Machado de Assis vs. Brás Cubas: The narrative situation of «Memórias póstumas de Brás Cubas»

Sandra Messinger Cypess

Joaquim María Machado de Assis, considered possibly the first in the «Western hemisphere to experiment with the structure of the novel in a significant manner»¹, can also be considered a master in exploring different narrative methods. His fiction reflects his great understanding of the relationship between point of view and the theme of the work, that is, the dynamics of the method and the message.

This judgment is substantiated by a careful analysis of Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cuba (1880)², the first work in which Machado changed the narrative situation he had successfully used in his previous four novels. In MPBC, Machado creates a first-person narrator to whom he has given full responsibility for the contents of the story, which consists of the narrator's memoirs. Autobiographical narration was a popular form of nineteenth century fiction; yet Machado, in a way which I believe foreshadows Jorge, Luis Borges and his approach to biography, accepts this tradition only to mock its attempt to create verisimilitude and be a faithful mirror of life.

It is through an analysis of narrative method that one may best surmount the interpretive obstacles put forth by the narrative «I», evaluate the rhetorical devices manipulated by the author, and finally, gain entrance into the realm of authorial or deep textual meaning. By undertaking this detailed examination of the narrative method of MPBC, beginning with the characteristics of the narrator, I shall prove that Brás Cubas is a first-person narrator whose opinions and beliefs do not reflect the values of Machado de Assis. Rather, Machado has carefully disassociated himself from his narrator by means of specific rhetorical devices: his use of irony in addition to the physical, temporal and spatial distances he posits between Brás and the reader as well as between Brás and Machado as an historical personage. This essay will demonstrate that in MPBC there are actually two points of view presented, one being that of the created character, the other that of the creator, Machado de Assis. First, however, it is essential to describe the basic narrative situations used by Machado in his novelistic works.

Based on their narrative method, Machado's nine novels can be divided into two main categories: those told in the author's own voice and those which are related by a created character. Four works, starting with MPBC and including his last novel, Memorial de Aires, published in the year of his death (1908), present a created character who is a dramatized fictive «I» aware of his role as narrator of a written work. They are, in the terminology of Wayne Booth, self-conscious narrators³. These characters and the works they narrate -MPBC, Dom Casmurro, Esaú and Jacó and Memorial de Aires- belong to what has been called the «nova fase da carreira de Machado de Assis»⁴. In regard to the narrative situation, these four do constitute a distinct change from Machado's previous novels. The significance of this decisive change in narrative method needs to be explored fully in order to understand the problematic aspects of point of view in MPBC.

Analysis of the narrative method of Machado's Ressurreição (1872), A Mão e a Luva (1874), Helena (1876), and Iaiá Garcia (1878), and Quincas Borba (1891) reveals that in these works Machado enters the text as an omniscient and visible authorial presence with his point of view as author dominating the material. This type of narrative method has been called «editorial omniscience» by Norman Friedman⁵, a term which appears to be equivalent to Franz Stanzel's description of the «authorial situation»⁶. Scholes and Kellogg have traced this narrative method from its ancient roots to its more definitive form initiated by Cervantes and refined by Fielding⁷. According to Scholes and Kellogg the three roles which function within this narrative voice include the histor, who is the reliable investigator of facts and commentator of the actions he relates, the bard, who reveals the unspoken thoughts of his character, and the maker, who admits that he is the creator of the fictional world. Machado's early work can be added to this tradition. Beginning with Ressurreição, Machado addresses the reader with this voice of threefold functions, acting as an attentive guide, glossing over what is not germane, presenting the inner' most thoughts of the characters and quite often helping us to interpret their actions correctly. All aspects of this narrative method are succinctly demonstrated in the following passage from A Mão e a Luva in which Machado presents for the reader an expose of the different kinds of love offered by the three men who pursue Guiomar:

Guiomar, entretanto, erguera-se o chegara ao grupo da madrinha. Jorge fitou-a com uma expressão de vaidade e cobiça. Luís Alves, que se achava de pé, recuou um pouco para deixá-la passar. Os olhos com que a contemplou não eram de cobiça nem de vaidade; a leitora, que ainda lembrará de confissão por êle mesmo feita a Estêvão, suporá talvez que eram de amor. Talvez, -quem sabe?- amor um pouco sossegado, não louco e cego como o de Estêvão, não pueril e lascivo, como o de Jorge, um meio-têrmo entre um e outro, -como podia havé-lo no coração de um ambicioso8.

