the literary chronicle for it. And later, in Diary of Rio de Janeiro, then directed by Quintino Bocaiúva, was tasked with reviewing and commenting on newly printed books. Although not always continuous, Machado reviewed and commented on authors such as Raul Pompeia, José Veríssimo, Joaquim Nabuco, Graça Aranha, etc. In those times he had the epistolary “blessing” of José de Alencar, regarding a comment by Machado about the writer and poet Castro Alves. Alencar, by the way, even calls Machado “the first Brazilian critic”, according to researcher Sílvia Azevedo (Azevedo, 2015).
The critic saw the innovations of Brazilian realistic drama, brought to the scene by Dramatic Gymnasium Theater, from 1855, with pieces by Dumas Filho, Émile Augier and Octave Feuillet. These playwrights called themselves realists because they intended to deal rigorously with the new bourgeois society. With a moralistic verve, the plays were established in a plot that discriminated between good and bad customs through a set of values such as work, family, marriage, money, free initiative, the need to preserve capital, honesty etc. “It was an innovative dramaturgy in relation to the theater of João Caetano dos Santos, which focused on romantic dramas, neoclassical tragedies and successful melodramas instead of seriously investing in national theater”, as observed by Alex Martins, in the article “The fundamentals philosophical aspects of theater criticism in Machado de Assis” (Martins, 2019, p. 51).
Décio de Almeida Prado also reports some of these episodes, in his work entitled A concise history of Brazilian theater [1999]. For the interpreter, the realism that took hold in Europe also meant the loss of bourgeois illusions in the social world, such as occurred in Flaubert, Balzac, Stendhal, etc. In terms of dramaturgy production, the highlight of some productions that arrived in Brazil is mainly due to French production, which contained some of the names brought to our land. According to Prado, “If the nucleus of romantic drama was often the nation, in realism it becomes the family, seen as the mother cell of society” (Prado, 2020, p. 78).
In the case of Machado de Assis' late works, there is a satirical movement in the details of a certain mismatch between the ideas and the social matter of the local dominant classes. However, Machadian realism is constituted by “anti-realist” elements (the speaking deceased, for example), according to which the critic seeks to specify such a construction based on literary irony that becomes an immediate consequence in which the Machadian narrator acquires a social and well-defined history. Therefore, the alienation from established forms of realism, those analyzed, for example, by the Hungarian philosopher György Lukács (Lukács, 2011), is the narrative center of “Memórias posthumas de Brás Cubas”. In this text, we will address some of these two aspects, having as a guiding thread Machado's writing as a literary and dramaturgical analyst of Brazilian social life (limited to the lands of Rio and Fluminense).
The young Machado theater critic
At the age of 20, Machado wrote his criticisms in small periodicals such as Fluminense marmot, The groundhog ou O Mirror. Reading these texts, and many others that he collaborated on, are fundamental to understanding Machado's cultural formation both as a literary critic and a theater critic. If we look at his intellectual career, it can be seen that he was supported from a very young age, and at the age of fifty he was considered the greatest writer in the country, the target of much admiration that no other Brazilian poet and novelist had ever experienced. In the works of great writers like him, according to Antonio Candido, it is common, therefore, to find the polyvalence of the literary verb, as it is easy to find a wealth of meaning in the texts, which allows each group and each era to “find their obsessions and their need for expression” (Candido, 1977, p. 18). For this reason, generations of critical readers have found different levels in Machado de Assis, and therefore appreciated him for different reasons; appearing as a prominent writer, whose qualities were often contradictory. But what qualifies him even more is precisely making each of these qualities, although opposed, fit into his intellectual diversity. When he reached maturity at around 40 years of age, his style and good language attracted notable attention. Such characteristics were codependent, “and the word that best brings them together for the critique of time is perhaps fineness” (Candido, 1977, p 18).
