Póstumas De Brás Cubas|The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas

2020 – A Feast of Brazilian Literary Delights Celebrating the birth centenary of CLARICE LISPECTOR (1920-1977), JOÃO CABRAL DE MELO NETO (1920-1999) and JOSÉ MAURO DE VASCONCELOS (1920-1984) #aFeastofBrazilianLiteraryDelights

VIRTUAL BRAZILIAN BILINGUAL BOOK CLUB| JOAQUIM MARIA MACHADO DE ASSIS |MEMÓRIAS PÓSTUMAS DE BRÁS CUBAS|THE POSTHUMOUS MEMOIRS OF BRAS CUBAS

19th NOVEMBER 2020, 18.30-21.00

2020 the year of #aFeastofBrazilianLiteraryDelights

Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas (1880, 1881) by JOAQUIM MARIA MACHADO DE ASSIS (1839-1908) translated as

The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas (1951, 1952,1953, 1955 …2020)

1 Cover page of Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas, first book edition, 1881, Rio de Janeiro: Typographia Nacional with a handwritten

dedication text ‘A Bibliotheca Nacional offerece Machado de Assis’ reportedly in Machado de Assis's own handwriting. Page ©VIRTUAL BRAZILIAN BILINGUAL BOOK CLUB –EMBASSY OF BRAZIL IN LONDON All rights reserved - Creator & Convenor -©Nadia Kerecuk http://londres.itamaraty.gov.br/en-us/book_club.xml 14-16 Cockspur Street London SW11Y 5BL

@BrazilEmbassyUK

1952 1998 2008 2020 2020

Witty, ageless, bitingly satirical and a delightful masterpiece, The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas is an unmitigated joy to read.

Narrated, from beyond the grave, by an heir of a crafty master cooper, who succeeded in perching himself on the branch of the family tree of the Portuguese nobleman and explorer Braz Cubas (1507-1592), twice governor of the Captaincy of São Vicente and founder of the city of Santos.

Our book club discussed this masterpiece in Year 2*, on 18th Feb 2016: Our members were captivated by the narrator on the journey to the ‘Undiscovered Country’, and greatly amused by the hippopotamus ride through the mythical universal skies and ancient African plains in search of the beginnings of time (and space, of course!).

By the time you reach chapter seven, entitled The Delirium, the horizons of the history of humanity unravels.

Do not miss references regrettably neglected or overlooked by so many: from the dawn of times you will journey the places around the Nile, ancient civilisations, and the Storks of Ilisos - name of the Athenian river, its etymology is pre-Greek and may have originated in Africa!

The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas is one key novel in the Machado de Assis’s fivefold chain of novels: Quincas Borba (1891), Dom Casmurro (1899), Esau and Jacob (1904) and Counsellor Ayres’ Memorial (1908). In addition, it contains significant connection with the short novel The Alienist (1881) Our book club read the five novels, the novella, and short stories!

How many British and world writers have read Machado de Assis? In1980s, S.V. Pritchett wrote about translations of Machado de Assis. S. Rushdie, a great admirer and disciple, has claimed that Machado de Assis was at least one hundred years ahead of his time, and that he originated all Latin American literature. C. Fuentes stated that Machado de Assis was ‘The most brilliant star in the sky of nineteenth-century Iberian- American novels.’ Louis de Bernières, P. Roth, and many more, overtly and covertly all over the world, have delighted in reading his oeuvre.

Our book club launched with the novel Quincas Borba, acclaimed by our members as a 21st century novel, in January 2015, and since then we have read numerous works in our six years: our 2

members have never ceased to be amazed! Page ©VIRTUAL BRAZILIAN BILINGUAL BOOK CLUB –EMBASSY OF BRAZIL IN LONDON All rights reserved - Creator & Convenor -©Nadia Kerecuk http://londres.itamaraty.gov.br/en-us/book_club.xml 14-16 Cockspur Street London SW11Y 5BL

@BrazilEmbassyUK

Since the last1998 translation of this masterpiece, two new (re)translations appeared in English this year! Proof that it is a timeless masterpiece!

*https://sistemas.mre.gov.br/kitweb/datafiles/Londres/en-us/file/cul-bookclub-02- machadodeassis.pdf

DETAILS OF AVAILABLE PUBLICATIONS:

ENGLISH

1951 - The posthumous memoirs of Brás Cubas translated by William L. Grossman, São Paulo: São Paulo Editora.

1952 - Epitaph of a Small Winner* translated by William L. Grossman (1906-1980), New York Noonday Press Reprinted 1953 Epitaph of a Small Winner* translated by William L. Grossman, London W.H. Allan with various reprints and various forewords, e.g. 2008 by Bloomsbury Publishing PLC ISBN- 10: 0747599041 ISBN-13: 978-0747599043 ASIN: B0055NCU7S N.B.-This is the same translation as the 1951 he posthumous memoirs of Brás Cubas, but published under a new title.

1955 Posthumous reminiscences of Braz Cubas by E. Percy Ellis translated from the 4th edition-1899, in the series ‘Coleção de traduções de grandes autores brasileiros’ (Translation of the Great Brazilian authors series) of the Brazilian Ministry of Education and Culture ‘Instituto Nacional do Livro (The Brazilian National Book Institute)’: Rio de Janeiro. ASIN: B0014LXGOQ

1998- The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas translated by Gregory Rabassa (1926-2016), Oxford University Press, Library of Latin America ISBN-10: 0195101707 ISBN-13: 978- 0195101706 ASIN: B0055NCU7S Free downloads: https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Posthumous_Memoirs_of_Br%C3%A1s_Cub as.html?id=bzjKmQZi9kgC&redir_esc=y http://ebook.visitbrasil.com/detalhe.html?idbook=7

June 2020 The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas translated by Flora Thomson-DeVeaux, published by Penguin Classics ISBN-13: 978-0143135036 ISBN-10: 0143135031 ASIN: B081M5RL5S

August 2020 - Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas translated by M. J. Costa and R. Patterson, Liveright/Norton ISBN-10: 1631495321 ISBN-13: 978-1631495328 ASIN: B07ZTT43PL