As bard, Machado sees and knows more than the individual characters and is able to relay what he knows to the reader. As the maker of the fiction, he has authority over his characters as well as the superior vantage point from which to judge them. Yet, he does not always profess transcendent omniscience, but leaves unanswered select, unverifiable questions (the «Talvez, -quem sabe?» of the above quote), as befits his investigative role as histor.

Machado presents not only the self-deceptions of his characters, but he also extends his bard-like omniscience into the mind of the reader and divines the reader's thoughts. For example, in Quincas Borba, Machado successfully maneuvers both Rubião and the reader to the conclusion that Sofia must have gone to meet Carlos Maria in an illicit love tryst. However, this judgment is abruptly dispelled when Machado chastises the reader for jumping to a hasty and false conclusion. He guesses that

o leitor, desorientado, não pode combinar as tristezas de Sofia com a anedota do cocheiro. E pergunta confuso: -Então a entrevista da Rua da Hormonia, Sofia, Carlos Maria, êsse chocalho de rimas sonoras e delinqûentes é tudo calúnia? Calúnia do leitor e do Rubião, não do pobre cocheiro, que não proferiu nomes, não chegou sequer a contar uma anedota verdadeira. E o que terias visto, se lesses com pausa9.

Machado, by cautioning the reader not to be hasty in judgment, to scrutinize carefully all the evidence in the narrative before reaching a final interpretation, and to read slowly, «com pausa», encourages the reader to take a critical stance rather than an accepting attitude. This advice becomes even more relevant for readers of those narratives in which Machado removes himself as the authorial presence and instead creates a self-conscious Active «I» to perform the narrative function.

When the reader enters into the fictive worlds of MPBC, Dom Casmurro, Esaú e Jacó or Memorial de Aires, it would appear that the same Machadian voice of the previous novels greets him once again. This conclusion results from the reader's introduction to the work by one major figure who characterizes himself as the writer and addresses the reader, claiming responsibility for the creation of the material. However, because the narrative «I» retains some of the characteristics of the tripartite features of the authorial presence in the earlier novels, a considerable number of critics and readers continue to identify the fictive «I» of MPBC, Dom Casmurro, and Memorial de Aires with Machado de Assis the implied author¹⁰. The Brazilian critic Mario Matos provides us with a good example of a common misreading. The title of his study shows that he accepts this identification: Machado de Assis: O homem e a Obra: Os Personagens Explicam o Autor¹¹. Matos assumes that whenever Brás Cubas refers to the manner in which the book is written, it is Machado himself addressing the reader. Eugenio Gomes also follows this trend; from his early work of 1958 to his more recent Enigma de Capitú of 1967, he insists on calling the various narrators the alter egos of Machado de Assis¹². Augusto Meyer, although perspicacious in much of his criticism, nevertheless also believes that Brás Cubas is a mask behind which Machado hides in order to express his true feelings¹³.

For these critics there is no distinction between Machado and his created narrators, just as there was no difference for many readers between Gulliver and Jonathan Swift, or Marcel in A la recherche du temps perdu and Proust. Indeed, if one perceives no distinctions between these different narrative situations, then the «I» of these narratives could easily be identified as a reference to Machado.

The Brazilian critics are especially eager to find the figure of Machado in his narrators for a most particular reason. Despite the many volumes of writing Machado de Assis produced, he did not leave a personal record of his private life, a fact which has led to unbridled speculations, resulting in critical distortions concerning the influence of his personal life on his artistic creations. Salient examples of this type of criticism can be found in articles by Expedito Teles and Hélcio Pereira da Silva's Machado de Assis: A Megalomania¹⁴. Pereira da Silva, for example, believes that the megalomania from which Brás Cubas suffers is a mere reflection of Assis' own sick condition.