In Machado's critical observations, dramaturgy (theatrical) was already distinguished from modern comedy, from realistic comedy (whose promising intention was to reproduce the social scene in order to provide moralizing lessons). In his writings there is no mention of a particular play, but it is known that the theatrical predominance was French. The plays were performed in the Drama Gymnasium Theater, in the semester of 1856, as the The Marble Women, by Theodore Barriere and Lambert Thibousr and Lady of Camelhas, by Alexandre Dumas Filho, and also a few years later The Equivocal World, from Le Demi-Monde, A Prodigal Father and the Question of Money, by Alexandre Dumas Filho, Barriere's Hypocrites, Mr. Pereira's Son-in-Law, Giboyer's Son, Olympia's Wedding, by Émile Augier, The Crisis, by Octave Feuillet, By Right of Conquest, by Ernest Legouvé. Although he was not yet very deep into the dilemmas of dramaturgy that was going on, in a short time, contact with the theater and intellectuals of his generation quickly made him understand what was happening on the Brazilian scene.
According to Roberto Faria, in his extensive research on Machado's writings on the subject, he observes that the main aspects of this dramaturgy staged by the Dramatic Gym contrary to the idea of art for art's sake, “they gave their works an uplifting and moralizing character, committing themselves to defending the ethical values of the bourgeoisie, the social class with which they identified” (Faria, 2008, p. 27). The staged bourgeois virtues such as marriage, family, conjugal fidelity, work, intelligence, honesty, honor, are constantly emphasized in the bourgeois imagination as recognized moral qualities and which, therefore, must be contrary to vices, such as marriage for convenience, adultery, prostitution, loan sharking, illicit enrichment, idleness, etc. As Faria puts it:
It goes without saying that Manichaeism perfectly served its moralizing purpose, since the conflict always resulted in the overwhelming victory of good. What's more: this dramaturgy painted a portrait of French society that made Brazilians jealous. While the hell of slavery was living here, our mark of backwardness, in France society was modernizing through bourgeois ideology (Faria, 2008, p. 27).
This historical scenario seduced the young intellectuals who were graduating, especially those who were cordial to the liberal-conservative thought that was being consolidated. Still in this formative period, Machado was an avid reader of theatrical serials, and as he weaves Faria's suggestive understanding, perhaps he allowed himself to be influenced by the ideals of Quintino Bocaiúva, who was a serialist for the Rio de Janeiro diary, and also a viewer of realistic comedies from Dramatic Gym. Thus, Quintino Bocaiúva rejected the romanticism, I expected from the theater that this would be a mirror of society. But not just an unreflective reproduction of the real. In its idealization, therefore: “Theatre's primary function was to contribute to the improvement of family and society life, through the moralizing critique of vices. In his words, “the theater is not just a show house, but a teaching school; Its purpose is not only to amuse and soothe the spirit, but, through the example of its lessons, to educate and moralize the soul of the public” (Faria, 2008, p. 28).
In these words, we can see an ideal for dramaturgy that would overcome the impoverished and outdated deceptions of the Rio theater scene. Far beyond the traits that represented the Brazilian cultural awakening in the bourgeois scene, an enlightened and critical understanding of what was happening here was also necessary. Furthermore, Machado also closely followed José de Alencar's debut as a playwright at the end of 1857. He entered the scene in Dramatic Gym his first comedy called Rio de Janeiro, back and forth, followed by the piece The Familiar Demon. This last play was significant for the new direction that Brazilian theater would take.
In Alencar's perception, however, the first generations of romanticism had not been up to the task. Above all, aesthetic renovation was needed.. For him, romanticism had already lost its effervescence and was no longer capable of being a parameter, and could now be replaced by realistic comedy, whose format fit better into the new historical context. To write the Familiar Demon He looked for a model in comedy in Brazilian dramaturgy, but was unsuccessful and had to resort to French dramaturgy, as in Dumas Filho. For Alencar, this writer perfected comedy, “adding a new feature, naturalness” (Faria, 2008, p. 29), thus constituting the new modern comedy. In the meantime, something had become clear to Alencar: high comedy needed to include these two basic elements: naturalness and morality. If, on the one hand, the Horatian idea of the utilitarianism of art emerges from classical influence, on the other hand, realism conspires with the ideals of its own time. Abbreviating these principles, we have a construction of a piece that captures reality, but adds a subtle moralizing aspect to it. Something that, somehow, Machado assimilated.
