PLCS 13/14 (2005)
Novel

The Beautiful Form of Sadness: Machado de Assis' "Memorial de Aires"

PDF
  • Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht
DOI: https://doi.org/10.62791/k7y48678

Published 2016-09-20

Copyright (c) 2016 Portuguese Literary and Cultural Studies

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Abstract

Abstract: Memorial de Aires is not simply a novel of sadness but a novel that shows how sadness can grow into a form between the dimensions and through the movements of time. Between an existential future that can only hold nothing, a present that has become empty, and a past that is now receding from the present, time appears to move slowly. It is from this perspective that we can read Machado de Assis’ Memorial de Aires and Martin Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit (Being and Time) as converging texts.

PDF