PORTUGUESE

1880 - Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas as a feuilleton in Revista Brasileira published

from 15th March to 15th December 3

Page ©VIRTUAL BRAZILIAN BILINGUAL BOOK CLUB –EMBASSY OF BRAZIL IN LONDON All rights reserved - Creator & Convenor -©Nadia Kerecuk http://londres.itamaraty.gov.br/en-us/book_club.xml 14-16 Cockspur Street London SW11Y 5BL

@BrazilEmbassyUK

1881 - Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas Rio published by Typographia Nacional Numerous editions, e.g. ISBN-10: 1973391155 ISBN-13: 978-1973391159 ASIN: B00G03IGWU

Free downloads: Original 1881 edition: https://digital.bbm.usp.br/handle/bbm/4826 http://www.dominiopublico.gov.br/download/texto/bv000215.pdf

SHORT HISTORY OF THE BOOK AND TRANSLATION

Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas is one of the most notable novels in world literature of all times. It emerged from the well spring of extraordinary imagination and ideas of a man of genius, a literary titan, and a prodigious author. From the original feuilleton in Revista Brasileira published from15th March to15th December 1880, containing a quotation from As You Like It, and its subsequent edition in book format in 1881, reprinted as third and fourth editions. It has never been out of print over one hundred and forty years.

Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas was the first novel by Machado de Assis translated in foreign languages: French in 1911, Italian in 1919, Spanish in 1940 and German in 1950. Regrettably, the English language translation took a rather long time to appear with the first appearing in 1951. In 2020, the reader in English now has a record number of translations Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas, and a record number of reprints. Numerous world writers have been borrowing from Machado de Assis’s oeuvre, and each generation who reads him rediscovers him – an incontestable proof that Machado de Assis has not been forgotten at all. Our book club members loved it when we discussed it in February 2016 and delighted in finding the intricate and cerebral links between Quincas Borba, with which our book club was launched in 2015, and Dom Casmurro, which features the reference to the worn gnawing …which we also read in 2015.

Dear Brazilian Bilingual Book Club members, this repeat and updated edition, let us embark on a (re)discovery of this marvellous Brazilian novel and author! 4

@BrazilEmbassyUK

In my view, Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas is best described as a nimble satire (my nod to Shakespeare’s As you like it !) featuring an intellectually cerebral and humorous narrative, with a self-deprecating narrator displaying erudition with biting satirical wit, and a seemingly comical discussion of philosophical themes. It is an endless source of amusement. It certainly does not fit the classification straight jacket of literary movements of the nineteenth century, which academics like to apply - artificial constructs that such classifications are, thus (re)reading it, certainly provides ample refutation of acts of pigeonholing of this novel as a ‘realist’ or any other ‘-ism’.

What singles The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas out and makes it a unique phenomenal fictional narrative is that the narrator is dead. This enables the narrator to speak freely and poke fun at matters pertaining to the essence of humanity, the human virtues and vices, human passions, and histories which humanity has created through times and spaces. A relatively short tome but it contains a history of humanity narrated by a deceased man who has a fabulous sense of humour.

It is said that love moves the world and The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas contains a delightfully passionate love story, and romantic too. A covert autobiography of the author is slipped between the covers of the book. Not only does his narrator track the historical and Biblical sites in Africa, the migrations, but he also inserts a vast heritage of mythical tales which have migrated and mutated through time and space.

The deceased narrator is free to take aim at the way that household masters treated the children they had out of wedlock with their slaves in his century, who would live as ‘agregados’, attached to the household and often came to be regarded as family members for generations. Some would live, get married and continue to be a part of the same broader household. The character Cotrim is a powerful representation of some of the most despicable social practices. Machado de Assis had first-hand experience and certainly witnessed many episodes which appear in both his literary works as well as the quasi-literary chronicles in

abundance.

5 Page ©VIRTUAL BRAZILIAN BILINGUAL BOOK CLUB –EMBASSY OF BRAZIL IN LONDON All rights reserved - Creator & Convenor -©Nadia Kerecuk http://londres.itamaraty.gov.br/en-us/book_club.xml 14-16 Cockspur Street London SW11Y 5BL

@BrazilEmbassyUK

The author chose to set his novel in the times of the momentous events unfolding in the Empire of Brazil. Machado de Assis was an unwavering monarchist, while republican undercurrents were gaining strength. The structuring of the chapters, based on earlier British and European ideas, are unequivocally Brazilian. Although the author ironically and satirically focuses on a series of negatives in the life of his iconic narrator, he bequeathed an intangible and unparalleled intellectual legacy of world culture and ideas to all future generations of Brazilians first and foremost. Machado de Assis brought histories from world books, introduced W. Shakespeare to Brazilian readers, he brought a ‘universal’ library and encyclopaedia. He astounded his peers and has been bemusing successive generations of readers and critics.

The satirical component of The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas follows in the footsteps of a long tradition which can be traced back to the Greek Cynic philosopher, Menipus of Gadara (3rd century BC), whose ideas would migrate to Rome, imitated by the Roman grammarian and writer Marcus Terentius Varro (116–27 BC), who wrote about this type of satire, adding to the vast treasury of Latin traditions in Europe in the subsequent centuries.

One example of the continuity of this type of satire is The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621) by Robert Burton (1577-1640) which is one of the sources Machado de Assis used in all probability. It is highly significant that The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas contains a sort of Treatise on Insanity, or in the current parlance, on mental health. The humanist philosophical stance in Robert Burton’s work may have inspired the creation of Quincas Borba’s ‘humanitism’. The Latin word humanitas means human nature, civilisation, decency, kindness.

The fact that Machado de Assis suffered from epilepsy in the nineteenth century is equally relevant as it was regarded as a mental disease and sufferers were often committed to mental institutions. Readers will note that there is a cross reference to the novella (not short story!) The Alienist published in 1881 in The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas. Our book club discussed this important short novel in a Special Olympics edition in August 2016, see: https://sistemas.mre.gov.br/kitweb/datafiles/Londres/en-us/file/cul-bookclub-08- machadodeassis.pdf

Some of the authors who admired and used The Anatomy of Melancholy in their works were Dr. Samuel Johnson (11709-1784), who took to his beside, and Laurence Sterne (1713-1768) who drew from R. Burton in his novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1759-1767, in nine volumes) who is referenced by Machado de Assis.

