In The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas, the narrator being dead gives him license to say things he couldn't say while alive, allowing him to look back over his whole life and draw conclusions.

(00:00:00) This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. (00:00:06) This is summer at its peak. (00:00:08) Whole Foods Market's Summer Fruit Fest is your invitation to eat the season. (00:00:12) Fresh, organic and bursting with flavour. (00:00:15) Start your day with peaches and organic blueberries and yogurt. (00:00:18) Build a grazing board with fresh fruit, prosciutto and artisanal cheese. (00:00:23) Then fire up the grill with no antibiotics ever proteins and fresh produce. (00:00:28) Savour the season. (00:00:29) Shop Summer Fruit Fest. (00:00:30) at Whole Foods Market. (00:00:32) I'm Simon Jack. (00:00:33) I'm Zing Singh. (00:00:34) And on Good Bad Billionaire, we're exploring the life and fortune of music megastar Sir Paul McCartney. (00:00:40) Macca. (00:00:41) As one of the primary songwriters in the Beatles... (00:00:44) And with an extensive solo career... (00:00:45) His work generates vast and continuous royalty streams. (00:00:49) But were song royalties alone enough to break the billion? (00:00:52) And earn him the title of the first British billionaire rock star? (00:00:56) Find out in Good Bad Billionaire from the BBC World Service. (00:00:59) Listen now, search for (00:01:00) Good Bad Billionaire wherever you get your BBC podcasts. (00:01:06) How did a boycott Jimmy become a billionaire from posting videos? (00:01:10) On Good Bad Billionaire, we're going to find out how the world's most popular YouTuber, Mr. (00:01:14) Beast, made his fortune. (00:01:15) He's buried himself in a coffin for days. (00:01:17) Counted to 100,000 on camera. (00:01:19) And even recreated Squid Games, all in an attempt to go viral on the internet. (00:01:24) But it all started when he gave a homeless man $10,000. (00:01:27) So is he a philanthropist reshaping capitalism? (00:01:30) Or is he just the king of the attention economy? (00:01:32) Find out on Good Bad Billionaire. (00:01:34) Listen on bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts. (00:01:39) This is In Our Time from BBC Radio 4, and this is one of more than 1000 episodes you can find in the In Our Time archive. (00:01:49) A reading list for this edition can be found in the episode description wherever you're listening. (00:01:54) I hope you enjoy the programme. (00:01:57) Hello. (00:01:58) Machado de Assis is considered the towering figure of modern Brazilian literature, with a global reputation, although arguably not as much as he deserves. (00:02:12) The descendant of slaves, Machado wrote many of his novels and almost 200 short stories before Brazil abolished slavery in 1888, the last country in the Americas to do so. (00:02:26) And while he vividly critiques the slave-owning classes, he transcends that time and place. (00:02:32) In Salman Rushdie's view, his works seem to have been written yesterday, not 100 years ago. (00:02:39) Well, with me to discuss Machado Giassis are Ana Claudia Suriani da Silva, Associate Professor in Brazilian Studies at University College London. (00:02:50) Claire Williams, Professor of Brazilian Literature and Culture at the Faculty of Modern Languages at the University of Oxford and Fellow of Saint Peter's College, and Viviani Cavalho da Annunciation, Affiliated Lecturer at the Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics at the University of Cambridge. (00:03:11) And Viviani, it's to you that I come first. (00:03:14) Can you tell us something about Machado's early life in Rio de Janeiro? (00:03:21) Machado just sees us sometimes called the greatest Brazilian writer, but I come to think of him as the Pele of literature. (00:03:31) Machado did the same thing as Pele did for football. (00:03:36) He inherited an European tradition, mastered it and transformed it, (00:03:41) completely creating it, something unmistakably Brazilian and original. (00:03:48) And Machado Jassiz was born in Rio de Janeiro, a burgeoning city. (00:03:55) He was the son of Francisco Jose Jassiz and Mariela Polgina Machado Jassiz. (00:04:01) His father was a painter. (00:04:04) descendant from freed slaves and his mother was an Azorean washer woman. (00:04:10) He grew up in an affluent neighborhood but connected to a working class family. (00:04:18) He was... (00:04:20) baptized by Donna Maria Jose Gemaine Domse, the wife of a senator. (00:04:26) So he grew up going in and out of her mansion and going back to his working-class family. (00:04:35) So what was his relationship with the wealthy family? (00:04:38) She was his godmother, and he would go to her house to have meals and to be with her. (00:04:48) So just to make (00:04:49) clear, what was that relationship between a relatively poor family, working class, how come he has this relationship with a wealthy family? (00:05:00) Well, it's where his father and mother would work. (00:05:05) This is basically where he would paint their houses, she would wash their clothes, and that was a patronage relationship. (00:05:16) And what were the prospects for a young boy like Machado at the time in Brazil, given his background and this relationship of dependency with the wealthy family? (00:05:28) It was very slim. (00:05:29) It was believed that he was going to follow the footsteps of his father and become a painter or some sort of manual worker. (00:05:40) But effectively, his health wasn't so great, so he started working (00:05:46) in selling sweets, but then he wasn't strong enough. (00:05:52) And developing this incredible intelligence for literature, he transcended his background. (00:06:01) So although illiteracy in Brazil at this time is very high, I think around 70%, (00:06:07) He nonetheless has access to books and reading because of that relationship with the wealthy family. (00:06:13) Is that right? (00:06:14) Not exactly, because what happened is that he lost both his mother and his father at an early age, and he was brought up by his stepmother, Maria Ines, who was an Afro-Brazilian woman. (00:06:30) And Lucia Miguel Pereira, in her biography of Macha de Jassiz, says that she worked in a school for young women. (00:06:42) And apparently, he would overhear the lessons and the