According to what we read in the research carried out by Sílvia Azevedo, the young writer Machado de Assis, during his period as a theater critic and columnist in Rio de Janeiro newspapers, had a critical fortune from which we can call it criticism in reverse (Azevedo, 2015). As an example of this, the writer will deal, on December 20, 1869, with the work Angelina or Two Happy Chances, by José Joaquim Pereira de Azurara. The “choice” of the subject for criticism appears amid other issues covered in the chronicle of this date, such as the state of abandonment of the streets of Rio de Janeiro and the change of name of some of them. It is within this context, far from literary subjects, that Azurara's work begins to be treated, that is, in the midst of “things”: “This novel Angelina or Two Happy Chances It was published three days ago. It has 78 pages and 13 chapters. It is a work worth reading. There are plenty of pages of description and feeling, sober reflections and human things, and above all, a breathtaking newness of form. […] I have noticed in our current writers the use of vulgar and well-known words with disregard for poetic or simply classical terms. The author of angelina breaks brilliantly with this tradition. He knows how to use euphonious, legitimate and coruscating words for free. […] Why should we say red, loves, lacks, etc., like any barber? The author uses punishment, notrice, inopia, buzzing, impervious, starving, etc. It shows that he studied. He ends the novel with this question: Now I have to ask you, my readers, should I continue to write? Undoubtedly. We hope for a second novel.” (Jornal da Tarde, 77, December 20, 1869, p. 1).
Criticize the novel Angelina or Two Happy Chances within the chronicle is an indirect way of negatively pre-judging the work, bringing it to a context in which the lack of connection between it and the other subjects covered gives rise to the chronicler's observation regarding another bizarre approach: “What a point can there be between the battle of Tuiuti and the tomatoes in the market?” (Assis, 2013). Furthermore, Machado's intention, by bringing the novel closer to other “things”, was to covertly criticize Azurara's conception of literature, which had “difficult” words as a synonym. The “preciousness” of the novel was like looking at the quality of tomatoes in the market…
Under the pseudonym “Dr. Semana”, the ironic simulation also involved incorporating the “literary” terms used by Azurara, in order to create a second speech that mimics the incomprehensible character of the reviewed author. When the reader chooses one of the meanings, choosing the literal, when dealing with the figurative, or vice versa, the humorous effect is inevitable. In fact, it happened, when Pereira de Azurara, after reading the review that appeared in the Illustrated Week regarding his novel, he sent two letters of thanks to the magazine's editors, accompanied by the comedies “How beautiful this is!” and “I don’t like lemon”, which the professor from Guaratiba submitted to criticism from Dr. Semana [Machado’s pseudonym]. The chronicler did not miss the opportunity to transcribe both letters in the “Badaladas” (section of the newspaper) of February 20 and 27, 1870, the first preceded by an ironic “introito” (beginning), in which he casts doubt on the “authenticity ” from the correspondence (see: Azevedo, 2015, p. 52):
[…] Mr. Azurara is the same author of the novel Two happy accidents that I already talked about a few weeks ago. But are these letters authentic? Is the author of the novel really the same author of the comedies? Or perhaps someone who wishes, in the shadow of an already known name, to showcase his works?
The comedies are good, and I would publish them in Week with all my will. But ignoring whether the author will be the same, the most I do this time is publish the first letter hoping that the author will contact me and confirm its authenticity (Illustrated Week, 480, February 20, 1870, p. 3835).