In the Victorian period, this satirical tradition continued in the works such as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking Glass (1871) by Lewis Carroll and the novels by Thomas Love Peacock (1785-1866) in his novel Nightmare Abbey (1818), Benjamin Disraeli's The Voyage of Captain Popanilla (1828), Thomas Carlyle's Sartor Resartus (1833-34). This is to say that Machado de Assis, used a long tradition of ideas which migrated and mutated over more than two thousand years. His archives, for example, have samples of his handwritten exercises studying Greek.

Another Victorian author who employed satire to great effect was Charles Dickens 6

(1812-1870) and Machado de Assis was well acquainted with his works. At the time that Page ©VIRTUAL BRAZILIAN BILINGUAL BOOK CLUB –EMBASSY OF BRAZIL IN LONDON All rights reserved - Creator & Convenor -©Nadia Kerecuk http://londres.itamaraty.gov.br/en-us/book_club.xml 14-16 Cockspur Street London SW11Y 5BL

@BrazilEmbassyUK

Charles Dickens died in 1870, Machado de Assis was publishing the translation of Oliver Twist in Portuguese. All Brazilian translations drew from Machado’s original translation. In June 2007, in my lecture on Machado de Assis and Charles Dickens during the Machado de Assis’s Week at the Embassy of Brazil in London, I highlighted the fact that Charles Dickens’ first novel The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (published as a monthly serial, from April 1836 to November 1937) may have been another source for the title Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas perhaps in addition to the Mémoires d'Outre-Tombe |Memoirs from Beyond the Grave), a memoir by François-René de Chateaubriand (1768–1848) published in two volumes in 1849-50.

The title has caused puzzlement since its publication. The attention is usually drawn to the word ‘posthumous’, but the title contains a further witty pun. Machado de Assis is a deft user of puns for humorous effect. The word memórias illustrates this well. In addition to the meaning which comes to twenty-first century readers minds – of autobiography, reminiscences, or things remembered narrated in some form, another prevailing use of the word in the nineteenth century was to refer proceedings of learned societies, scientific institutions. Memórias (memoir or mémoire) used in this sense refers to academic papers presenting new findings. A further use of the word in Machado de Assis’s oeuvre is the diplomatic sense of the word, specific diplomatic documents. The second pun in the title is the surname Cubas – cuba means casket or barrel; and, in the nineteenth century it was used to mean ‘cúpula’ – dome (see Chapter III) lost in the English translations.

The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas was not the first novel but an evolution of the earlier novels, plays and short stories. It is one key novel in the Machado de Assis’s interwoven fivefold chain of novels: Quincas Borba (1891), Dom Casmurro (1899), Esau and Jacob (1904) and Counsellor Ayres’ Memorial (1908). In addition, it contains significant connection with the short novel The Alienist (1881) and various amazingly creative and innovative short stories published separately or in anthologies.

7 Page ©VIRTUAL BRAZILIAN BILINGUAL BOOK CLUB –EMBASSY OF BRAZIL IN LONDON All rights reserved - Creator & Convenor -©Nadia Kerecuk http://londres.itamaraty.gov.br/en-us/book_club.xml 14-16 Cockspur Street London SW11Y 5BL

@BrazilEmbassyUK

How Machado de Assis conceived of his ingenious novel Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas is equally fascinating. He went with his wife Carolina to the town of Nova Friburgo to convalesce. This town was settled by the Swiss and Germans, located in the Atlantic Ridge and Forest about 85 miles from the city of Rio de Janeiro. A perfect and idyllic retreat location to recover and to write. The story goes that Machado de Assis dictated the novel and his wife typed it for him. There are various handwritten chapters. This means that it was probably a combination of both. That his wife, Carolina, was his amanuensis may sound like a trivial detail. No mean feat, though. Many conjectures about his creative genius and memory come to light from this detail; and particularly considering the array of intertextual references to human intellectual history and literature in his novel. Carolina was an erudite Portuguese woman, they met at a chess club meeting in Rio de Janeiro, chess being one of the great skills of the author, and further evidence has emerged that she was the author’s soul and intellectual mate for 35 years of happy married life.

Carolina Augusta Xavier de Novaes Machado de Assis (1835-1904) 8

@BrazilEmbassyUK

Nova Friburgo is named after the Swiss canton of Friburg, as a result of a development colonisation plan decree issued by the King Dom João VI at the time that Brazil was the court of the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil, and the Algarves in 1818. The King aimed at promoting better relations with European countries to counteract the invasion by the French, which resulted in the single transfer of a court to a colony in the world history. The town location was chosen because of the likeness of the mountains to those in the Friburg canton. The drive to colonise and develop the huge territory of Brazil brought successive settlers to the various corners of Brazil. Nova Friburgo started with one hundred Swiss families settling in the area in the 1818-1830 period. It quickly became a top destination for dwellers of the capital of Brazil.

The success of the serialised Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas published in the Revista Brasileira in 1880 is corroborated by immediate publication of novel in book format in1881. It was published by ‘Typographia Nacional’, the successor publisher of the ‘Imprensa Régia’, created by Dom João VI in 1808, and predecessor of the current ‘Imprensa Nacional’, with 160 chapters, with a four thousand copies run.

Machado de Assis made revisions in the original for the book format edition. In revising the novel for the third edition (1896, published by H. Garnier), Machado tells us that ‘I have amended a few bits and took out two or three dozen lines’ adding that the reading public had been benevolent, hence a third edition. An understatement of its success since the reception by critics had been rather muted. The first book edition contained a quotation from As you Like it (1623) from Act 3, scene 2, ‘I will chide no breather in the world but myself, against whom I know most faults’ which Machado translated in Portuguese. It also included an introduction by Braz Cubas addressing the reader, ‘Ao Leitor’.

In Act IV, Scene 1, As you like it, there is a reference to ‘worms’, ‘But these are all lies. Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them, but not for love.’ In the play Richard II, another reference to worms ‘Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs|Make dust our paper and with rainy eyes|Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth, Let's choose executors and talk of wills’. The quotation from William Shakespeare’s As You Like It was replaced by an epigraph in the form of a thought-provoking dedication, breaking with convention, and referring to the Biblical sources:

‘Ao verme que primeiro roeu as frias carnes do meu cadaver dedico como saudosa lembrança estas MEMÓRIAS PÓSTUMAS.’