corridors and get very much interested in what they were studying. (00:06:53) Formal education didn't suit him, so he would learn French with Madame Gallot. (00:07:01) the baker, classics, Greek, Latin, with Father Silvera Sarmiento, the priest. (00:07:08) When he was 17, he started to go to the bookshop Pereira Brito. (00:07:16) and frequent literary circles. (00:07:19) So in addition to reading by himself, studying by himself, he was also learning from people in different social classes and in different levels of education. (00:07:32) So Ana Claudia Sodiane da Silva, he is working associated with a bookshop, which is run by a publisher in Rio. (00:07:43) How does he start writing? (00:07:44) What's his first break as a writer? (00:07:48) Machado starts to collaborate with the local press, so Paola Brito's press, as a translator. (00:07:56) So he translates poetry and he translates novels, but also he is an aspiring poet. (00:08:04) And he's not very successful as a poet. (00:08:07) He very soon realizes from very harsh criticism that he's not a very good poet. (00:08:13) At that time, there was a flourishing publishing market, print culture, in Brazil. (00:08:19) So with the end of censorship in 1821, all of a sudden we had lots of books being published, so a proper print culture, bookshops, circulating libraries. (00:08:32) One of the circulating libraries was the British Subscription Library, the Portuguese Royal Cabinet, and lots of newspapers and periodicals, many of (00:08:43) them were ventures by European publishers that settled down in Rio de Janeiro, including Garnier. (00:08:50) So Garnier played a very important role in Machado's career because he had a fashion magazine, a magazine for women. (00:09:00) So it was basically a magazine full of sewing material, fashion plates, and a lot of literary content. (00:09:08) So Machado went from being an average poet to being a very successful short story writer. (00:09:16) So he wrote in this specific journal published once a month, and it was actually printed in Paris. (00:09:24) So his manuscripts had to travel to Paris and come back to Brazil and serialized. (00:09:30) And his short stories were very long, which means that he made (00:09:34) a good amount of money because of the word count of these stories. (00:09:38) And these were largely women's magazines, is that right? (00:09:41) Yes. (00:09:41) Why is he so popular with women at the time? (00:09:44) Oh, because these magazines were very successful, so there were all sorts of periodicals being published in Brazil. (00:09:52) It was a very vibrant market for (00:09:55) a periodical, so political newspapers published daily, and also these magazines that targeted women and were suited for the domestic sphere. (00:10:06) So Machado was writing short stories, and the short stories were actually a big attraction to the readers for them to subscribe to these magazines. (00:10:17) So he had a very diverse readership, both men when he was publishing short stories for political newspapers, and women in these fashion magazines. (00:10:28) Thank you. (00:10:29) Claire Williams, Brazilian literature comes late in the day. (00:10:33) Was it in any sense ostracized during the slavery period? (00:10:38) Brazil as a nation was ostracized and looked down upon by the rest of the world. (00:10:44) while they were a slave-owning nation. (00:10:46) And the development of Brazil is quite unique in that it was a colony of Portugal for 300 years, and then became an empire in 1822, a kind of constitutional monarchy. (00:10:59) And all this time, the economy was run largely on slavery. (00:11:05) This was something that was very much looked down upon by the rest of the world. (00:11:10) And Brazilian politicians and intellectuals were worried that they wouldn't be taken seriously as a modern nation. (00:11:17) until slavery had been abolished. (00:11:19) Why did it take so long for slavery to be abolished? (00:11:23) There are lots of thoughts about that. (00:11:25) Historians have written many tomes about that, but because the politicians, the governing classes were plantation owners, so a lot of money was at stake if they were going to give up their workforce. (00:11:38) But they did eventually. (00:11:40) So the slave trade ended in 1850 and gradually slavery was abolished in various waves through various laws. (00:11:49) and in 1888 it was abolished. (00:11:52) More or less at the same time that Brazil becomes a republic. (00:11:56) Exactly. (00:11:57) So 1889 Brazil becomes a republic. (00:12:00) Gets rid of the monarchy. (00:12:01) Let's look at one of Machado's most famous works. (00:12:06) That's the posthumous memoirs of Bras Cubas. (00:12:11) Can you describe that novel to us? (00:12:12) Absolutely. (00:12:13) It's a novel where nothing happens and everything happens. (00:12:18) So you'd think from the title that it's the story of a life, then you realise that it's posthumous memoirs, so there's something strange going on. (00:12:28) So he's dead when he's writing it? (00:12:30) He's dead when he's writing it, and he tells us at the beginning, (00:12:34) after making a dedication to the worms that gnawed on his cold body, the first worm who gnawed on his cold body, that this is not the book of an author who has died, but a dead man who has become an author. (00:12:50) So he tells us right from the very beginning that he's not a very good writer, but he is quite good at being dead. (00:12:57) And being dead, (00:12:58) gives him license to say all sorts of things that he couldn't say when he was alive. (00:13:04) It also gives him the chance to look back over his whole life and draw conclusions about the causes that produced certain effects and to reflect on how important he could have been because he's a character who's desperate for approbation, for a claim, for recognition. (00:13:26) And yet he's so lazy and cowardly and so entitled as well. (00:13:34) He comes from a rich background. (00:13:36) He's wealthy. (00:13:36) He doesn't even need to work. (00:13:38) And he could do anything with his learning. (00:13:42) He studied in Portugal. (00:13:44) He could do anything with his money, but he keeps it all for himself. (00:13:48) And in fact, he's one of the great ironies is that he's very lucky, so almost as if whatever he wants, (00:13:54) he