Journal of World Literature 3 (2018) 403–416

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Reflections on at the Present Moment The National Instinct

Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis

Translated by Robert Patrick Newcomb University of California, Davis [email protected]

In the March 24, 1873 edition of the periodical O Novo Mundo, Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (1839–1908) published the essay “Notícia da atual literatura brasileira. Instinto de nacionalidade.”1 The author, then primarily known as a poet, playwright, and critic, reflected on the ongoing project, the “shared desire,” to build a truly national Brazilian literature. Machado – as he is com- monly referred to in – praised the Romantic, “Indianist” literature that in the hands of the poet Gonçalves Dias, the novelist José de Alencar and oth- ers flourished in the decades following Brazil’s independence from Portugal in 1822. Writing a half-century on, and after the rise of realism-naturalism, Machado called on younger Brazilian writers to transcend indianismo and its presentation of exemplary Amerindians, often historical or mythical figures, as prototypical . With the diplomatic tone that would typify the decep- tively subversive novels he would publish beginning in the 1880s,2 Machado rejected the notion that national authenticity and cosmopolitan modernity were opposed values. Rather, in his essay’s central argument Machado con- tended that Brazilian writers might remain authentically national even when addressing apparently foreign themes. “What we should expect of the writer above all,” Machado contended, “is a certain intimate feeling that renders him a man of his time and country, even when he addresses topics that are remote

1 This English translation was originally published, without a headnote, in Brasil/Brazil vol. 26, no. 47/2013: 85–101. Permission to reprint this translation was kindly granted by the editors of Brasil/Brazil. 2 These include the novels Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas (Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas, 1881), (1891), (1899), Esaú e Jacó (1904) and Memorial de Aires (1908).

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi:10.1163/24056480-00304002 404 newcomb in time or space.” Machado, anticipating by several decades Jorge Luis Borges’ argument in “El escritor argentino y la tradición” (The Argentine Writer and Tradition), judged this “inner” Brazilian-ness, this more fully-formed “national instinct,” as “distinct and superior for not being merely superficial.” To do the opposite, and strictly adhere to the indianista model, risked the literary fabri- cation of “a nationhood of vocabulary and nothing more.” In this way, Machado encouraged Brazilian writers to throw off the expecta- tion that in order to be patriotic, they must invariably embrace rural settings, local color and indianismo. Without rejecting the Romantic legacy, Machado called for his contemporaries to take up the challenge of bringing the implicitly urban “analytical novel,” concerned with “passions and characters,” to Brazil. In his mature fiction he would present as a sort of human specta- cle, as a contradictory space divided by class and race, in which wealth and poverty, and egotism and idealism collided. Machado, a native-born carioca who seldom left his city’s environs, would set all of his novels and much of his short fiction in Brazil’s then-capital. In so doing he helped consolidate urban fiction as one of Brazilian literature’s dominant tendencies while refusing to concede either the “national” or “universal” bona fides of his urban, and urbane, novels and short stories. Indeed, Machado’s observation that Brazilian writ- ers’ literary patriotism need not, and probably should not, entail the more superficial forms of “clothing [oneself] in the nation’s colors,” pre-emptively answered – though unfortunately failed to prevent – decades of pointless debate on whether Machado was fundamentally a “Brazilian” or “universal” writer. Machado, whose disenchanted view of humanity would flourish as his fame as a fiction writer grew, would have no doubt appreciated this irony. ∵

When one examines Brazilian literature at the present moment, one quickly recognizes a certain national instinct as one of this literature’s most salient aspects. Poetry, the novel – ideas manifested in all literary forms seek to clothe themselves in the nation’s colors, and there is no denying that this preoccupa- tion is evidence of vitality and that it bodes well for the future. The traditions of Gonçalves Dias,3 Porto-Alegre,4 and Magalhães5 have in this way been taken up

3 Antônio Gonçalves Dias (1823–1864): One of Brazil’s most important Romantic poets, notable for his lyricism and celebrations of Brazilian nature and indigenous life and traditions. 4 Manuel de Araújo Porto-Alegre (1806–1879): Romantic writer, painter, and critic. Co-founder of the publications Niterói and Guanabara. 5 Domingos José Gonçalves de Magalhães (1811–1882): Poet and dramatist, credited with intro-

Journal of World Literature 3 (2018) 403–416