‘To the worm, which first gnawed at the cold flesh of my corpse I dedicate,

as a token of loving memory, these POSTHUMOUS MEMOIRS.’(N.K.) 9

@BrazilEmbassyUK

Machado de Assis was clearly reading William Shakespeare’s plays carefully and absorbed the themes and emulated some of the understated satirical wit. He may have reread or reconsidered his initial choice of quotation, with which he addressed, and possibly reassured his Revista Brasileira readers that he was writing about his own self. His knowledge of Biblical texts and possibly Hamlet , Scene 3, may have given an impetus to change the original epigraph. In Hamlet Act IV, Scene 3: Not where he eats, but where ‘a is eaten. A certain convocation of politic worms are e’en at him. Your worm is your only emperor for diet. We fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots. Your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service—two dishes, but to one table. That’s the end…A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and eat of the fish that hath fed of the worm. The foreword of the fourth edition (1899, H. Garnier) contains reference to the earlier editions. Notably in the second paragraph, the author refers to the reception of his work. The publication was reviewed by very few of Machado de Assis’s friends or colleagues; for example, a few reviews appeared in Gazetinha and Revista Ilustrada in 1881. In re-reading those reviews, one can discern an obvious puzzlement among Machado’s contemporaries, who were unable to fathom the value of the novel.

For instance, the Brazilian historian Capistrano de Abreu (1853-1927) wondered whether Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas was actually a novel. His review and subsequent appraisals were particularly inimical. The author and critic Silvio Romero (1851-1914), who was a follower of Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), and later published a history of Brazilian literature, reacted with a rather vitriolic statement that ‘it was an affected and rather unnatural imitation of English authors’. Both S. Romero, who was particularly envious, as well as other critics would regurgitate cliché views on Machado’s inspiration somehow missing details such as, for example, that Laurence Sterne (1713-1768) and Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) were Irish.

In 1881, one anonymous reviewer (using a pen name, obviously wanted to remain anonymous), praised the novel as a notable, extraordinary work and the best since the death of José de Alencar. Another novel, O Mulato, by Aluísio Azevedo (1857-1913) published in 1881 and which followed fashion emulating the style of European naturalism attracted many more reviews in the same year. Artur de Azevedo (1855-1908), Aluisio’s brother, a playwright, also wrote negative reviews on Machado. The intellectual historian and literary critic Wilson Martins (1921-2010) in the volumes IV and V of his seven-volume História da Inteligência Brasileira offers invaluable and extensive details about the reactions to the novel (as well as on Machado’s oeuvre).

The most distinguished and fashionable Brazilian critics at the time were truly confounded by Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas. They issued specious bordering on ludicrous views, which soon were to be toppled one by one, like dominoes. Those reviews offered clear evidence that Machado de Assis’s novel had been outside of what writers and critics expected. Most were slaves to trends and fashions and classifications fitting neat frameworks. It is a feature of great works of literature to undergo such a fate immediately after publication. The fact that such works continue to withstand the test of time reflects their timeless value and, by the same token, prove critics wrong. 10

@BrazilEmbassyUK

A few words about the second foreword by Brás Cubas are pertinent as it offers a coded critique to endemic challenges for Brazilian literature. When Brás Cubas ventures to estimate a possible number of readers of his novel – reduced to single digits - he is referring to the paltry proportion of reading public and their reading habits in Brazil. Writers were continually complaining about this in their letters, articles and works. According to the first census of the Imperial Period in Brazil in 1872, there was a rather low literacy level, 80% of the population was illiterate. To make matters worse, elites, fashion-conscious had a penchant to read in French leaving Brazilian authors aside with dire consequences for the authors and publishing houses. Equally, there were only about eight thousand graduates in a population of ten million. The fact that Machado de Assis mentions this remains significant to date, a lasting reminder of the timeless value of reading as means of improving literacy. This is even truer in the 21st century in Brazil, as elsewhere, with the proliferation of social media which has ensued in a loss of reading and thinking skills and long-term memory.

In Brazil, Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas continues in print to date in a variety of editions. The 1943 edition illustrated by Candido Portinari (1903-1962), a limited edition of 119 copies, is a rare treasure. For more details on Portinari see: http://enciclopedia.itaucultural.org.br/en/pessoa10686/candido-portinari ]

A few words on the historical Braz Cubas (Porto, 1507 - Porto, 1592). Braz Cubas was a Portuguese nobleman, explorer, and the founder of the village of Santos, the son of João Pires Cubas and Isabel Nunes, he was twice governor of the Captaincy of São Vicente (1545-1549 and 1555-1556). He arrived in 1531 with Martim Afonso de Sousa (c. 1500- 1564), the founder of the Captaincy of São Vicente. In 1543, he officially founded the village of Santos with a chapel and the first Alms House and hospital, the ‘Santa Casa de Misericórdia de Todos os Santos’. His legacy is huge as there are ‘Santa Casas’ in most large cities in Brazil to date.

Braz Cubas became one of the biggest land owners in Brazil, developed agriculture, started sugar cane plantations and set up a sugar cane mill, and went on expeditions to find gold and precious minerals, allegedly going as far as the Chapada Diamantina in Minas Gerais with records that he found gold, silver and metals in São Paulo in 1560.

@BrazilEmbassyUK

His monument in Santos is regarded as the oldest in the city and a main attraction. There are streets named after him and a local myth has spread that his body was allegedly entombed in the monument. In 2008, a Brazilian historian, Waldir Rueda (1966-2011), published a book Braz Cubas – Homenagem a uma Vida (Editora Comunicar) based on his comprehensive research. Some forty works of W. Rueda were deposited at the Fundação Arquivo e Memória de Santos in 2012.

TRANSLATIONS

The first translation of the novel appeared in 1911 into French by Adrien Delpech, Mémoires posthumes de Braz Cubas (Garnier Frères) following an agreement between the editor Baptiste Louis Garnier (1823-1893), owner of the Livraria Garnier in Rio de Janeiro, who bought the rights to publish and translate the books both in Rio de Janeiro and Paris. It was Hippolyte Garnier (1815 or 1816-1859), one of the three Garnier brothers, who negotiated the publication and translation rights in deals that were largely detrimental to the interests of the authors the brothers published; this is the case of the rights to Machado de Assis’s oeuvre. Furthermore, Hippolyte Garnier showed little interest in promoting translations into other languages, worse still often curtailed such undertakings. Also, Garnier was often criticised for publishing Brazilian books in Paris.