Raise suspicion regarding the authorship of the letters (it must be said, they were all signed), under the allegation that another author, to take advantage of Azurara's “fame”, would be using the same resource of sending his works to the editors of the Illustrated Week, “in the hope that Dr. Semana would handle them with care, is an indirect way of saying that comedies are even worse than romance” (Azevedo, 2015, p. 53). Perhaps that is why, this time, instead of “analyzing” the pieces, the chronicler-critic opted for another strategy in the service of irony, without any interruption, as happens in relation to the first letter. His very fine irony and highly refined style. This is associated with an idea of mild urbanity, discretion and reserve.
The works of light comedy, made of jokes and crude humor, a genre that infested the theaters of Rio de Janeiro, and that Machado de Assis, in the role of theater critic and censor of the Dramatic Conservatory, fought hard, went through this ridicule by “evidenced” them as pompous and full of praise. In the young Machado, with this example, we can highlight characteristics very typical of a prose writer who makes ironic relativization a fictional function that led, years later, to the construction of the “voluble narrator” present in The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas (1881), a work from the “mature phase”. Now, as an already renowned and productive writer, Machado makes his prose a formal aspect in which irony and satirical criticism intertwine in his novelistic manner.
Brazilian satire and social drama
In fact, what Dr. Semana does, in the sense of this “reverse criticism”, clearly points out how criticism would work as a guide for newcomers; as the “Ideal of the critic” (Assis, 1865) was also presented in his text, in the need for the author, both new and professional, to read good examples of literature, in order to improve himself as a writer, and not seek by dubious intentions, self-affirmations and flattery. From theatrical criticism as a moral pedagogy and criticism for a supposed enlightened elite, Machado now begins to ridicule precisely the narrow-minded universe that forms the Brazilian Republic; and irony, in turn, is the formal content that frames the social drama.
Thus, when we see that the volubility of Brás Cubas is a narrative mechanism in which it is implicated in a national issue (the birth of the Republic is one of them), such volubility that accompanies the steps of the book, has its immediate context in it, even when not made explicit or even targeted. For Schwarz, “The stridency, the numerous artifices and the desire to attract attention dominate the beginning of the songs. The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas. The tone is one of deliberate abuse, starting with the nonsense of the title, since the dead do not write” (Schwarz, 2000a, p. 16). Machado's narrative movement, then, resorts to the stock of enlightened appearances, through which he destroys the totality of contemporary lights, which he subordinates to a principle contrary to theirs, as Roberto Schwarz observes. According to Schwarz's interpretation, in “A master on the periphery of capitalism” [1990] (2000a), a work which is a study of Machado's late work, especially “Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas”, Machado's narrative form, in the “voluble narrator”, he visited and absorbed the relevant culture of the time, to acclimatize it in the country, that is, to associate it with the institute of slavery, whose core of discretionary personal domination however mocked the civilized pretension and was no longer sustainable. public (Schwarz, 2000a). Part of volubility is the accelerated and summary consumption of postures, ideas, convictions, literary manners, etc., soon abandoned by others, almost like “disqualifications”.
Furthermore, on the other hand, we also find in Alfredo Bosi, an interesting essay commenting on issues of the critical function of the ideological molds of his time present in Machado's narrative. In “An ideological knot: notes on the linking of perspectives in Machado de Assis” [1988], according to him we can start from the following interpretative axis:
The metaphor of the knot seems to fit the ideological plot that can be recognized in the fictional work of Machado de Assis.
Why ideological knot? Because the expression refers to the image of several threads joined together in an intricate way, in such a way that one cannot follow the path of one without touching the others. The operation that unties and stretches them, one next to the other, only gains historical and formal meaning if the interpreter puts them back together (Bosi, 2008, p. 7).