The identification of a first-person narrative as an autobiographical statement is a not uncommon view of long-standing duration, as Stanzel points out in his discussion of this narrative convention¹⁵. A corollary of this previous idea is another assumption widely attributed to the first-person narrator and relates to the whole problem of credibility. Many literary theoreticians substantiate the idea that a narrative «I» is often chosen as a means to confer an impression of authenticity and verisimilitude to the contents of the narration. Kayser notes that «Ya en la antigüedad se procuró acreditar de este modo historias verdaderamente fantásticas y maravillosos relatos de viajes»¹⁶. Despite the fact that these two attributes -the autobiographical aspect and the authenticity of the narrator's statements- cannot be applied to all of his novels equally, they have nevertheless wrongly been the two guiding critical principles in much of Machadian criticism, whether the work be Ressurreição or MPBC, whether the narrative situation be an authorial presence or a created fictive «I». By analyzing carefully the narrative method of MPBC, I propose to show that Machado, in full knowledge of the conventions of first-person fiction, mocked their traditional use and turned them back upon the reader, forcing the critical reader to question rather than to accept, to doubt rather than to believe the face value of the narrative. The face -the mask- of the narrator turns out to hide not Machado the author-maker, but a representative of the philosophy of nothingness and self-love. Thus, Machado de Assis does not stand with his created character, but remains off in the distance, in back of the reader, where we discovered him by studying the quote from Quincas Borba on p. 357.

In reading MPBC, one should immediately observe that the figure of Machado de Assis as author is absent from the work's inception: the dedication and the prefatory word to the reader are attributed to the pen of Brás Cubas himself. Significantly the novel starts, not with Chapter One, but with the dedicatory phrase, which was unfortunately omitted in William Grossman's English translation¹⁷. The phrase announces that the narrator-author is dead: Brás dedicates the memoir's «ao verme que primeiro roeu as frias carnes do meu cadáver». This method of direct address is continued as Brás Cubas turns from the worm to the potential reader of his memoirs in «Ao leitor». These two brief paragraphs emphasize Brás Cubas' concern with the whole process of the narrative act per se, a topic he will continue in the memoirs proper. Because this preface discusses problems that would normally fall within the domain of the maker of the written work, as opposed to the story's protagonist, it is easy to understand why readers have mistakenly assumed that it is Machado masked as Brás Cubas who is writing, especially since the author of the preface refers to other well-known and historically verifiable writers -Stendhal, Laurence Sterne, Xavier de Maistre- and compares himself as a writer to these men: «trata-se, na verdade, de uma obra difusa, na qual, eu, Brás Cubas, se adotei a forma livre de um Sterne, ou de um Xavier de Maistre...» (p. 23).

Why should one interpret this phrase as a reference to Machado de Assis, as if he were the true narrative voice confessing here his preoccupations with the reading audience and its critical judgment of his work? A careful reading of the work reveals there is no need for recourse to the figure of Machado, since once we enter into the narrative proper we see that Brás' concern for narrative method is continued throughout the work. He does not change his narrative characteristics but is consistent in his self-presentation as a narrator-protagonist with a dual objective: to describe the past as he remembers it and to comment on these events from his present perspective. His critical comments upon his technique conform to his internal logic as a character. Brás fits the pattern of a fully dramatized self-conscious narrator as described by Wayne Booth, for he is aware of his role as narrator of a written work and directs his attention both to the material he is writing and to the reading audience, as we see in this one example: «Justaniente, nesse instante, apareceu na chácara o Lôbo Neves. Não tremas assim, leitora pálida; decansa, que não hei de rubricar esta lauda com um pingo de sangue» (pp. 109-110). Mario Matos' reaction to Brás as commentator is typical: «Em todo o transcurso da leitura, estamos em presença do autor, ora de modo latente, ora em pessoa. Porque Brás Cubas, ao transmitir impressões, apresenta personalidade dupla: diz os fatos e comenta-os. Os comentarios são de Machado, a gente percebe visivelmente que são de Machado»¹⁸. Although Matos sees the dual functions inherent in this narrative method, he assumes that it must be the authorial presence (i. e. Machado himself) who makes the comments about the narrative process. This type of reading assumes that Machado has continued to employ the narrative method of his previous works, in which the commentary did indeed emanate from the authorial presence whose existence was posited outside the novelistic world. Brás Cubas, however, is both a character of the fictional world and the figure who has taken on the role of narrator of his own deeds. Consequently, there is no need to destroy the fictional world by attributing the remarks to Machado as the intrusive author. Indeed, in contrast to some of Machado's other novels, there is no reference to the man Machado de Assis within MPBC.

Although I have proven that the narrative situation of MPBC does not involve the authorial presence of Machado, it is still necessary to determine whether Brás Cubas has been conceived as the spokesman for his creator. Is he, in fact, «el doble o Doppelgänger de Machado de Assis?»¹⁹. If this were true, we would bo able to read the work in a straightforward, accepting manner, as a reader often expects to do when introduced to a narrative «I».