1909 Machado de Assis Son Ouevre Littéraire, 12

by M. de Oliveira Lima and Victor Orban Page ©VIRTUAL BRAZILIAN BILINGUAL BOOK CLUB –EMBASSY OF BRAZIL IN LONDON All rights reserved - Creator & Convenor -©Nadia Kerecuk http://londres.itamaraty.gov.br/en-us/book_club.xml 14-16 Cockspur Street London SW11Y 5BL

@BrazilEmbassyUK

Despite the Garnier Brothers’ actions, there were other initiatives in France which promoted Machado de Assis. The foreword by Anatole France (1844-1924), the French Academy, is printed in Machado de Assis Son Ouevre Littéraire, by the diplomat M. de Oliveira Lima (1867-1928) and Victor Orban (1868-1946) attests to this. Victor Orban published Litterature Bresilienne - Preface de M. de Oliveira Lima, (1914), Paris, Garnier Freres Libraires-Editeurs, 370p.

The fact that it took a long time for a translation to appear in English, regrettably detrimental. The first translation in English -The posthumous memoirs of Braz Cubas translated by William L. Grossman, was published by São Paulo Editora, in São Paulo in 1951. The translation was subsequently published in New York under a rather odd title Epitaph of a small winner by the same translator, William Leonard Grossman, illustrated by Sari Frisch, published by Noonday Press in 1952 and then by W.H. Allen in London in 1953.

William Leonard Grossman (1906-1980) was one of the lecturers, who came at the invitation of the Brazilian Ministry of Aeronautics; a founder member of and lecturer in air transport economics at the Instituto Tecnológico de Aeronáutica (Technological Aeronautics Institute /ITA) at the Centro Técnico de Aeronáutica in São José dos Campos. He also headed the ITA Economics and Transports Departments. He was an economist, a Harvard graduate, and had a law degree from University of New York. He had published various books an air transport before arriving in Brazil (Air Passenger Traffic 1947, Ocean Freight Rates 1956 and Fundamentals of Transportation 1959) and published in various journals and was a member of the Transportation Research Forum in New York. On 15 April 2011, the ITA Air Transport Laboratory was renamed honouring his memory - LABTAR Prof William L Grossman (http://www.ita.br/labs/labtar)

@BrazilEmbassyUK

W. L. Grossman fell in love with Brazilian literature and translated Machado de Assis and Jorge Amado into English. It was at ITA that he translated Memórias póstumas de Brás Cubas. In the foreword of the first translation published in Brazil, he remarks that the work had already been translated into French, Spanish and Italian and that ‘its translation into English has been long overdue’ and thanks Professor Arnaldo Pessoa, who ‘went through the text with me’ and to Joseph Morgan Stokes (ITA Vice-Chancellor, 1951-3, who also translated Canção do exílio/Song of the Exile by Gonçalves Dias in 1956) ‘whose discerning comments on my first draft are reflected in the final version; and W. M. Jackson Inc. which graciously authorised publication of the translation’.

In 1952, his translation was republished in the USA under a new title - Epitaph of a Small Winner. In his foreword aimed at the American audience, W. L. Grossman kept part of the original 1951 text but omitted the credits to the two professors who helped him and did not mention the Brazilian Publishing House which published the translation first. The volume of materials amassed by W. L. Grossman on Machado de Assis appeared at the 2008 event on Machado de Assis at the Brown University in the U.S.A.

There is another 1955 translation which rarely appears in various lists both in Brazil and abroad - Posthumous reminiscences of Braz Cubas by E. Percy Ellis translated from the 4th edition, 1899, in the series ‘Coleção de traduções de 10 grandes autores brasileiros (Translation Collection of Great Brazilian Authors)’of the Brazilian Ministry of Education and Culture, published by the ‘Instituto Nacional do Livro (National Book Institute)’ in Rio de Janeiro. An interesting opinion about the quality of this translation appears in the chapter ‘Machado de Assis Brazilian’ in his Myth Makers (1979) reprinted in A Man of Letters (1985) by Sir Victor Sawdon Pritchett CH CBE (1900 –1997).

In 1998, a new translation The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas by Gregory Rabassa (1922- 2016), a well-known translator of Spanish and Portuguese literatures, was published by the Oxford University Press (Library of Latin America).

In June 2020, another translation was published as The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas by Flora Thomson-DeVeaux, published by Penguin Classics. The translator has drawn on earlier translations by W. Grossman, E. P. Ellis, and G. Rabassa. The volume has a foreword by the US writer David Eggers (1970-), two introductory notes by the translation, and a set of endnotes.

The praise/acclaim quotations for the book include well known quotations including 14

a non-sequitur tiresome one by A. Ginsburg (1926-1997), ‘Another Kafka’ which makes Page ©VIRTUAL BRAZILIAN BILINGUAL BOOK CLUB –EMBASSY OF BRAZIL IN LONDON All rights reserved - Creator & Convenor -©Nadia Kerecuk http://londres.itamaraty.gov.br/en-us/book_club.xml 14-16 Cockspur Street London SW11Y 5BL

@BrazilEmbassyUK

one wonder whether the translator and editors read any Franz Kafka (1883-1924). F. Kafka started writing his first novel in 1912, Machado de Assis died in 1908. Furthermore, why does Machado de Assis need to be the subject of attributions likening him to other writers?

The endnotes are a rather ad hoc assemblage of study notes and commentary, particularly on choices that the translator made. F. Thomson-DeVeaux included her translations of sections which were edited out from the first edition in book format. However, she does not provide the original excerpts. One would expect best academic practice of quoting the original excerpt followed by the translated sections. Equally, some of the historical details in the footnotes are superficial, flippant and/or inaccurate, as for example, with reference to the Dutch in Brazil (Chapter X, footnote 2, p.302) or the Portuguese Royal family in ‘exile’ ( Chapter XII, footnote 1, page 303 ). The justification for her translation of the word emplasto (chapter II), mentions that she used the 1836 Portuguese dictionary Novo diccionario critico e etymologico da lingua portugueza … by Francisco Solano Constâncio (1777-1846). It is uncertain whether the translator used other larger dictionaries, which were available in Brazil in the second half of the nineteenth century. The term emplasto/ emplastro has a long medical history, and in Brazil it is part of the history of apothecaries and medical practices established. ‘Poultice’ is a better choice than ‘plaster’, if one wishes to use a nineteenth century lexicon, which the translator seems to have claimed. I have pointed out that Machado de Assis could have been referring to Triaga Brasilica in my earlier posts. The footnotes appear at the end of the book and may be unwieldy. They would need to be edited and harmonised.