In Machado's work, in short, the artistic achievement as a chronicler and literary critic emerges with the idea of “reverse criticism” in the elaboration by the young writer in the way in which the rhetorical and narrative nexus was configured in the way of exposing that the ridiculous is taken seriously by those who believe it; and the seriousness of the world is treated as if it were a ridicule of ourselves. Here we have Machado and his gentleman Brás Cubas. However, Machado began writing in newspapers in his youth and this culminated in a synthesis, in order to ridicule a pathetic universe, in which its purpose lies in showing the absurdity and irrationality of life regarding “human misery” in the narrator Brás Vats. The writer insightfully perceives social contradictions through the lens of those “from below” at first; and, consequently, in the alternation of perspective through the lenses of those “from above”, the narrator characters, sometimes observers, sometimes participants in the “understanding between classes” and in the ideological game, as Schwarz points out, of a historical plot that, for decades afterwards, they would thicken – coups, counter-coups, the deepening of imperialism, etc. (2000a).
In the first half of the 19th century there was a considerable increase in the slave trade. The bourgeois transformations through the affirmations of the liberal constitutions promulgated in the European metropolises and in the management of the colonies through the exploitation of the slave trade would tend to crumble and the “independent” nations would formally be constituted, this only at the end of the century. XIX, with all the cultural and ideological entanglement present. This is the social backdrop of “Memórias posthumas de Brás Cubas”. As typical figures of this liberal-slavery mentality (a subject that Roberto Schwarz addresses, with another purpose, in the essay Ideas out of place[I]), Machado presents Cotrim, Brás's brother-in-law, and Damasceno, who is Cotrim's brother-in-law, both defenders of the freedom of landowners and enjoyers of the slave trade at the end of the 1840s (chap. 92). Damasceno, then upset with British pressure against trafficking and fearful of liberal-democratic ideals, went so far as to say: “the revolution is at the door”. And further: “May the devil take the English! This wouldn’t be right without them all going out” (Assis, 1975).
As for future centuries, Brás Cubas does not see them, so monotonous in their similarity to those that preceded them. “Now we understand what the phrase with which the late author ended his biography means on a universal level” (Bosi, 2008, p. 30). It is the famous phrase that generations pass on to later generations, it is the legacy of their misery. Brás Cubas has a mocking tone, but is skeptical. In the critical fortune of Machado's narrative, according to the interpretation of the content outlined here, we have reached a point where “democratic” ideals and the defense of historical “achievements” are bankrupt by liberalism as a facade of a complicated ideological mesh. The writer ridiculed the positivist and progressive conception of History, which was shared by the disciples of Auguste Comte and Herbert Spencer.
Here lies Machado's philosophical-political skepticism: nature takes him to the top of a mountain and makes him contemplate, through a fog, the parade of centuries, the allegory of History. Scenarios follow one another, civilizations appear and disappear, growing on top of each other's ruins. The spectacle, which could be great, ends up turning into a nightmare. Thus, times accelerate until the present arrives; the irremediable production, destruction and eternal conservation of “nature” at the cost of successive generations, and as Brás Cubas says: “all of them punctual in the grave”. And he continues: “The minute that comes is strong, powerful, it supposes to bring eternity within itself, and it brings death, and it perishes like the other, but time subsists” (Assis, 1975). But if Machado, on the other hand, was far from being a “socialist” or anything like that (and he even had certain inclinations considered “conservative” in today’s eyes), at least he did not make concessions to ridicule and absurdity. that was around him in social and literary matters.
Final considerations
In summary, we can maintain that, as mentioned, from a very early age Machado, when writing his theatrical criticisms, especially about the Brazilian artistic scene, was a lucid prelude to what would become his mature prose, whose ironic verve was never a stylistic resource itself, but it was in the Brazilian social drama itself. The social face of literary form, according to Schwarz. As we noted, Machado thought of theater as a thermometer of civilization, of a people. Therefore, in his writings to the newspapers he called on his readers: “To the Theater!”. For him, theater shows the facets of a society “frivolous, philosophical, castilian, avaricious, self-interested, exalted, full of flowers and thorns, pains and pleasures, smiles and tears!” (Faria, 2008, p. 24).