In literary tradition, the presence of a narrative «I» has generally been used to enlist the reader's sympathy for the character and to lend greater verisimilitude to the fictive world. In turn, the reader's acceptance of the fictive world is greatly facilitated. Machado, whether consciously or unconsciously, can be credited with making use of these conventions when, in his first attempt at nonauthorial presentation, he cast MPBC in the form of a first-person narrative.

Brás Cubas is given the authority for the whole story. Since it is his life, he alone is in a position to have either experienced, witnessed or been told the events described. Machado was careful to have his fictive «I» conform to the convention of plausibility in fiction. Brás Cubas always justifies his knowledge and lets the reader know his sources of information. Thus, in recounting the details of his birth and infancy, Brás informs the reader: «Digo essas cousas por alto, segundo as ouvi narrar anos depois; ignoro a mor parte dos pormenores daquele famoso dia... Item, não posso dizer nada do meu batizado, porque nada me referiram a tal respeito, a não ser que foi uma das mais galhardas destas do ano seguinte, 1806...» (p. 40). All of these factors create the illusion that this narrative «I» is a credible character, and the reader's impression is that Brás Cubas is a believable character in fiction, almost as forceful and memorable as Don Quijote, more like the pícaro Gil Blas with whom he shares so much in common²⁰. Nevertheless, as credible as Brás Cubas may seem as a fictional character, in his role as narrator he is not to be believed. The consistent and insistent use of irony and humor as well as the great physical, temporal and spatial distances created between Brás Cubas and the reader serve as the two major devices whereby the implied author indicates to the reader that Brás Cubas is an unreliable narrator. For Machado artfully discredits the careful picture Brás has constructed of himself as a sincere and superior narrator, one to be trusted and accepted. If we examine step by step the various elements of the novel's narrative method, starting with the characteristics of the narrator, we shall soon overcome Brás' attempts to intimidate his leader into accepting his beliefs and finally judge him according to the values that the implied author prefers to accentuate.

Although the use of a narrative «I» works to reduce the distance between the reader and the narrator, and may imply a reduction in distance between the narrator and the implied author, Machado has characterized Brás in such a way as to encourage a distinction between himself and Brás Cubas and between Brás Cubas and the reader.

On an obvious surface level Machado posits a distinction between himself as implied author and Brás Cubas by having Brás describe himself as a dead narrator whose consciousness has continued despite his death. Just as Brás' characterization as a self-conscious narrator began with the dedication of the novel, so, too, do the references to his dead state. Furthermore, his commentary as a narrator stresses his dead state and emphasizes that this characteristic is intrinsic to his narrating self and determines the narrative perspective from which he writes. For example, Brás first calls his work «obra de finado» and clarifies this further in Chapter One: he introduces himself as «um defunto autor para quem a campa foi outro berço» (p. 25). That is, he did not begin to write until after his voyage to the Other World beyond the grave. Lest we think otherwise, Brás clearly differentiates himself from the conventional author of posthumous memoirs, whose work was written before death but published after being found by a third party. This is the most common situation, as exemplified by Marivaux's La vie de Marianne or Cela's La familia de Pascual Duarte.

As readers, how are we to accept this supernatural characteristic of the narrator who has authority for the fictional world we are about to enter, and whose consciousness is the interpretive medium for all that we read? Do we ignore this aspect of the narrator, consider it merely a trick by Machado to test our gullibility? Is it a device to spark our curiosity, only to be discarded within the work itself?²¹ On the contrary, never in the course of the entire narrative does Brás Cubas deny or ignore the distinction between his former living, acting self versus his present dead, narrating self. On this difference between the living and the dead, he also posits the dichotomy which exists between the reader and himself, as can be seen clearly in the chapter «O senão do livro» (ch. 71). Dirce Riedel also points out that this chapter «é mais um comentário sôbre o tempo dos vivos e o dos mortos, o piano do leitor que ama a ação, e o do narrador que se detém a refletir»²².