The haphazard splitting of words at the end of lines is a nuisance for the reader in this Penguin edition – large and small publishers seem to be reluctant to correct this flaw in their graphic art and book design technologies.

Flora Thomson-DeVeaux holds a B.A. in Spanish and Portuguese Languages and Cultures (Princeton, 2013) and a PhD in Portuguese and Brazilian Studies (Brown, 2019). She has been translating from Spanish (esp. Argentinian) and Portuguese since 2009.

This year we also have another translation published in August 2020 - Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas, translated by M. J. Costa (1949-) and R. Patterson published by Liveright/Norton. The translation has an introduction by the translators and a biographical note at the end of the book. The introduction contains inaccuracies, for example the publication dates of William L. Grossman’s translation as they claim it was 1953 (Sic!). Inexact is their claim that Machado was ‘virtually unknown in Europe and North America’.

Equally, the biographical note regrettably contains various naïve inaccuracies. The 15 Page ©VIRTUAL BRAZILIAN BILINGUAL BOOK CLUB –EMBASSY OF BRAZIL IN LONDON All rights reserved - Creator & Convenor -©Nadia Kerecuk http://londres.itamaraty.gov.br/en-us/book_club.xml 14-16 Cockspur Street London SW11Y 5BL

@BrazilEmbassyUK

translators seem not to have read other novels by author or decided to omit them. There is a vast corpus of detail about the life of Machado de Assis especially in Portuguese in Brazil.

The Portuguese Language Museum in São Paulo produced an innovative catalogue to accompany its exhibition on Machado de Assis centenary of the death of the author entitled Machado de Assis, mas este capítulo não é sério held from 15th July 2008 to 1st March 2009. I was given a copy during my special visit to the museum in 2010. The museum was destroyed by fire and undergoing reconstruction. https://www.museudalinguaportuguesa.org.br/memoria/exposicoes- temporarias/machado-de-assis-mas-este-capitulo-nao-e-serio/

In 2018, the Guita and José Mindlin Brasiliana Library at USP held an exhibition of rare first editions of Machado de Assis. https://prceu.usp.br/noticia/exposicao-machado-de-assis/

Margaret Elisabeth Jull Costa OBE is a British translator of Portuguese- and Spanish- language fiction and poetry, including the works by Eça de Queiroz, Fernando Pessoa, Javier Marías, Bernardo Atxaga, José Régio and the Nobel Prize winner José Saramago. Robbin Patterson has been translating since 2013 and was mentored by M. J. Costa.

Translations into other languages in chronological order: French (1911, c. 1944, 2005), Italian (1919, 1953); Spanish (1940, 1951, Mexican, 2003), Danish (1956), Serbian- Croatian (1957, 1962); German (1950, 1967, 1979, 2003), Romanian (1986), Czech

(1996), Dutch (1954), and Catalan (2001). There are various editions in Portugal as well (e.g. 1957, 1985, 1987, 2007, 2008, 2010). 16

@BrazilEmbassyUK

SHORT BIOGRAPHY

JOAQUIM MARIA MACHADO DE ASSIS (21st June1839- 29th September1908)

‘Há coisas que melhor se dizem calando’ ‘Some things are better said by remaining silent’.

Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis is the most celebrated classic Brazilian author, thinker, and a social critic. A true man of genius, he wrote poetry, novels and short stories, plays, chronicles, translations, including a notable Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens (1812- 1870), parliamentary reports, music scores, economic outlook articles and much more. His insights into the life and times of 19th century Brazil permeate all his works. A classic master of Brazilian and world literature, he covertly brought and disseminated some of the leading European and universal ideas to Brazil.

17 Page ©VIRTUAL BRAZILIAN BILINGUAL BOOK CLUB –EMBASSY OF BRAZIL IN LONDON All rights reserved - Creator & Convenor -©Nadia Kerecuk http://londres.itamaraty.gov.br/en-us/book_club.xml 14-16 Cockspur Street London SW11Y 5BL

@BrazilEmbassyUK

Cosme Velho House, no.18, Rio de Janeiro where Machado de Assis lived from 1883-1908. The Cosme Velho Borough Residents’ Association funded this plaque. (Source of the images: Wikipedia Commons)

Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis is the most celebrated classic Brazilian author, thinker, and a social critic. A true man of genius, he wrote poetry, novels and short stories, plays, chronicles, translations including Oliver Twist by C. Dickens, parliamentary reports, music scores, economic outlook articles and much more. His insights into the life and times of 19th century and early 20th century Brazil permeate all of his works. A world classic master of Brazilian and world literature covertly brought some of the leading European and universal ideas to Brazil.

Machado de Assis’s Family Tree – 18 from exhibition catalogue Machado de Assis, mas este capítulo não é sério (2008)

Museum of the Portuguese Language in S, Paulo Page ©VIRTUAL BRAZILIAN BILINGUAL BOOK CLUB –EMBASSY OF BRAZIL IN LONDON All rights reserved - Creator & Convenor -©Nadia Kerecuk http://londres.itamaraty.gov.br/en-us/book_club.xml 14-16 Cockspur Street London SW11Y 5BL

@BrazilEmbassyUK

He was an extraordinary man of letters of mixed race and an immense capacity to respond to the challenges with which life presented him. Many are the similarities between Machado de Assis’s and Charles Dickens’ childhood and youth, both living in the 19th century capitals Rio de Janeiro and London. Both had to start work early and amassed their vast knowledge through unwavering determination and self-improvement.

Machado de Assis also had to live with epileptic seizures, misunderstood in medical circles in the nineteenth century, which exerted adverse effects on his social wellbeing. He became a printer’s apprentice at the age of 17 and taught himself various languages and studied world literature. He had a keen interest in music and excelled as a chess player.

He started writing early, became an exemplary civil servant and remained happily married to a cultured woman, Carolina Augusta Xavier de Novais (1835-1904). He was a founder member the Brazilian Academy of Letters and was elected as its first president on 20th July 1897. In 1908, he was given a full state funeral.