gets. (00:13:55) He likes a particular woman. (00:13:57) He manages to seduce her. (00:13:59) He finds money in the street. (00:14:01) And all this at the time where poverty was rife. (00:14:06) So that's what I want to go on to. (00:14:09) Viviane, can you tell us what the social critique in this novel is really about? (00:14:16) Well, the European, you have the tradition of the self-made man, the person who works, who comes out of nothing and (00:14:24) yields something extraordinary. (00:14:27) In a way, Braz has everything and he doesn't make anything out of that. (00:14:33) And there is a whole chapter about him trying to be a politician, which is dot, dot, dot. (00:14:41) And that is a big joke that Machado plays with the reader. (00:14:47) How did I become a politician? (00:14:50) There is nothing to be read about it. (00:14:54) following chapter, well, I am in my house, I am with my slaves, I'm with my son, my chair, but I keep thinking about the work that I don't have. (00:15:06) This is very typical of the higher classes. (00:15:10) They have everything, and they want a little bit more in the Brazilian situation of the 19th century. (00:15:16) But he's still talking about what he could have been. (00:15:21) In a way, it is Brazilian, but it's also very (00:15:24) universal in a way because we might have everything but we still keep thinking about that little thing that didn't happen. (00:15:32) Anna Claudia, that sense of entitlement which Viviani described there. (00:15:37) It sounds quite a lot like the Brazil of today. (00:15:41) There's not much of a plot in this novel. (00:15:44) So what is it that inspires people to read the book? (00:15:48) Well, in terms of the entitlement, Machado is writing to a niche of readers. (00:15:55) So the literacy levels were actually quite low in Brazil. (00:15:59) It was 30% of people could read. (00:16:02) And he was writing to the educated elite, yes. (00:16:07) It's the first novel he publishes in the first person. (00:16:11) So he moves away from the sentimental, omniscient narrator of his first novels. (00:16:17) And in the preface of this specific novel, he says that he's now being in his second phase, and he's heavily influenced by Stern and Tristan Shandy. (00:16:29) So we are about to engage with a novel that is going to be digressive, (00:16:35) is going to be fragmented and very witty and ironic. (00:16:40) So he constructs a character that is going to embrace the blindness of Brazilian elite. (00:16:47) And for many times, critics couldn't understand that he was actually being critical to the status quo because that character, who achieves nothing, (00:16:57) leaves no legacy, is a failed scientist, a failed politician, a bad lover, is actually represents the failure of the Brazilian elite, yes? (00:17:08) So how was it received when it was first published? (00:17:12) You said that they didn't really understand it. (00:17:14) They liked the novel, but they didn't understand it. (00:17:16) Was it well received? (00:17:18) It was extremely well received. (00:17:19) It was first published in a scientific magazine and then a sign of success that it was very quickly published in book form. (00:17:29) And it had all sorts of positive reception that read in favor of this very witty... (00:17:37) charming narrator. (00:17:38) You mean almost as though they were celebrating the fecklessness of the Brazilian elite. (00:17:45) Exactly, yes. (00:17:46) And actually not seeing that a lot that is silence. (00:17:50) For example, Bras Kubas is a slave owner and he barely mentions slaves in his plot. (00:17:56) So it's again that silence that tells everything. (00:18:00) And that's what more reception, the reception of his novel (00:18:05) from the 1950 onwards start to open the eyes and see that the silence is more important than what is said. (00:18:12) Right, so reception changes as Brazil develops and people start to look at it in different ways. (00:18:21) Claire Williams, the narrator here is a man, Bras Kubas, but how strong are women in Machado's work? (00:18:29) Women are crucial. (00:18:31) So before Bras Kubas, before the memoirs, he'd published four other novels. (00:18:36) This is his fifth novel. (00:18:38) And the third and fourth have female protagonists and the titles are female names, Elena and Yaya Garcia. (00:18:47) And then from then on, he focuses on male narrators. (00:18:51) almost all of them writing in the first person. (00:18:53) So they are the ones with the voice, they are the ones with the agency, but we have to read between the lines to see what's going on with the women. (00:19:02) So a lot of the female characters who these male narrators speak about are extremely beautiful. (00:19:08) They have lovely long black hair, they have glittering eyes, they go to balls and they bare their shoulders, and kissing them is close to heaven. (00:19:19) And the men become bewitched until the point when they want to drop them. (00:19:23) So we see, it's a bit like Jane Austen, the way that the world of the women is that they have to capitalize on their beauty. (00:19:32) They have to be practical and strategic in order to survive. (00:19:38) And perhaps the best example of this is Kapitou, who's the heroine of the seventh novel, Don Cazmuro, that title, Don Cazmuro, (00:19:49) has a double meaning which we can talk about later. (00:19:52) Well, do tell us now what it means. (00:19:55) Well, Don is a title, as in Don Quixote, it's a title that means nobility, but here it's used ironically. (00:20:02) And Kasmuhu is a term which means grumpy, basically. (00:20:07) So it's Sir Grumpy. (00:20:09) Yes, exactly. (00:20:11) And in the first chapter of this novel, (00:20:14) Again, in the first chapter, that's where they give themselves, start to give themselves away. (00:20:20) I think the reader gives them a bit of benefit of the doubt, but very soon we start to spot contradictions and realise that we need to think very hard about what they're saying before we trust them. (00:20:31) So he tells us in the first chapter, Oh, a young poet called me Doncas Moohoo when I didn't take his poems seriously, and I accepted that title. (00:20:42) But, dear reader, don't go and look up in the dictionary. (00:20:45) I will tell you what this means. (00:20:47) It means somebody who is very quiet, a