The alienation and tension that is typical of the autobiographical form of narration popular in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are more greatly marked in MPBC. By comparing Machado's technique to the narrative methods of Laurence Sterne, an important predecessor of Machado (see note 1) and Charles Dickens, a contemporary, we can appreciate the significant changes that the Brazilian instituted. In changing from actor to author, Pip of Dickens' Great Expectations undergoes a maturing process which brings him closer to the attributes valued by society: forgiveness, gratitude, self-awareness. Pip's motivation for writing is to discover the significance of his past and to make himself intelligible to himself and others; as he writes he reveals his maturity. Brás, on the other hand, is another kind of writer. He is not seeking to find himself and change his ways to become a better human being -the book of life has already closed for him. Instead of living new chapters, he is writing up all the old lived ones at a physical distance from his former acting self as well as at a temporal and spatial distance (i. e., in the World beyond, «essa outra margem».)

Sterne's Tristram Shandy emphasizes his identification with the reader's temporality when he discusses his battle with narrative time versus narrated time. Unlike Tristram and the reader, however, Brás Cubas is no longer afraid that his time will run out; he is writing from beyond the grave and so has all eternity in which to record his reflections; the only action possible during his narrative time consists of the process of narration. Brás explains his motivation for writing in relation to temporality -his decision to write his memoirs is based on his need for distraction, for he is bored (pp. 118-119). Brás' boredom and isolation are eternal and involuntary now, for he exists in «essa outra margem» and writes «do fundo de meu sepulcro».

As a figure of deathly solitude, Brás Cubas distances himself not only from his past but from the reader as well, physically and mentally. He cleverly attempts to use these differences from the reader to his own advantage. If we agree that «the basic convention of first-person fiction is necessarily a confidence in the narrator»²³, we see that Brás exploits the reader's confidence in the fictive «I» despite his supernatural state. He does not consider it a disadvantage which would alienate us from his story; rather, he affirms that in his role as a dead author, he can be trusted far more than any living author. His professed attitude is neither to dissimulate nor to distort any information, no matter how ridiculous it makes his former acting self appear, an idea he reiterates throughout the memoirs and uses as the theme for chapter twenty-four (pp. 65-66). Brás not only insists upon his reliability because of his dead state, but as we have already seen earlier, goes one step further, exaggerating his claims for the frankness of the dead as opposed to the deceit of the living. He claims that «a franqueza é a primeira virtude de um defunto» (p. 66). His supernatural stance is not meant to encourage an easy identification between himself and the reader because Brás considers himself superior to the reader. Yet, at the same time he vaunts his supposed superiority and prides himself on his open and complete frankness, he has also subtly indicated that he will not always report everything as it happened.

This idea of hiding things, as with his characterization as a self-conscious dead narrator, is initiated in the preface. Brás immediately calls attention to a problem the reader has no doubt pondered, too. For despite our suspension of disbelief as we enter the fictive world mediated by a supernatural narrator, we might still wonder how the author attempts to explain this process. Brás anticipates this question: «evito contar o processo extraórdinário que empreguei na composição destas Memórias, trabalhadas cá no outro mundo. Seria curioso, mas nímiamente extenso, e aliás desnecessário ao entendimento da obra» (p. 23). Thus, Brás says it is for the reader's sake, whose favor he wants, that he has dismissed the whole question of the technical process of narration from the Other World. There is a method, he assures us, but it has been left to the reader's imagination. This is an excellent device to extricate the maker from a difficult situation, and at the same time, encourage overtly the reader's participation in the narrative process. The open solicitation of the reader's involvement in the work of fiction is more a contemporary critical preoccupation and one for which the reader should be prepared. Although Brás does warn his reader of his necessity to involve himself actively in the process of narration, many readers are unprepared for such a role, and, as we shall see further on, fail to accomplish this aspect of the reading process. Furthermore, Brás also warns the reader of another aspect of his narrative technique. In omitting the extraordinary process of narration, Brás works on the principle that the knowledge of process is not necessary for an understanding of the work. We should infer, therefore, that Brás as narrator may leave out of his story what he considers unnecessary for us to know. The reader has been put on guard again. The reader is encouraged subtly to judge not only what is being overtly expressed, but also, what might be concealed. The repercussions of this concept in relation to the credibility of Brás Cubas as narrator cannot be ignored. It can be taken as a cue from Machado de Assis, the implied author.

On one hand Brás says we must believe all that he writes, for it is his intention to tell the truth about his past. On the other hand, he lets it slip that he omits what he judges to be «desnecessário ao entendimento da obra». Brás refers to this point quickly and without due emphasis, for it appears to contradict his clearly stated and accentuated intention that he will be completely frank. This disparity between two stated intentions -one emphasized, the other glossed over, serves as one of the decisive direct clues from the implied author that the reliability of Brás as narrator should be questioned.