In addition to leaving a legacy of superlative novels and short stories, poems, plays and chronicles, Machado de Assis bequeathed some of the deepest appraisals of the values and attitudes of the societies of the nineteenth century Rio reflecting a keen sense of ethics. Machado’s oeuvre is timeless. There is a significant dialogue between author/narrator with texts from Antiquity, the Fathers of the Church, science treatises and universal literature, a thesaurus of overt and covert references. Machado de Assis surprises his readers with numerous references to English and British literature. His influence in bringing such readings to Brazil is noteworthy. For instance, numerous quotations of works by William Shakespeare (1564-1616) amply demonstrate the breadth and depth of his acquaintance with the essence of William Shakespeare’s ideas and metaphors. It is thanks to Machado de Assis that British authors gained exceptional popularity in Brazil.

His dialogue with the reader/interlocutor illustrates fascinating aspects of human understanding. The embryonic topics and ideas which appear in his poems, plays and chronicles often reappear in his novels. The shorter works are the source of subsequent full- fledged narratives, creating, thus, an internal dialogue, intertextuality of a very original kind foreshadowing much modern writing.

His influence on literature both in Brazil, South America, and elsewhere is wide- ranging. His works have remained as a source of inspiration for many. Susan Sontag (1933- 2004) once referred to him as the greatest writer ever produced in Latin America, surpassing even Jorge L. Borges (1899-1986). Harold Bloom (1930- ) went further describing him as ‘the supreme black literary artist to date’ (in Genius, 2002). Sir Salman Rushdie (1947- ) remarked that ‘If Borges is the writer who made Garcia Marquez possible, then, it is no exaggeration to say that Machado de Assis is the writer who made Borges possible’. The influence which Machado the Assis has had on Jorge L. Borges has been neglected and overlook as it is the case with various other authors. Louis de Bernières is another author who reads Machado. There are many more who read and draw from Machado de Assis’s fountain.

Works on Machado abound, although paradoxically little of what he wrote has been read. His Dom Casmurro, Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas, Quincas Borba, Esau and Jacob, Counsellor Ayres’ Memorial, The Alienist, and other novels, short stories and writings 19

carry features of universal literature akin to the greatest authors of all times. Various scholars Page ©VIRTUAL BRAZILIAN BILINGUAL BOOK CLUB –EMBASSY OF BRAZIL IN LONDON All rights reserved - Creator & Convenor -©Nadia Kerecuk http://londres.itamaraty.gov.br/en-us/book_club.xml 14-16 Cockspur Street London SW11Y 5BL

@BrazilEmbassyUK

have, more often than not, tried to classify his works as realist, romantic or even magic realism, attempting to fit them into some fixed category or methodological framework but, invariably, they have failed as the distinguishing features of his oeuvre extend beyond such models.

Translations of his works in English and other languages are yet to deliver the inherent quality of both his exquisite use of Brazilian Portuguese and his true genius.

The British Library holds over 300 copies of various works by Machado de Assis including some of his earliest works acquired in the nineteenth century reflecting, thus, the interest which his works have attracted from the time of his first publications.

Main Fictional Works by Machado de Assis

❖ 1864 - Crisálidas (Chrysalids, poetry) ❖ 1870 - Falenas (Phalaenae; poetry) ❖ 1870 - Contos Fluminenses (Tales from Rio, anthology of short stories) ❖ 1872 - Ressurreição (Resurrection; novel) ❖ 1873 - Histórias da Meia Noite (Stories of Midnight, anthology of short stories) ❖ 1874 - A Mão e a Luva (The Hand and the Glove, novel) ❖ 1875 - Americanas (poetry) ❖ 1876 - Helena (novel) ❖ 1878 - Iaiá Garcia (Mistress Garcia, novel) ❖ 1881 - Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas (The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas, also known in English as Epitaph for a Small Winner, novel) ❖ 1882 - Papéis Avulsos (Single Papers, anthology of short stories) ❖ 1882 - O alienista (also known in English as The alienist or The psychiatrist; novella) ❖ 1884 - Histórias sem data (Undated Stories; anthology of short stories) ❖ 1891 - Quincas Borba (also known in English as Philosopher or Dog?, novel) ❖ 1896 - Várias histórias (Several Stories, anthology of short stories) ❖ 1899 - Páginas recolhidas (Retained Pages, anthology of short stories including The Case of the Stick) ❖ 1899 - Dom Casmurro (Dom Casmurro, novel) ❖ 1901 - Poesias completas (complete anthology of poetry) ❖ 1904 - Esaú e Jacó (Esau and Jacob, novel) ❖ 1906 - Relíquias da Casa Velha (Relics of the Old House, anthology of short stories) ❖ 1908 - Memorial de Aires (Counselor Aires's Memoirs, novel)

A selection of biographies and source materials in Portuguese: The Brazilian Academy of Letters has a link with various archival materials: http://www.machadodeassis.org.br/

JOSÉ GALANTE SOUSA (1913-1986) was one of the main scholars and biographers of Machado de Assis. His Bibliografia de Machado de Assis (1955), as Fontes para o estudo de

Machado de Assis (1958) & Cronologia de Machado de Assis, published in 1958 – Revista do Livro, and reprinted in Cadernos de Literatura Brasileira of the Instituto Moreira Salles.

20 Page ©VIRTUAL BRAZILIAN BILINGUAL BOOK CLUB –EMBASSY OF BRAZIL IN LONDON All rights reserved - Creator & Convenor -©Nadia Kerecuk http://londres.itamaraty.gov.br/en-us/book_club.xml 14-16 Cockspur Street London SW11Y 5BL

@BrazilEmbassyUK

FRANCISCO DE ASSIS BARBOSA (1914-1991) Another excellent albeit short biography in the form of an essay written in 1988 as an introduction to the collection of 17 books on Machado de Assis published by Machado’s editor Livraria Garnier (Rio de Janeiro e Belo Horizonte): Machado de Assis – Vida e Obra: Parábola Perfeita. The essay appears in the novel Ressurreição (in Coleção de Autores Célebres da Literatura Brasileira pages 11-52). This collection of the Machado de Assis works is one of the very best in terms of quality of the texts vis-à-vis original sources. This collection is an essential source for scholars and translators, who wish to verify textual variations of various extant editions of Machado de Assis.

