# Reading > Write a Book Review >  Machado de Assis - The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas

## Marbles

_Translated from Portuguese by Gregory Rabassa
First published 1880; this translation 1997_

This novel when it appeared was arguably ahead of its time in terms of its form and style. It is an anomaly in the corpus of nineteenth century literature as it challenges the accepted modes of representation set by narrative realism. The memoralist, the narrator, tells his story from the grave (first Latin America attempt at magical realism?) _It is not a story of a writer who is a dead man but a dead man who is a writer._

Because he is dead and hence free from the responsibilities of the living, he is at liberty to relate the story without compromise, with fedlity to total truth, telling things as they are (or were), because the genie of public opinion cannot affect a dead man; it is for the living to fear what others think of him.

Bras Cubas, the narrator, is a member of the elite class in mid-nineteenth century Brazil when it was still a kingdom and slavery was very much alive. He is expected to follow in the footsteps of others of his class, and to take a government position, of influence and riches which come with it, after he had studied in Portugal. But Bras Cubas is not made for any of this, despite his earnest attempts to gain some of that social position that is required of a person of his inherited social background.

The narration, in telling the story of his failed life, which could very well have been great and successful without much work, takes on the social mores and political habits of members of his class, who are anxious to make a place for themselves in that system. It is through this discourse the writer satirizes the morality of his times

The absence of urgency for action and emotion, the supine, idyllic and static life of the elite class, is mirrored through Bras Cubas armchair struggle to gain a post of social standing and through his two love affairs, one of which with a married woman who was initially promised in marriage to him but whose father married her off to a young man of better financial means and brighter career prospects. The affair remains clandestine and intense, but there is no place for tragic in it; when the situation changes they easily part and go their separate paths, making a great show of separation, but both knowing full well that its impossible to give oneself fully to feeling.

There is a fascinating episode of a dream the narrator tells of during one of bouts of delirium preceding his death. He is at an icy wasteland overlooking a hill and from that vantage point sees the whole century passing before his eyes. All centuries of the past till the present one pass through his vision in a stunning, electrifying apparition as if lightening, and at the end of this he realises that his century, along with the history of humanity with its ideologies, institutions, and images, is an illusion. _You great lascivious man, the voluptuosity of nothingness awaits you._ There is nothing to take from the past and nothing to pass on to the future.

To see all and everything of human history concentrated at one point is bound to remind the reader of Borges Aleph, which is a point containing each and everything that has ever existed and will exist, that the protagonist in the short story sees in his friends basement. Could Borges have taken the idea from Machado de Assis? This is very much possible.

All in all, this sharp novel casting a gimlet look on society with its deadly humour should be required reading for anyone reading classics of the 19th century.

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## JCamilo

Borges and Machado only have contacts because they share reading (Balzac, Poe, Flaubert) and both are prone to irony. Machado is however a typical realist - Bras Cubas is not magical realism at all, it is a ghost telling his story, just like Ishmael tell Moby Dick, both settled apart of the world where the story happens. Plus, maybe a flaw of translation, Bras cuba is a unrealiable narrator, he is not telling the truth at all. 

Machado didn't happen in a vaccum, he is a follower of José de Alencar, he followed and traded experiences with european literature often, translated many authors froms french and english. It is famous his feud with Eça de Queiroz for example. Machado is a true giant, besides Bras Cubas, his Dom Casmuro is a notable experiment with the unreliable narrator and his Alienista - a short tale that has something of Gogol - are great readings. He was also a good poet, short story writer. 

But I never saw Borges mention him. I do not think he was a reader of portuguese language - his mother used to read Eça de Queiroz, but probally translations - I knew he mentions Gonçalves Dias and Euclides da Cunha. But that is all. In the 70's he was show to Pessoa. Between some disdain for brazil (he considered us to be barbaric also... there is borges notorious racism) and that Machado being as famous would have been introduced to Borges when he visited us, I cannot tell if Borges was too old to care and remember of he just didn't conected with Machado.