recluse, and of course, what does the reader do? (00:20:52) The first thing we do is to go and look it up, and it means grumpy, stubborn, and I think this is a very early example of mansplaining. (00:21:01) So we get these male characters who tell the women what to do, get very frustrated when they don't know what they're thinking, and are seduced by their beauty to a certain extent. (00:21:16) This is summer at its peak. (00:21:18) Whole Foods Market's Summer Fruit Fest is your invitation to eat the season, fresh, organic, and bursting with flavor. (00:21:25) Start your day with peaches and organic blueberries and yogurt. (00:21:29) Build a grazing board with fresh fruit, prosciutto, and artisanal cheese. (00:21:33) Then, fire up the grill with no antibiotics ever, proteins, and fresh produce. (00:21:38) Savor the season. (00:21:39) Shop Summer Fruit Fest at Whole Foods Market. (00:21:43) I'm Simon Jack. (00:21:44) I'm Zing Singh. (00:21:44) And on Good Bad Billionaire, we're exploring the life and fortune of music megastar Sir Paul McCartney. (00:21:51) Macca. (00:21:51) As one of the primary songwriters in the Beatles. (00:21:54) And with an extensive solo career. (00:21:56) His work generates vast and continuous royalty streams. (00:21:59) But were song royalties alone enough to break the billion? (00:22:02) And earn him the title of the first British billionaire rock star? (00:22:06) Find out in Good Bad Billionaire from the BBC World Service. (00:22:09) Listen now, search for Good Bad Billionaire wherever you get your BBC podcast. (00:22:16) How did a boycott Jimmy become a billionaire from posting videos? (00:22:20) On Good Bad Billionaire, we're going to find out how the world's most popular YouTuber, MrBeast, made his fortune. (00:22:26) He's buried himself in a coffin for days. (00:22:28) Counted to 100,000 on camera. (00:22:29) And even recreated Squid Games, all in an attempt to go viral on the internet. (00:22:34) But it all started when he gave a homeless man $10,000. (00:22:38) So is he a philanthropist reshaping capitalism? (00:22:40) Or is he just the king of the attention economy? (00:22:42) Find out on Good Bad Billionaire. (00:22:44) Listen on bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts. (00:22:50) Viv, we've just heard from Claire about Doncas Muhur. (00:22:53) It doesn't sound like the way a lot of people describe it, which is a modern Othello. (00:22:59) Is that right? (00:23:00) And why is it compared to Othello? (00:23:03) Well, it's all about jealousy. (00:23:06) It's all about this woman, Capito, who has watery eyes, under toe eyes, who is very seductive. (00:23:14) And we don't hear her voice. (00:23:16) We hear her through his eyes. (00:23:20) But he's very jealous. (00:23:21) He believes that his best friend, Escobar, had an affair with her, and their child is actually his best friend and not his. (00:23:32) And the end of the (00:23:33) novel, he goes and watches Othello, and after he comes out, he keeps thinking, well, poor Desdemona, she's not guilty, but what would have happened if she was guilty as Capitou? (00:23:51) And then he tries to think about ways to punish Capitou. (00:23:56) And in many ways, this Casmorro has deceived readers and literary critics for 50 years. (00:24:06) It took an American critic, Helen Caldwell, in the 80s, 90s, to write the Brazilian Othello. (00:24:15) And she pointed out to us, which was right in front of us, you shouldn't trust this first person narrator. (00:24:24) We are hearing everything from his point of view. (00:24:28) That's right, because in Shakespeare's Othello, we know throughout the play that Desdemona is absolutely innocent. (00:24:36) Here we don't know because we only have one voice and that's Don Cazmuro, and so there is doubt. (00:24:44) We simply don't know. (00:24:45) But his name is Bento Santiago. (00:24:49) Bento and Don Cazmuro are the same person. (00:24:53) So Saint Iago, Iago is within his name. (00:24:59) So Machado is a brilliant author that he is, he's already showing us (00:25:05) Iago is inside his mind. (00:25:08) So Don Cazmuhu is both Othello and the Iago at the same time, both the duped one and the person who's suggesting that Capitou is unfaithful. (00:25:24) Ana Claudia, this is probably his best known work. (00:25:28) How does it highlight his strengths as a writer? (00:25:32) It's a novel that shows how varied his style and prose is. (00:25:38) So The Young Machado was exposed to a tsunami of novels. (00:25:43) He read at the same time Stern, Balzac, Dickens, Cervantes, different traditions of novels. (00:25:52) And throughout his career, he experimented with different (00:25:56) novel traditions. (00:25:58) So, in Doncasmuru, we see this all together. (00:26:02) It's at the same time a sentimental novel. (00:26:05) It's an elegy, so he misses Capitou. (00:26:08) So he has a sort of hate and love relationship with Capitou. (00:26:12) And he misses her. (00:26:13) He writes a memoir, which is at the same time an autobiography, but an elegy. (00:26:19) So he doesn't kill Capitou. (00:26:20) She leaves him for Europe. (00:26:22) It's also realist, so there are chapters in which you find very clear and realistic descriptions of the setting, the farm where he grew up. (00:26:35) characters like Escobar, his mother, his aunt, and the dependent. (00:26:41) Can you just explain what the dependent is? (00:26:44) Because this is an important concept in Brazil, but not so familiar here. (00:26:47) Yes, so Machard was a sort of dependent of this wealthy family that he lived with and supported him. (00:26:55) So dependent is a free person. (00:26:58) that works and has a very complicated relationship with a wealthy family because it's not an enslaved person and it has no blood ties with the family. (00:27:08) So they have to make themselves useful for the family in order not to be sent out. (00:27:15) Viv, you wanted to come in briefly there? (00:27:17) Yeah, because I think the drama is very important in Doncas Moro. (00:27:23) Of course it is from Shakespeare. (00:27:26) Machad de Jassiz was him, he began his career writing poetry, but also writing theatre. (00:27:33) It's also very Brazilian, this type of performance, when you are under a patronage, some sort of system, you have to perform in a certain way that you're going