WILSON MARTINS (1921-2010), a distinguished intellectual/cultural historian and literary critic, who did not write a biography of Machado de Assis per se, but volumes four and five of his História da Inteligência Brasileira, are an essential source for any Machadian and/or historian of ideas. The second complete edition (1996), seven volumes, was published by the Secretary of Culture of the State of Paraná, by the then Secretary for Culture, lawyer, literary critic and intellectual, Dr Eduardo Rocha Virmond (1929- ).

DANIEL PIZA (1970-2011) wrote a more recent popular but comprehensive biography Machado de Assis Um gênio brasileiro [Machado de Assis: a Brazilian Man of Genius, N.K.], 2nd revised edition 2006, beautifully illustrated with reprints from original sources and excellent graphic art.

A relatively recent publication on Machado de Assis in Brazil is a sort of ‘hybrid’ book Machado by Silviano Santiago (1936- ) published in 2016.

You may also find this BBC Radio Scotland programme by Mark Rickards broadcast in January 2015 relevant, N. Kerecuk contributes, and one of our book club members, David Acton, reads excerpts from The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02gthsd

Source: First editions of Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas (Photo: Marcos Santos/ USP Imagens)

https://www.revistamuseu.com.br/site/br/noticias/nacionais/5488-18-08-2018- 21

exposicao-destaca-edicoes-raras-de-machado-de-assis.html Page ©VIRTUAL BRAZILIAN BILINGUAL BOOK CLUB –EMBASSY OF BRAZIL IN LONDON All rights reserved - Creator & Convenor -©Nadia Kerecuk http://londres.itamaraty.gov.br/en-us/book_club.xml 14-16 Cockspur Street London SW11Y 5BL

@BrazilEmbassyUK

References and sources: ➢ 1How to Run a Bilingual Book Club Featuring the First Year of the BRAZILIAN BILINGUAL BOOK CLUB at the Embassy of Brazil in London, by Nadia Kerecuk ISBN 978-1-5272-3265-5 (Oct 2019), The posts for Quincas Borba and Dom Casmurro are in the book and not available on our website. ➢ Brazilian Bilingual Book Club Posts on Machado deAssis • The Alienist https://sistemas.mre.gov.br/kitweb/datafiles/Londres/en- us/file/cul-bookclub-08-machadodeassis.pdf • Miss Dollar https://sistemas.mre.gov.br/kitweb/datafiles/Londres/en- us/file/cul-bookclub-19-missdollar.pdf • Esau and Jacob https://sistemas.mre.gov.br/kitweb/datafiles/Londres/en- us/file/cul-bookclub-35-machadodeassis.pdf • Memorial de Ayres https://sistemas.mre.gov.br/kitweb/datafiles/Londres/en-us/file/cul-bookclub-27- ayres.pdf • The Collected Stories by Machado de Assis https://sistemas.mre.gov.br/kitweb/datafiles/Londres/en-us/file/cul- bookclub-40-machado.pdf

➢ 1909 Machado de Assis Son Ouevre Littéraire, by M. de Oliveira Lima and Victor Orban available at https://www.gutenberg.org/files/57360/57360-h/57360- h.htm ➢ Machado de Assis na BBM: primeiras edições e raridades. Setembro- Dezembro 2018 Biblioteca Brasiliana Guita e José Mindlin (BBM) da USP (banner below) https://prceu.usp.br/noticia/exposicao-machado-de-assis/

➢ Biblioteca Brasiliana Guita e José Mindlin (BBM)- USP contains contains numerous rare and first digitised editions, downloadable in Portuguese https://prceu.usp.br/centro/biblioteca-brasiliana/ ➢ A long bibliographical list of works on Machado de Assis in Portuguese: http://www.elfikurten.com.br/2014/07/machado-de-assis-fortuna-critica.html ➢ On The Anatomy of Melancholy https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/burtons-anatomy-of-

melancholy-1628

➢ Dec 2017 Pinho da Silva, R. D. ‘Ne faites pas cela, ma chère ! » Le lecteur-coauteur

dans la fiction de Machado de Assis’ in Revue Étudiante des Expressions Lusophones 22

(RéEL) Page ©VIRTUAL BRAZILIAN BILINGUAL BOOK CLUB –EMBASSY OF BRAZIL IN LONDON All rights reserved - Creator & Convenor -©Nadia Kerecuk http://londres.itamaraty.gov.br/en-us/book_club.xml 14-16 Cockspur Street London SW11Y 5BL

@BrazilEmbassyUK

➢ Kerecuk, N. (2007) Society and Ethics in Machado de Assis’s Rio de Janeiro and Charles Dickens’s London (lecture), Machado de Assis Week, The Embassy of Brazil, London. Also, a DVD of Machado de Assis Week: translated and abridged, edited and narrated.Kerecuk, N. (2007) Workshop Re-(Dis-)covering a neglected man of literary genius: assessing the essential elements to return Machado de Assis (1839- 1908) to his rightful place in the universal intellectual history and literary history , Machado de Assis Week, Embassy of Brazil, London. ➢ Kerecuk, N. (2007) Snuffbox translation of 1878 Machado de Assis’s Bote de Rapé (first translation into English, annotated) catalogued at Bodleian Library. SOLO http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk, the library catalogue for Oxford and full record http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/dlDisplay.do?vid=OXV U1&docId=oxfaleph019455932 ➢ 2001 Film: Memórias Póstumas ( Posthumous Memoirs) comedy-drama film directed by André Klotzel based on The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas by Machado de Assis. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0166709/

HAPPY READING!

2020: #aFeastofBrazilianLiteraryDelights

Attendance is free, but booking is essential: [email protected] ©Nadia Kerecuk Creator and Convenor of the ©Virtual Brazilian Bilingual Book Club at the Embassy of Brazil in London

23 Page ©VIRTUAL BRAZILIAN BILINGUAL BOOK CLUB –EMBASSY OF BRAZIL IN LONDON All rights reserved - Creator & Convenor -©Nadia Kerecuk http://londres.itamaraty.gov.br/en-us/book_club.xml 14-16 Cockspur Street London SW11Y 5BL

@BrazilEmbassyUK