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## Marbles

> Borges and Machado only have contacts because they share reading (Balzac, Poe, Flaubert) and both are prone to irony. Machado is however a typical realist - Bras Cubas is not magical realism at all, it is a ghost telling his story, just like Ishmael tell Moby Dick, both settled apart of the world where the story happens. Plus, maybe a flaw of translation, Bras cuba is a unrealiable narrator, he is not telling the truth at all. 
> 
> Machado didn't happen in a vaccum, he is a follower of José de Alencar, he followed and traded experiences with european literature often, translated many authors froms french and english. It is famous his feud with Eça de Queiroz for example. Machado is a true giant, besides Bras Cubas, his Dom Casmuro is a notable experiment with the unreliable narrator and his Alienista - a short tale that has something of Gogol - are great readings. He was also a good poet, short story writer. 
> 
> But I never saw Borges mention him. I do not think he was a reader of portuguese language - his mother used to read Eça de Queiroz, but probally translations - I knew he mentions Gonçalves Dias and Euclides da Cunha. But that is all. In the 70's he was show to Pessoa. Between some disdain for brazil (he considered us to be barbaric also... there is borges notorious racism) and that Machado being as famous would have been introduced to Borges when he visited us, I cannot tell if Borges was too old to care and remember of he just didn't conected with Machado.


Thanks for the informative comment, JCamilo.

The narrator doe say something and then corrects himself later with new information but it does not quite affect the story, methinks. He does not come across as unreliable; he comes across rather playful and ironic. Maybe it's due to the translation. Gregory Rabassa is a fantastic translator though but he mainly translates from Spanish. I don't know how well he is when working with Portuguese.

I am wondering, however, how do you interpret the striking similarity between the sight of all centuries in a moment of lightening in Bras Cubas and the concentration at one point of everything that exists in Borges' Aleph?

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## stlukesguild

I loved _The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas_ when I first read it perhaps a decade ago. I haven't come across any other books by Machado de Assis in English translation since... although just browsing Amazon I find that The Alienist and Dom Casmuro. I must look into these... and Eça de Queiroz as well. You are not the first to mention his work. I've had him recommended by an acquaintance on an opera appreciation forum. 

The dead unreliable narrator? It makes you wonder:

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## JCamilo

Yes, it is irony, but you cannot tell always if the correction is more true than the narrator original claims. The fact he is dead put him apart from our (mortal) morality and he takes advantage of it. You would need to understand the historical context of Machado and the brasilian society. The narrator belongs to the elite (burgouise elite) and his corrections and irony were used to make a critic to this elite. 

Well, Borges Aleph came from H.G.Wells, it is metaphysical in a sense. Machado is someone who studied - like borges, he has a vast reading - and Bras Cuba is rooted on the Chronicle Menipeia that came from Luciano Dialogue with the Dead, Voltaire, Cervantes are in the work. Also, Machado is a typical pessimists - he is a reader of Schopenhauer - and the book theme is the denial of past. It is not all históry in one point (as an Aleph), it is no history at all, just like the narrator is a failure, he does not build anything, he does not mean anything. The individual is his acts on the world, the narrator is nothing, so all history is a farse (as the carnaval implies), it does not exist. 

The Aleph is something that exists, unlike the end of XIX notion of end of all things, Borges work with the notion that all things exists and this is too much. The apocalypse of Borges, the horror is the possibility that we are close to complete all things or nothing new will happen. Borges does not deny the history - albeit he does play with the carnaval too - but unlike Machado that claim it is not real (therefore, admits the existence or status of "reality"), borges is not sure if anything is real or if it is better to be real. The aleph is false, but there is a real aleph somewhere.

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## JCamilo

> I loved _The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas_ when I first read it perhaps a decade ago. I haven't come across any other books by Machado de Assis in English translation since... although just browsing Amazon I find that The Alienist and Dom Casmuro. I must look into these... and Eça de Queiroz as well. You are not the first to mention his work. I've had him recommended by an acquaintance on an opera appreciation forum. 
> 
> The dead unreliable narrator? It makes you wonder:


Yeah, Unreliable narrators such as Machado, Henry James, Poe, Melville were a great device for the Noir genre. More even, because there is no surprise (they will die in the end) so we depend on their style. 

Alienista is more close to Borges than Bras Cubas, IMO. A good translation would do good and it is very short (50 pages or so). Of course, Machado is an author full of parcimony, very economic, specially on his mature momment (he wrote a lot early, many dramas, more close to Sabrina than anything, as he needed money). Eça is Borges's mother favorite author. Once he and Bioy Casares ranked him higher than Flaubert and the russians. He and Machado are without doubt highlights of portuguese language. Primo Basilio is his most notorious work (sexual scandal at the time), Os Maias regarded as his "greatest novel", Cidade e as Serras a small and cheerished work (with a funny scene of a dream where the protagonist see God and Voltaire playing games in heaven).

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## Marbles

> You are not the first to mention his work. I've had him recommended by an acquaintance on an opera appreciation forum.


Does that refer to me? Of course I'm not the first one to mention his work??

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## JCamilo

I think he means Eça.  :Biggrin:

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## Marbles

> I think he means Eça.


Ah, it must be so!

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