If we accept, as truth all that Brás Cubas says because his stated intention is that «agora, porém, que estou cá do outro lado da vida, posso confessar tudo...» (p. 27), then we fall into the error of the intentional fallacy, that is, of believing that the author's accomplishments correspond to his stated intentions. Most readers have accepted the memoirs as a faithful mirror of Brás, «o que foi e o que deixou de ser». What is this picture that we are presented with, what kind of man do we get to know? Again, (for some readers,) Brás incarnates «a futilidade mesquinha do homem (niilismo)»²⁴. Most critical articles censure Brás for being such a pessimistic, cynical man, who appears to be proud of his negative philosophy. By following the intentional fallacy, these critics credit Brás with successfully expressing and encouraging his nihilistic view of life. When Machado, in turn, is also censured for writing such an antagonistic work, this verdict mistakenly attributes to the implied author what belongs only to the surface level narrated by the fictive «I».

At the time of his death, Brás Cubas is a solitary man, still searching for the fame and glory which has always eluded him. In almost every endeavor, from marriage and fatherhood to politics and poetry, he has been unsuccessful in fulfilling his aspirations. The memoirs chronicle faithfully his attempts at success as well as his constant failures. Thus, Brás, who never achieved his goals during his lifetime, tells the reader that it was only after his death that he realized he was a small winner after all: «ao chegar a este outro lado do mistério, achei-me com un pequeno saldo, que é a derradeira negativa d'êste capítulo de negativas: não tive filhos, não transmiti a nenhuma criatura o legado da nossa miséria» (p. 199). Doesn't it seem as if Brás is disdaining what he has never achieved? For, it should be noted, that only in this last line of his memoirs does Brás give the idea of his childlessness a positive connotation. All previous times he considered his lack of children to be a negative factor (chs. 86, 90, 106, 120). For example, when his mistress Virgilia became pregnant, Brás was sure he was the father and was thrilled with the idea: «Um filho! Um ser tirado do meu ser! Esta era minha preocupação exclusiva d'aquêle tempo» (p. 140). When Brás finally expresses his pleasure about not having children it is a statement made by one who is no longer part of the life cycle, who comforts himself in his death by saying he has no real ties with the world of the living, its frustrations and tribulations. This statement by Brás has been accepted as the philosophy of Machado de Assis as well. Some critics have oven referred to Machado's own life and lack of children to substantiate their theory that Brás Cubas reflects the judgments of Machado de Assis²⁵. It is true that Machado and his wife did not have any children. But to consider incidental similarities in the lives of Brás Cubas and Machado de Assis as proof that Brás speaks for Machado is to fall once again into the trap of expecting the first person narrator to be identical with the implied author, in this case Machado de Assis.

If one feels the need to venture forth beyond the confines of this narrative to substantiate the relationship between Brás Cubas and his creator it should not be to the life of Machado de Assis, but to his other works of fiction. For the novel Machado published following MPBC -Quincas Borba- is closely connected to it by the sharing of some characters (most notably, Brás Cubas and his friend Quincas Borba), and by explicit reference to it in the novel itself (ch. 4). However, as I stated above (p. 7), contrary to MPBC, the narrative situation of Quincas Borba reverts once again to authorial presentation, the method Machado had employed before MPBC. His experimentation with narrative situation that we find in MPBC was not well-received nor understood by the critics of his day, which may be one reason for his return to the more familiar narrative method of authorial omniscience; Machado knew his audience well and Quincas Borba was not misunderstood and was immediately praised²⁶. Thus, when the authorial presence of Quincas Borba claims that he is also the author of MPBC, this statement could be used in analyzing the narrative situation of MPBC. Does it prove that Brás Cubas and Machado de Assis are one and the same? It should be pointed out that Machado is not saying that he is Brás Cubas, but rather that he is the author of MPBC. This, of course, one cannot deny; Machado de Assis is the implied author of MPBC, he is the creator of Brás Cubas, his narrative «I» of the fictive memoirs. It would seem, then, by pointing out his authorship of MPBC Machado is also making clear that he is not to be confused with his fictive character. No one takes him to be Quincas Borba, for example. Furthermore, to return to MPBC, in the preface to the fourth edition, Machado once again makes explicit that although the defunto Brás Cubas «se pintou a sí e a outros» Machado is the supreme maker of them all, the controlling mind of the fictive world whose message, then, needs to be discovered.

