Um Machado de Assis para o Século XXI
We at the Santa Barbara Portuguese Studies are happy to publish the proceedings of our Congress "Um Machado de Assis para o Seculo XXI" which took place between October 30 and 31 at the Mosher Alumni House, UCSB.
The aim of this reflection on the most important Brazilian writer was, in our Congress and is, in this present volume, to foment a scholarly discussion on how to engage with the complexity of Machado de Assis's works, for our century; most especially, when such scholars schew cultural fashions and refuse simplisms. It is a double challenge. How to maintain a discourse about Machado that doesn't appeal to current anxieties, which more often than not, limit Machado to a few topics now, such as elements that are in general extrinsic to the value of his work.
A few years ago I had a strange encounter with one of these blinkered topics. I participated in a Congress in Brazil in which, without knowing I was Brazilian, a journalist, given the program and seeing the title of my presentation, attacked me and another foreigner scholar for detracting Machado de Assis of his originality by pointing out the author's copious readings in English, French, Italian, German, American literatures. He should have consulted Machado, of course. But the focus of the resentment was that "Machado is ours"; well, at least a certain discourse on Machado is. This point of view comes too often tinged with a one-sided orthodoxy in Machado's studies in Brazil; Sociology informed critics tends to see Machado's works as a mirror of Brazilian society: literature as reportage. However, as much as a society "influences" a writer, literature also influences, informs and forms this same society and the same writers who write about it and about themselves. Indeed, Machado is complex.
And this brings us to the narratives that are built around Machado's (or any other canonical writer) work: this mass of cultural narrative that becomes so dense that they may blind us to the pulsating core of his work which remains there, to be discovered and rediscovered.
In the various attempts to introduce Machado de Assis to an American public, the Brazilian mass of cultural narrative accumulated around Machado obviously cannot be reproduced. It also doesn't translate at all to another culture like the American. This journey has been a transformation, helped and hindered by translations which on the whole either miss the point, the tone or the voice of this multifaced writer. Between mistranslations and misunderstandings, the fact is that Machado de Assis has been placed into a niche, internationally. He would promptly and ironically recognize that and fully accept it. For Brazilians, even the ones who don't subscribe to a nationalist view of Machado, this reception has been frustrating, distorting, but there is an element of pride in it. "Our best writer" is getting the international recognition he deserves. Even if more doesn't mean better, in this case, more can mean better when a critical mass of scholarly studies is created by an international team of scholars, and this was the intent of our Congress and the papers and discussions that came in its wake.
If we follow attentively that core of engaged, dedicated scholars of Machado de Assis, all over the world, there is, indeed, a community of academics that care about, widen and deepen Machado's work. The scholars who participated in our Congress are among the best examples of this group, and their work, published here, is an oustanding contribution to this critical mass.
Editor
Élide Valarini Oliver Professor of Brazilian and Comparative Literature Director of the Center for Portuguese Studies UC Santa Barbara |
|
Assistant Editors
Pedro Craveiro, Ph.D. Lecturer of Spanish and Portuguese UC Santa Barbara pedrocraveiro@ucsb.edu |
Aline de Almeida Ph.D. Candidate UC Santa Barbara alinedealmeida@ucsb.edu |
Volume 14
O escritor intempestivo: Machado de Assis e o (seu) tempo, Ettore Finazzi-Agrò (Sapienza Università di Roma)
Figuras da queda no deserto do "real": Os romances do conselheiro e as ruínas do tempo, Roberto Vecchi (Università di Bologna)
Memórias das Memorie. Uma breve contra-história editorial das primeiras traduções italianas de Machado, Vicenzo Russo (Cátedra António Lobo Antunes, Università degli Studi di Milano Statale)
Lições machadianas para o século XXI à luz das propostas de Calvino, Sonia Netto Salomão (Sapienza Università di Roma)
Entre o realismo e o naturalismo: A crítica de Machado de Assis, Aline de Almeida (UC Santa Barbara)
O animal e o vegetal em Machado de Assis, Pedro Craveiro (UC Santa Barbara)