In short, Machado's prose is founded from an early age on the mantle of “feigned distance”, of “apparent neutrality”, to hide the “cutting edges” of irony, in the words of Linda Hutcheon (Hutcheon, 2000, p. 63). Thus, Machado also tested the competence of his opponents in reading what was implicit in Dr. Semana's critical (theatrical) chronicles. In the posthumous memories, in turn, our delusional subject will experience some vicissitudes. Brás Cubas' moral volubility, on the other hand, reveals something about the society he mirrors. The deceased author is an heir, a person who lives at the expense of the misfortunes around him; he laughs and delights in the loves he lives and ends them, in the “gallant adventures and his irresponsible rich man's naughtiness”, according to Bosi (Bosi, 2008, p. 16); however, by satirizing slavery, not as a destination, he is denouncing the exclusionary and prejudiced ideology of the old oligarchic liberalism (Bosi, 2008, p. 23 seq.).
The social drama in Machado's criticism is nothing more than a reflection whose distorted form is the unresolved reckoning with our past. In his literature, the aspect appears that the current ideology of his time used the supposedly scientific certainties of a certain era to legitimize our domination (in the case of evolutionism manipulated by imperialism): the supposed “pessimism” that contests it, or the skepticism that would doubt it , would exercise a satirical function of non-moralistic making, but reduced its necessary protoform to literary content. In Machado's literary form, such distortion in the lyrics is caused in the spirit, because it shows in how the plot is, deep down, “My life, my dead / My crooked paths” (Secos e Molhados – “Sangue Latino”).
*Jessica Machado Boeira é Master's student in philosophy at the University of Caxias do Sul (UCS).
*Wesley Sousa is a doctoral student in philosophy at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG).
References
ASSIS, Machado de. Machado de Assis: literary criticism and diverse texts. In: AZEVEDO, Sílvia; DUSILEK, Adriana; CALLIPO, Daniela (Org.). São Paulo: UNESP, 2013.
ASSIS, Machado de. The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas. Rio de Janeiro: Brazilian Civilization; Brasília: INL, 1975.
ASSIS, Machado de. The ideal of the critic. Available using this link. [1865].
AZEVEDO, Sílvia. Machado de Assis and criticism in reverse. Bakhtiniana, São Paulo, vol. 10, no. 1, Jan./Apr., p. 42-56, 2015.
BOSI, Alfredo. An ideological knot: notes on the linking of perspectives in Machado de Assis. Writings: magazine of the Casa de Rui Barbosa Research Center, v. 2, no. 2, p. 7-34, 2008.
CANDIDO, Antonio. Various Writings. São Paulo: Livraria Duas Cidades, 1977.
FARIA, Roberto. Machado de Assis do Teatro: text and various writings. São Paulo: Perspectiva, 2008.
HUTCHEON, L. Theory and politics of irony. Translated by Julio Jeha. Belo Horizonte: UFMG Publisher, 2000.
LUKÁCS, György. The historical novel. Translated by Rubens Enderle. Presentation Arlenice Silva. São Paulo: Boitempo, 2011.
MARTINS, Alex. The philosophical foundations of Machado de Assis's theater criticism. São Paulo, Machado de Assis em Linha, v. 12, no. 26, p. 47-61, 2019.
PRADO, Décio de Almeida. Concise history of Brazilian theater (1570-1908). São Paulo: 1st edition; 3rd reprint. EDUSP, 2020.
SCHWARZ, Roberto. To the winner the potatoes: literary form and social process in the beginnings of the Brazilian novel [1977]. São Paulo: Duas Cidades/34, 2000.
SCHWARZ, Roberto. A master on the periphery of capitalism: Machado de Assis [1990]. 4th edition. São Paulo: Duas Cidades/34, 2000a.
Note
[I] See: Schwarz, Roberto. Ideas out of place. In: To the winner the potatoes. São Paulo: Duas Cidades/34, 2000.
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