In MPBC, there is no need to go beyond the limits of the novel to determine Machado's perspective, and judgments. There is substantial internal evidence to prove that Machado as implied author does not expect the reader to accept the pessimistic philosophy of Brás Cubas as the only philosophy of life, as the only message of the work.

From the very beginning of Brás' narrative Machado the implied author envelopes Brás in an ironic cloak which slowly becomes visible to the critical reader. A good example of this pointed irony is found in the description of Brás' death, which is narrated at the onset of the memoirs. Brás tells us that he died of pneumonia caught while he was preoccupied with the invention that was to bring him the glory and the fame he so long desired. Yet what was the idea? «era nada menos que a invencão de um medicamento sublime, un emplasto anti-hipocondríaca, destinado a aliviar a nossa melancólica Humanidade» (p. 27). As absurd as this invention may seem, his involvement with its plans caused his death. We can infer that he died in the pursuit of ego satisfaction, for he equates the idea of the «plaster», «o emplasto Brás Cubas», with the selfish «love of glory»; «sêde de nomeada» or «amor da glória» (p. 27). Although the reader may think his attempted invention a joke, Brás took himself quite seriously -after all, he died as a result of his preoccupation with it. His death as a result of his pursuit of ego-satisfaction is not an extraneous element in his autobiography. As we proceed to witness other scenes of his past life, it becomes apparent that there is one common theme to them all: Brás' interest in his own ego at the expense of others. Brás incarnates the principle of self-love and the harmful effects such a principle has on the life of humankind.

In incident after incident Brás reveals that he had been primarily motivated by the concept of self-love. Satisfaction of his own ego functioned as both the stimulus for his actions and his primary goal. As Brás describes his childhood in the chapter significantly entitled, «o menino é pai do homen» (ch. 11), it becomes evident that Brás' father brought him up to think only of his self-importance, and at the same time to act in society so as to secure the good opinion of others. As a child Brás describes himself to be «opiniático, egoísta e algo contemptor dos homens» (p. 41) and the incidents he includes bear out his descriptions of himself. His statement that «the child is father to the man» is a clue that we should compare his adulthood to his childhood. Although Brás leaves out the negative self-appraisal of his acts as an adult, the types of incidents he includes demonstrate that he continued to be opinionated, selfish and contemptuous of others. It is left to the reader to make the final judgment based on the examples included.

Let us return again to the final statement by Brás, that his childlessness made him a small winner. Nevertheless, at various intervals throughout his affair with Virgilia, he had desired a child. When Virgilia became pregnant Brás was sure the child was his and was thrilled with the idea. Soon, however, the idea of having a child changes from proof of his love for Virgilia to a mere glorification of his ego: «Meu filho! E repetia estas duas palavras com certa voluptuosidade indefinível, e não sei que assomos do orgullo» (p. 140), He replaced the force of love with that of self-love. It is significant that Virgilia suffers a miscarriage, aborting Brás' opportunity to become a father, to engender, perhaps as his father did, another manifestation of egocentricity.

For in the life of Brás Cubas, the contest between the forces of love and the ego was won by the ego. Brás himself juxtaposes the emotion of love with egocentricity in his theory «A ponta do nariz» (ch. 49). From Brás' explanation it becomes evident that the act of staring at the tip of one's nose represents man's egocentric nature, which leads him to consider only himself as the person worthy of success and good fortune. Opposed to this force, however, is the other capital force of life, love: «há duas fôrças capitaies: o amor, que multiplica a espécie, e o nariz, que a subordina ao indivíduo». Love, then, involves procreation -a creative force, whereas egocentricity is a nonproductive force. Self-love, the reader may infer, is a sterile, wasteful attribute. It is fitting, then, that the symbol of supreme self-love is Brás Cubas, a dead narrator. Motivated by egotism in life, Brás was spiritually dead then. Now his physical state has caught up with his moral and emotional decay. Brás' own judgment of himself, as a small winner, is thus not the implied conclusion of Machado de Assis. His implied perspective leads us to conclude that Brás' pursuit of ego satisfaction led to his many failures in life, to his existence as a lonely old bachelor, whose death was caused by his preoccupation with another attempt at glory.