to make your employer very much flattered. (00:27:49) It's a very theatrical society, Brazil. (00:27:52) I remember when I first went there, I had come from working in the Balkans for a long time. (00:27:58) Circumstances in Brazil in terms of poverty and things like that are comparable to the (00:28:03) Falkans but people still party all the time it's a very lively society and I wonder if Machado captures any of that liveliness as well I think so because his novels and short stories they all have you know a dark side because of the plot characters owning slaves etc but they are joyful (00:28:27) And that reflects a characteristic of Brazilian culture and Brazilians nowadays. (00:28:34) If you go to Brazil for the first time, you think everybody's happy. (00:28:37) And if you read these statistics, not really. (00:28:41) Lots of people are not happy, but we are joyful. (00:28:44) So in Brazil, you learn very quickly to this. (00:28:48) distinguished between being joyful and happy. (00:28:51) And I think that part of his wit and one contribution for the formation of Brazilian literature is exactly how to convey this very specific, unique Brazilian humor into literature, which was then, of course, expanded (00:29:10) incorporated by Lima Bajeto, Jean Durillo, and all the writers that came after him. (00:29:16) Claire, do you think that he was writing for women? (00:29:19) Were those his first readers, as it were? (00:29:23) I mean, we know that he wrote for women's magazines. (00:29:25) Do you think he was hoping that women would recognize (00:29:29) what was in these novels. (00:29:31) Very possibly. (00:29:32) I think he creates these very resourceful, practical, strategic female characters because they are the ones who are going to educate the sons and the Brazilians of the future. (00:29:45) And clearly nobody wants the Brazilians of the future to be like... (00:29:50) Berto or Bras Kubas, because society will fail just as they have failed. (00:29:56) And I think one of the things that's interesting is that in these novels, none of the protagonists have children who survive past the end of the book. (00:30:05) They are the end of a generation in a way. (00:30:09) That's really important because Brazil needed to reinvent itself, create (00:30:14) new citizens who were forward-looking. (00:30:17) Yes, of course, one of the cliches about Brazil is that Brazil is the country of the future and it always will be. (00:30:26) And it's that elite, that middle-class elite, who are often seen as preventing the development because of characters like Don Cosmoho, Ana Claudia. (00:30:39) Machado's been criticized for not speaking out enough about slavery as clearly as he might have done. (00:30:46) Is that a fair assessment? (00:30:48) Not really, but that's how he was read for many generations of critics. (00:30:55) So first of all, in his birth and death certificate, he appears as a white person. (00:31:02) And he was considered by many contemporary critics as apolitical. (00:31:07) He was even considered against the Republican, the change of the regime. (00:31:12) He was considered a monarchist. (00:31:14) And just basically because he didn't believe in any changes. (00:31:18) He was not really the person who would believe that changing, abolishing slavery or changing from (00:31:24) the monarchy to republic would change anything. (00:31:28) He's writing for the elite and talking and embracing the point of view of the elite and leaving a lot unsaid about the working class and slavery. (00:31:40) But as one of the critics says, Alfredo Bossi, a Brazilian critic from the University of Sao Paulo, Machado worked around asymmetric relations. (00:31:53) that were very close to each other. (00:31:56) So, Father against Mother... (00:31:58) That's the title of the story, right? (00:32:00) Yes, yes. (00:32:01) It's a short story, and it was published in 1906, 18 years after the end of slavery. (00:32:09) And Machado de Giassiz constructs a narrator presenting elements of slavery and what it was like in an anecdote about (00:32:18) slave catcher and a runaway slaved woman. (00:32:22) So you see the very asymmetric relations. (00:32:26) The slave catcher has to catch the slave because it depends on that reward in order to keep his son. (00:32:33) So we, as readers, we have in one side the runaway slaver who is a pregnant woman, Arminda, and the slave catcher whose wife is also pregnant. (00:32:45) So as readers, we (00:32:48) The narrator doesn't pass any judgment and we are put in this moral dilemma. (00:32:53) So this was a way for him to confront the system, talk about it, expose without being judgmental, leaving for the reader to make the conclusions. (00:33:05) Claire, there's a sense in Machado's work that he really despises mediocrity. (00:33:13) Where do you find examples of this? (00:33:16) There are lots of examples of this, and we've already touched on the fact that Bras Kubas achieved very little in his life, despite having all the wealth, all the training, all the education, all the charm to do this. (00:33:30) So Bras is the ultimate underachiever. (00:33:33) He wanted attention from everybody, but he did nothing really to deserve it. (00:33:39) He's somebody who does (00:33:42) Nothing. (00:33:43) And this, I think, is very frustrating for Mashadu, but also for the reader. (00:33:48) He has no initiative. (00:33:49) You know, this is this is what the new generation need. (00:33:52) They need initiative. (00:33:53) They need to take responsibility. (00:33:55) And there's the last chapter of Brash Kubaz is called Negatives, and it's all about what Brash didn't do in his life. (00:34:05) So he says. (00:34:07) I did not have children and thus did not bequeath to any creature the legacy of our misery. (00:34:14) He's listed all the things that he didn't do, which is basically what the whole story is about. (00:34:20) And also I would say that although Machado is described as a realist, it seems to me as though there are the seeds of modernism in what Machado is doing as well. (00:34:31) Ana Claudia? (00:34:32) Yes, so I think (00:34:36) Don Cazmul, for example, is a novel that is almost impressionist. (00:34:40) We have one version of a story, and not exactly the access to facts, because it's a first-person narrator. (00:34:51) So we are very close