“‘Blessed are they who possess, for they shall be consoled.’”
I have omitted mention of the earlier novels of Machado de Assis because they belong to a romantic epoch, and he was not of the stuff that makes real romantics.[6] How could he be a genuine member of that school when every trait of his retiring personality rebelled against the abandonment to outspokenness implied in membership? He is as wary of extremes, as mistrustful of superlatives, as José Dias in Dom Casmurro is fond of them. “I wiped my eyes,” relates the hero of that book, when apprised of his mother’s illness, “since of all José Dias’s words, but a single one remained in my heart: it was that gravissimo, (very serious). I saw afterward that he had meant to say only grave (serious), but the use of the superlative makes the mouth long, and through love of a sonorous sentence José Dias had increased my sadness. If you should find in this book any words belonging to the same family, let me know, gentle reader, that I may emend it in the second edition; there is nothing uglier than giving very long feet to very short ideas.” If anything, his method follows the reverse order, that of giving short feet to long ideas. He never strains a thought or a situation. If he is sad, it is not the loud-mouthed melancholy of Byronic youth; neither is he the blatant cynic. He does not wave his hands and beat his breast in deep despair; he seems rather to sit brooding—not too deeply, for that would imply too great a concern with the silly world—by the banks of a lake in which the reflection of the clouds paints fantastic pictures upon the changing waters.
The real Machado de Assis stands apart from all who have written prose in his country. Senhor Costa, in his admirable book upon the Brazilian novel, has sought to present his nation’s chief novelist by means of an imagery drawn from Greek architecture; Aluizio Azevedo thus becomes the Doric column; Machado de Assis, the sober, elegant Ionian column; Graça Aranha, the Corinthian and Coelho Netto the composite. Sobriety and elegance are surely the outstanding qualities of the noted writer. His art, according to Costa, is the secret of suggesting thoughts; this is what I have called his indirect method.
Machado de Assis belongs with the original writers of the nineteenth century. His family is the family of Renan and Anatole France; he is their younger brother, but his features show the resemblance.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The occasion was the Fête de l’Intellectualité Brésilenne, celebrated on April 3, 1909, at the Sorbonne in the Richelieu amphitheatre. Anatole France delivered a short, characteristic speech upon Le Génie Latin, emphasizing his disbelief in the idea of race. “Je dis le génie latin, je dis les peuples latins, parce que l’idée de race n’est le plus souvent qu’une vision de l’orgueil et de l’erreur, et parce que la civilization hellénique et romaine, comme la Jérusalem nouvelle, a vu venir de toutes parts à elle des enfants qu’elle n’avait point portés dans son sein. Et c’est sa gloire de gagner l’univers.… Latins des deux mondes, soyons fiers de notre commun heritage. Mais sachons le partager avec l’univers entier; sachons que la beauté antique, l’éternelle Hélène, plus auguste, plus chaste d’enlèvement en enlèvement, a pour destinée de se donner à des ravisseurs étrangers, et d’enfanter dans toutes les races, sous tous les climats, de nouveaux Euphorions, toujours plus savants et plus beaux.”
[2] “I do not like tears,” he says, in his last novel, Memorial de Ayres, “even in the eyes of women, whether or not they be pretty; they are confessions of weakness, and I was born with an abhorrence for the weak.”
[3] It was a blue fly, with wings of gold and carmine, daughter of China or of Hindustan, who was born on a certain summer’s night amid the petals of a red, red rose. And she buzzed and flew, and flew and buzzed, glittering in the light of the sun and the moon—brighter than a gem of the Grand Mogul. A humble toiler saw her, and was struck with amazement and sadness. A humble toiler, asking: “Fly, this glitter that seems rather a dream, say, who taught it to you?” Then she, flying around and about, replied: “I am life, I am the flower of grace, the paragon of earthly youth,—I am glory, I am love.” And he stood there, contemplating her, wrapt like a fakir, like one utterly dazed beyond power of comparison or reflection. Between the wings of the insect, as she flew in space, appeared something that rose with all the splendour of a palace, and he beheld a face that was his own. It was he,—he was a king,—the king of Cashmire, who wore upon his bare neck a huge necklace of opals, and a sapphire taken from the body of Vishnu. One hundred radiant women, a hundred exquisite nayras, smilingly display their rare graces at his feet upon the polished floor, and all the love they have they give to him. Mute, gravely on foot, a hundred ugly Ethiopians, with large ostrich fans, refresh their perfumed breasts, voluptuously nude. Then came glory,—forty conquered kings, and at last the triumphal tribute of three hundred nations, and the united felicitations of western crowns. But best of all is, that in the open face of the women and the men, as in water that shows the clear bottom, he saw into their hearts. Then he, extending his callous, rough hand that was accustomed only to carpentry, seized the glittering fly, curious to examine it. He wished to see it, to discover the cause of the mystery, and closing his fist around it, smiled with contentment to think that he held there an empire. He left for home. He arrives in excitement, examines and his mute behaviour is that of a man about to dissect his illusion. He dissected it, to such a point, and with such art, that the fly, broken, repellent, succumbed; and at this there vanished that fantastic, subtle vision. Today, when he passes, anointed with aloes and cardamom, with an affected air, they say that he went crazy, and that he doesn’t known how he lost his blue fly.
[4] Dancing in the air, a restless glow-worm wailed, “Oh, that I might be that radiant star which burns in the eternal blue, like a perpetual candle!” But the star: “Oh, that I might copy the transparent light that, at the gothic window of a Greek column the beloved, beautiful one sighingly contemplated!” But the moon, gazing at the sun, peevishly: “Wretched I! Would that I had that vast, undying refulgence which resumes all light in itself!” But the sun, bowing its rutilant crown: “This brilliant heavenly aureole wearies me.… I am burdened by this vast blue canopy.… Why was I not born a simple glow-worm?”