Perhaps, Brás' only success has come with the publication of his memoirs. For he has been successful in having his philosophy of self-love and nothingness appear as the only message in the work. He has intimidated most readers into seeing only his perspective, at the same time he has effaced the underlying message of Machado de Assis, the maker of the novel. Machado's subtle use of irony has been overwhelmed by Brás' exaggerated and insistent claims for his truthfulness, for his objectivity based on his special existence beyond the confines and concerns of living men. The critical reader must be alert to recognize the clues implanted by the implied author and interpret them to find the true meaning of the work.

Throughout this final section of my study I have shown that there are clues which the critical reader can pick up and put together to reconstruct the true picture of the life of Brás Cubas in a way that the narrator Brás Cubas does not wish us to see it. The use of irony and humor, the techniques of understatement and concealment have all worked to help the message of the implied author surge, forth from beneath the underlying surface of the work. Machado implants one last clue in the final chapter, to assure perhaps that at least at the very end the reader will perceive his true perspective.

The final last chapter is entitled «Das negativas» and serves as the brief farewell of Brás Cubas. It contains a concise statement of his negativistic philosophy, his last chance to convince the reader of man's mean and petty nature. Brás refers with quick dispatch to the opening scenes of the work: «Entre a morte do Quincas Borba e a minha, mediaram os successos narrados na primeira parte do livro» (p. 199). Those early scenes are distant spatially from the end of the novel and distant temporally only on the level of narrative time. If we turn to them once again at this moment of the last chapter, as Machado seems to beckon us to do, we discover a new perspective from which to approach the memoirs. As Brás narrated early in the work, when he realized he was dying, he admitted feeling great pleasure in mocking the world he was about to leave: «prestes a deixar o mundo sentia um prazer satânico em mofar d êle, em persuadir-me que não deixava nada» (pp. 31-32). By returning to this key scene before the final words of the novel are read, we are reminded by Machado that Brás had undertaken to write his memoirs with this mocking attitude. He wanted to persuade himself that «não deixava nada». Brás has been faithful to this negative attitude from the outset until that very last chapter appropriately called «Das negativas». The negativism of Brás as «un defunto autor» has distorted his presentation and interpretation of life. It appears that rather than merely trying to distract himself from the boredom of eternity, he has attempted to distract the reader from the positive, procreative, living aspects of life. It has been his conscious preference to resurrect the negative and bury the positive.

We see that the presence of Brás Cubas as a dead narrator functions as a means of thematic definition. His characteristics as a human being reveal his egocentric, selfish, sterile, death-like qualities. As narrator, he attempts to hide his own unreliability by using his supernatural state to convince the reader to accept his superiority, to trust him to lead us to the proper conclusions. As narrator, he has used all the persuasive powers of the first person narrative conventions to impose limits on our perspective, to direct us in our judgments. If we do accept his solution to life, and apply it to our own life and to humanity in general, the last joke will be directed at us as readers, difficult as it may be for us to realize it. For Brás' self-serving testimony is an attempt to fool us into identifying with his negative self-serving values; his passage into «essa outra margem» was merely the final step in his intellectual, spiritual and emotional demise. Machado, on the other hand, has attempted to guide us to see the contradictions in his narrator's presentation and commentary of his life. I believe that Machado is saying that we all can easily become a «Brás Cubas» -sterile and death-like- if we follow his example. If we look at the negative side of Brás Cubas, however, we discover a positive perspective: that by considering others, by following the path of «o amor que multiplica o espécie», we can avoid the pessimistic, lonely end of Brás Cubas.

Why has this positive reading of the novel, this condemnation of Brás' negative philosophy been so long ignored in the critical commentary of MPBC? As we have seen, the answer is complex, and relates to the whole question of the naive reader versus the critical reader. The naive reader has become convinced by the weight of the first person narration. The critical reader, on the other hand, should attempt to establish enough distance between him/herself and the fictive «I» in order to be able to judge him and determine his reliability, Machado has not made it easy for the reader because he has used a narrative method which closely approximates that of his previous novels. The presence of a self-conscious narrative «I» who comments on his own past actions and attempts to interpret his motivations closely approximates the narrative situation of authorial presentation which Machado had used before. It is no wonder, then, that MPBC has been misread. It has been my purpose, however, to clarify the narrative situation, to show that at the same time as Machado has created a fictive «I» who encourages us to accept his viewpoint, he has also provided us with the rhetorical devices to dissociate ourselves from this mediating mind, and judge him as the authorial clues suggest he be judged.