to, we can compare to James Joyce and also Lord Jim by Conrad. (00:34:58) So we have the impressions of the narrator, and the narrator writes about (00:35:04) his relationship with a dead character, exactly like in Lord Jim. (00:35:08) So we don't have access to that character, be, you know, in the case of Lord Jim and Machado d'Asis Capito. (00:35:15) So what we have is the impressions, the memories of the main narrator about that character. (00:35:22) So we are getting very close to modernism, but Machado is still grounded in the 19th century. (00:35:29) So his plots are very grounded in a (00:35:31) patriarchic, slave-owning society, and the characters reflect that society. (00:35:38) But he also, he writes quite economically, which, if I might say, is not necessarily a Brazilian trait of short books, short sentences, short chapters. (00:35:51) He's a very efficient writer. (00:35:53) Yes, that's true. (00:35:54) I mean, he's also been described as a post-modernist and I think that's something to do with the knowing nature of the way that the characters address you as if you know they've just you've just left the room and come back in and you are their dear reader. (00:36:09) Yes, that addressing of the audience is quite striking, isn't it? (00:36:13) And it's to call attention to the medium of the novel. (00:36:17) This is not reality. (00:36:18) You have to engage with this in some sort of way, because sometimes it's dear reader, sometimes it's damned reader or something like that. (00:36:28) I don't like, yeah, I don't like reader or like, don't look up that in the dictionary, don't tell Virgilia about this. (00:36:37) So there is like, yes, so what do we do with this? (00:36:42) So he's always spoken, you're like, yeah, let's, in the theater when you break the fourth wall, and it's like, yeah. (00:36:51) Now you make your own decision about the novel, about the story, about society, about what you think of the world. (00:36:59) Claire, why do you, or indeed your students, why do you find him so fresh today? (00:37:05) Well, I think he covers very juicy topics, such as universal topics about love, about parenting. (00:37:14) So sometimes I read Memorias Posimus as a kind of parenting manual, how not to be... (00:37:20) How not to. (00:37:20) How not to bring up your children. (00:37:22) Do impose discipline. (00:37:25) And then also Don Cash Muhu is a kind of marriage counselling, can be read as a kind of marriage counselling guide. (00:37:32) So it's very up to date in the topics that it's dealing with. (00:37:37) And then I very much enjoy texts where the reader has to participate. (00:37:43) Machado's novels are full of gaps and holes and clues which the reader has to put together. (00:37:50) Once we realise that the narrator is a narrator, that he's not the author, we have to deal with that sort of, that gap, the fact that there are different versions of reality being portrayed here. (00:38:04) And we also realise that the narrators have their own agenda. (00:38:10) So for example, in Donkaj Muhu, Bento is trying to prove throughout the novel that, in fact, that Kapitu is guilty. (00:38:19) And you can read it if you're on Kapitu's side, that she's innocent. (00:38:24) Just some other things that I really enjoy and my students have enjoyed, the fact that he's very entertaining. (00:38:32) The texts are full of jokes, they're full of like typographical quirks, as Viv was mentioning before. (00:38:40) There's a chapter called The Age-Old Dialogue of Adam and Eve in (00:38:45) the posthumous memoirs, which there are no words, there are ellipses and there is punctuation. (00:38:52) And you can tell from the number of question marks and exclamation marks that this is an argument between lovers. (00:39:00) Yeah, so we become part of the storytelling process and we sort of, we search for these clues and gaps and Easter eggs as well, like Easter eggs that they have in films. (00:39:11) where he makes a reference to a particular place or a quotation, which we then go and follow up and find out what extra information that adds to the story. (00:39:21) Okay, Viv, a big question for you. (00:39:24) How did Machado change Brazilian literature? (00:39:29) That is very... (00:39:30) I think he changed it forever. (00:39:32) He gave us a body of work that will go on for another hundred years, and we could still (00:39:41) He'll be writing about the short stories. (00:39:43) There's still a lot to be written about his novels. (00:39:49) And I think it's a love and hate relationship. (00:39:52) So, we have Mario Giandraggi, who was one of our greatest modernist novelists. (00:39:59) He wrote in a very avant-garde style, and he used to characterize Machado Jassiz as this classic writer, very much a Greek. (00:40:11) that wrote in the models of an European tradition. (00:40:15) But I would argue against that, especially in terms of science. (00:40:23) So, Na Claudia was talking about slavery, about the issue of race. (00:40:31) At the end of the 19th century, we have the beginning of eugenics. (00:40:36) Nina Rodriguez was writing in a similar way as Cesare Lombroso in Europe, identifying the race with criminality, certain aspects of genetic predisposition. (00:40:52) And of course, Machado Jassiz was not only Afro-descendant, but he also had a strange illness. (00:41:01) his condition, his illnesses, which was epilepsia. (00:41:06) And it was believed that it was associated with degeneracy, with the mixture of races. (00:41:16) And in a way, when Machado Dassiz wrote stories like The Alienist to Huelenista, he was trying to criticize also these new scientists. (00:41:28) Of course, in the 19th century Brazil, we don't have (00:41:31) have a big difference between the intellectual or the scientists. (00:41:35) They all kind of wrote about everything. (00:41:40) And he identified a problem with this kind of discourse of the whitening of the race. (00:41:48) And that was what happened in the beginning of the century in Brazil. (00:41:53) The whitening of Brazil was a governmental project to bring (00:41:59) European immigrants from Portugal, Spain, and Italy to create this kind of whitening of the race. (00:42:07) And this will happen at the end of the 19th century, the generation of 1870s. (00:42:13) And Machado, in one of his critical texts, which