The Importance of Schopenhauer

When Brás Cubas was released, first in installments (1880), and then in book form (1881), the reaction from its readers was either coldness or perplexity. In 1883, Araripe Júnior alluded to Machado’s novel as “the most whimsical book of those published in the Portuguese language.” Brás Cubas was then viewed as the odd one out, the offbeat fiction, the outlandish novel. Novel? “Is The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas a novel?” wonders Capistrano de Abreu. This question was, indeed, quite pertinent. After all, at the time, there was no parallel to Brás Cubas in the Portuguese language to help define it in terms of literary form or genre – the only exception, or the closest model, was perhaps the 1846 novel Viagens na minha terra (Travels in My Homeland) by the Portuguese writer Almeida Garrett. Therefore, the puzzlement that Brás Cubas caused in its first readers is quite understandable.

But, what was considered so odd about Brás Cubas? Basically, everything. However, we need to put this everything into context. So, let’s recap. We’ve already examined – albeit rather schematically – the cultural conditions of colonial Brazil. We’ve discussed the changes brought by the Portuguese royal family when Prince Regent D. João transferred the court from Portugal to Brazil in 1808. We’ve also mentioned the “French Mission” of 1816, when a group of French artists, who were invited and sponsored by D. João, moved to Brazil with the aim of modernizing the country by spreading French ideas and culture. As a matter of fact, the French Mission’s contribution to Brazilian culture was invaluable.

One general effect of this contribution lay in the fact that Brazil became openly Francophile, culturally speaking, during the nineteenth century. French became the second language of every educated Brazilian. French was the first foreign language Machado learned and the one in which he was most proficient. Machado, too, was Francophile. But, different from most of his peers, he widened his scope by reading and studying authors from other cultures, particularly Britain and America: Shakespeare, above all, but also Poe, Swift, and Sterne, as we’ve discussed in previous chapters. Regardless of languages and cultures, Machado was a friend of the classics: ancient Greeks, Dante, Camões, Cervantes, Goethe … This made him one of the few Brazilian intellectuals of his generation whose cultural background wasn’t founded almost exclusively upon French culture.