Machado de Assis, Critic of Eça de Queirós- A Symptomatic Misunderstanding

Abstract

Abstract: Writing about Eça de Queirós’ novels O Crime do Padre Amaro and O Primo Basílio in 1878, Machado de Assis showed little sympathy for the Portuguese author. In his essay Eça, discípulo de Machado?, published in 1963, Machado da Rosa expressed his admiration for Machado de Assis’ review of both of Eça’s novels but also called attention to the misunderstanding that led Machado to condemn Eça: for the great Brazilian novelist, Eça was but a disciple of Zola, for whose “Naturalism” he, Machado, had little sympathy. However, Machado’s novels, in particular Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas (1881) and Dom Casmurro (1890), published later, make it difficult, given the “amorality” or “immorality” of the events they depict, to understand Machado’s previous severity towards Eça. For a modern reader it seems unquestionable that Machado as a literary critic was by far more conservative than Machado as a novelist. Indeed, both Eça and Machado show in their works an understanding of the relationships between men and women that in its cynicism and disenchantment seems very close, both to one another and to a modern view of the same reality.