made him hated by many intellectuals like Silvio Romero, he said, This generation doesn't read Spenser and Darwin. (00:42:28) properly. (00:42:29) If you want to understand it properly, you should apply a scientific method. (00:42:34) And this is exactly what he did in his short stories. (00:42:37) He applied the scientific method to criticize what was happening in this change in society. (00:42:45) Thank you very much, Viv. (00:42:46) Anna Claudia, finally for you, what do you think Machado's appeal is today? (00:42:52) He remains (00:42:53) the lodestar of Brazilian literature. (00:42:55) Certainly among writers and scholars, he enjoys a huge reputation. (00:43:00) But Machado is not that well known by a general public outside Brazil. (00:43:06) Why do you think that's the case? (00:43:09) Well, I think... (00:43:10) It's the case is with Brazilian literature in general or literature in Portuguese language. (00:43:17) We have our big neighbor or neighbors that write in Spanish. (00:43:22) And the United States is a big market for Spanish literature. (00:43:28) But I think Machado and all the Brazilian writers like Clarice Rispecto, Jorge Amado, and Machado with the new wave of new translations are now (00:43:39) actually bringing Machado to the shop windows of libraries and to the interest of newspapers. (00:43:47) So there are more articles. (00:43:49) And for me, Machado is the type of writer that teaches how to read and how to doubt narratives, which is something very important nowadays. (00:44:01) So he teaches us basically how to be (00:44:06) not to trust the media system. (00:44:08) So he's writing novels. (00:44:10) He's writing for periodicals. (00:44:11) He's criticizing the information that is circulating in Brazilian periodicals all the time. (00:44:19) He's mocking those who actually own the newspapers, the bookshops. (00:44:24) And this is an excellent reading skill to acquire. (00:44:30) So we can read his novels for that reason, but also just for the pleasure of his prose, which is so diverse, witty, ironic. (00:44:39) And readers who enjoy Maupassin, Gogo, Jane Austen, Dickens, they are going to find something interesting in Machado and enjoy the prose by itself. (00:44:54) My thanks to Claire Williams, Anna Claudia Suriani da Silva and Viviani Carvalho da Annunciation. (00:45:02) Next week, the Delian League, how ancient Athens used and abused its alliance against Persia. (00:45:10) Thank you for listening. (00:45:12) And the In Our Time podcast gets some extra time now, with a few minutes of bonus material from Misha and his guests. (00:45:21) I still wanted to talk about Dualianista. (00:45:25) Well, talk about, now is your chance, Viv, to talk about Alianista, the alienist. (00:45:31) I think Ualianista is as important as Brascubas and as important as Don Cosmoho, and it's usually looked down. (00:45:41) He's disregarded. (00:45:42) So, why is it so important? (00:45:44) It's a short story, it's a novella, it's slightly shorter, and it's about (00:45:50) this the greatest doctor of the greatest physician in Brazil, Portugal, and of the two Spains. (00:45:59) And he's basically the Don Quixote of science who comes to, who returns from Europe to the village of Itaguayi. (00:46:07) and he wants to find the cause of madness and he dedicates himself to the study of madness. (00:46:16) He creates the greenhouse, the Casa Vergi, where he starts to... (00:46:22) to create a catalogue of illnesses and in a very absurd way, he starts to put everybody in this Casa Verdi when everybody rebels against him and nothing happens to him. (00:46:38) He continues putting people in his (00:46:43) mental asylum. (00:46:44) At the end of the story, he realizes there is no mad person in Antaguay. (00:46:50) I am the only mad person. (00:46:52) And then he locks himself up and dies alone. (00:46:56) And it's one of Machado's critique to the new vision of Brazil, of this intellectuality, which is replacing religion by science, (00:47:11) positivism, creating a new society, but reproducing the same mistakes, reproducing the same social relationships, the same structure. (00:47:24) So it seems to me that one of the real strengths of his work is that those things which he critiques (00:47:34) aspects of Brazilian society, the elite, the way the elite ignores the mass of other Brazilians, primarily Afro-Brazilians, the inequality, the entitlement. (00:47:49) These are phenomena which, when you go to Brazil today, they're all still there. (00:47:54) They're all visible. (00:47:55) Machado was writing about Brazil 100 years ago, but he's also writing about Brazil today. (00:48:00) Is that a fair enough comment? (00:48:03) And I think that he captures that zeitgeist of Brazil, but he also captures our way of dealing with things, which is sometimes we joke, we make, we are very much about not dealing with things directly. (00:48:25) We kind of (00:48:27) It's weird, we gossip about it, and then we move on. (00:48:31) And he's initially seen as a romantic author with a capital R, and then he becomes what's described as a realist author. (00:48:43) But what does realism mean within the Brazilian context? (00:48:48) It's very strange that a dead author is the father of realism in Brazil, and that shows a lot about us, as Brazilians. (00:48:58) Well, we are realists, but yeah, that was before the Latin American magic realism. (00:49:05) And in a way, this way of dealing with things in a very oblique way. (00:49:12) Oblique way, exactly, that's right. (00:49:14) The great British researcher into Mashad de Sij (00:49:17) John Gladson wrote a book about the deceptive realism of Don Cash Muhu. (00:49:22) And that's what it is. (00:49:24) It's skewed, it's oblique, it's realism with joy, with moments of shade and shock. (00:49:33) And I was thinking that the films of Clebre Mendon Safilho, who's a contemporary filmmaker, may have something, may be sort of a like 21st century reinvention of this idea of presenting (00:49:46) a realist version of urban Brazil, but with little pockets of magical realism. (00:49:53) So shadows of little Afro-Brazilian boys running across the screen, or there's a famous scene in his film, neighboring Sounds, with suddenly a fountain of blood, which there are lots of allusions to the slave owning past. (00:50:10) And he writes films about (00:50:13) landowners in contemporary Brazil. (00:50:17) Yeah, in the northeast of the country where this reality is much more present than in Rio or Sao Paulo. (00:50:24) So it seems there was a, I mean, what happens in the 1930s in Brazil is that you start to get the creation of the myth of Brazil being a non-racial society. (00:50:37) where everyone, it doesn't matter what you're born, you have the same equal opportunities. (00:50:43) But that, of course, doesn't reflect the economic reality in Brazil. (00:50:48) But tell me, Machado was, as you pointed out, Viv, he was writing at a time where there was this huge campaign to whiten Brazilian society. (00:50:58) Who was driving that amongst the elites? (00:51:01) Why did they want to whiten Brazilian society? (00:51:03) I think that it was more towards the 20th century. (00:51:08) In the 1870s, it was the beginning of this wave of new ideas that arrived in the country from Europe, and eugenics was one of them. (00:51:22) And one of the explanations why Brazil was underdeveloped (00:51:28) was behind Europe was because we were mostly a mixed race, a black nation or an Afro-Brazilian race. (00:51:39) And that was because of Jaimondo Ninhas Rodriguez's work on the Brazilian criminal, for example. (00:51:47) He would analyze criminals and Brazil as being predisposed to that. (00:51:54) And that was the Republican government. (00:51:57) Well, we need to make sure that Brazil is not going to make this mistake again. (00:52:05) So they were associating modernity with (00:52:09) whiteness and Europeanness. (00:52:12) I have to say that attitude towards criminality and Afro-Brazilian persists to this day in Brazil, sadly. (00:52:24) So, and in terms of the literature, after Machado, Brazilian literature must have gained quite a deal of self-confidence (00:52:34) because of his work, and he becomes recognized as the sort of this towering figure fairly early on in Brazil. (00:52:43) Would you see people like Jorge Armado, who's writing a little later, or later on Clarice Lispecto, these are also great, great figures of Brazilian literature. (00:52:54) Do they all admit a debt to Machado? (00:52:59) I think not directly, but you can certainly Lima Bahieto, for example, an author that has quite a great deal of humor, of a critical voice. (00:53:12) Mario Giandraggi, for example, he criticized Machado Giassiz, but if you analyze it, if you read his first novels, it's very much psychological analysis that are present in Machado from the beginning of his (00:53:29) work, when he was a romantic, his greatest difference between him and Jose de Alencard was the psychological analysis of these female characters. (00:53:43) Okay, final question before we get our tea and coffee, much deserved. (00:53:49) What would you recommend to readers who don't know Machado Giassis? (00:53:55) What should you read first? (00:53:56) Claire? (00:53:58) I love Don Kazmuhu. (00:54:00) I mean, I really love the character of Kapitu and I always hope that I'm going to spot a clue every time I read it that's going to prove that she was innocent. (00:54:11) I will go for The Aliens. (00:54:14) There is a good translation now and I think it is (00:54:18) It's short, you can read over the weekend and it's massively entertaining and extremely relevant for our society. (00:54:28) Anna Claudia? (00:54:29) Since I cannot choose Don Casmurro, I'm not going to repeat it. (00:54:34) I would say Father Against Mother, and another short story in which the main character is a woman, are chapped on hats. (00:54:43) They all have been translated into English. (00:54:46) So you can see the both sides of Machado. (00:54:49) You can also learn a lot about Rio de Janeiro, social life. (00:54:54) in the old town of Rio de Janeiro, who dovido consumer habits in Rio de Janeiro with chapter on head. (00:55:01) Rio's already the capital at this point. (00:55:04) Yes. (00:55:05) So no longer Salvador. (00:55:08) And if you get the chance to go to Rio, you should visit the Cafe Colombo, which is where Machado used to hang out with, and it's a wonderful 19th century cafe, still open today with (00:55:23) beautiful dark panelled walls and wall-length mirrors. (00:55:29) Very glittery. (00:55:30) Yes, it is. (00:55:31) It is, you have to queue. (00:55:33) And you should also visit the Cafe Capitou, which is in Cosmi Velhu, up the hill, where you can purchase a Penna da Gallioffa, the Pen of Mirthful Merriment, (00:55:45) filled with the ink of melancholy, which is what Machado says, what Brash says he's writing his story with. (00:55:55) Well, on that point... (00:55:57) Would you like tea or coffee? (00:55:58) Tea, please. (00:56:00) Tea, please. (00:56:00) Tea. (00:56:00) Tea. (00:56:00) For tea. (00:56:01) Thank you very much. (00:56:04) In Our Time with Misha Glenny is produced by Simon Tillotson, and it's a BBC Studios production. (00:56:11) I'm Jamie Bartlett and for BBC Radio 4, I'll be looking at how fakery took over the world. (00:56:18) No, hang on, hang on, sorry. (00:56:20) You're not Jamie Bartlett, I'm Jamie Bartlett. (00:56:23) Oh, really? (00:56:24) Well, who am I then? (00:56:25) I'm afraid you're not real pal. (00:56:27) You're just an imitation chatbot I created to help me make this series on modern fakery and why it's everywhere. (00:56:34) Sounds good. (00:56:35) What's going to be in it? (00:56:36) Well, there's a lot. (00:56:37) 1980s professional wrestling, dodgy academics. (00:56:41) AI psychosis, covid vaccines, sceptics, what's it called? (00:56:46) Everything is fake and nobody cares with me, Jamie Bartlett. (00:56:50) And me, Jimmy Botlett. (00:56:52) Listen first on BBC Sounds. (00:56:59) I'm Simon Jack. (00:57:00) I'm Zing Singh. (00:57:01) And on Good Bad Billionaire, we're exploring the life and fortune of music megastar Sir Paul McCartney. (00:57:07) Macca. (00:57:08) As one of the primary songwriters in the Beatles, and with an extensive solo career, his work generates vast and continuous royalty streams. (00:57:16) But were song royalties alone enough to break the billion? (00:57:19) And earn him the title of the first British billionaire rock star? (00:57:23) Find out in Good Bad Billionaire from the BBC World Service. (00:57:26) Listen now, search for Good Bad Billionaire wherever you get your BBC podcast.