Machado de Assis

Morro do Livramento. The arrow in the top right corner shows the house where Machado was probably born and spent his childhood.

Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis was born on 21 June 1839 in Rio de Janeiro, then capital of the Empire of Brazil.[6][7][8] His parents were Francisco José de Assis, a wall painter, the son of freed slaves,[9] and Maria Leopoldina da Câmara Machado, a Portuguese washerwoman from the Azores.[7][10] He was born in Livramento country house, owned by Dona Maria José de Mendonça Barroso Pereira, widow of senator Bento Barroso Pereira, who protected his parents and allowed them to live with her.[6][7] Dona Maria José became Joaquim's godmother; her brother-in-law, commendator Joaquim Alberto de Sousa da Silveira, was his godfather, and both were paid homage by giving their names to the baby.[6][7] Machado had a sister who died young.[8] Joaquim studied in a public school, but was not a good student.[6] While helping to serve masses, he met Father Silveira Sarmento, who became his Latin teacher and also a good friend.[6][7]

When Joaquim was ten years old, his mother died, and his father took him along as he moved to São Cristóvão. Francisco de Assis met Maria Inês da Silva, and they married in 1854.[6][7][8] Joaquim had classes in a school for girls only, thanks to his stepmother who worked there making candies. At night he learned French with an immigrant baker.[6] In his adolescence, he met Francisco de Paulo Brito, who owned a bookstore, a newspaper and typography.[6] On 12 January 1855, Francisco de Paula published the poem Ela ("Her") written by Joaquim, then 15 years old, in the newspaper Marmota Fluminense.[6][7][8] In the following year, he was hired as typographer's apprentice in the Imprensa Oficial (the Official Press, charged with the publication of Government measures), where he was encouraged as a writer by Manuel Antônio de Almeida, the newspaper's director and also a novelist.[6] There he also met Francisco Otaviano, journalist and later liberal senator, and Quintino Bocaiúva, who decades later would become known for his role as a republican orator.[11]

National Press, c.1880, where Machado de Assis began his services as typographer and reviser.

Francisco Otaviano hired Machado to work on the newspaper Correio Mercantil as a proofreader in 1858.[8][11] He continued to write for the Marmota Fluminense and also for several other newspapers, but he did not earn much and had a humble life.[8][11] As he did not live with his father anymore, it was common for him to eat only once a day for lack of money.[11]

Around this time, he became a friend of the writer and liberal politician José de Alencar, who taught him English. From English literature, he was influenced by Laurence Sterne, William Shakespeare, Lord Byron and Jonathan Swift. He learned German years later and in his old age, Greek.[11] He was invited by Bocaiúva to work at his newspaper Diário do Rio de Janeiro in 1860.[7][12] Machado had a passion for theater and wrote several plays for a short time; his friend Bocaiúva concluded: "Your works are meant to be read and not played."[12] He gained some notability and began to sign his writings as J. M. Machado de Assis, the way he would be known for posterity: Machado de Assis.[12] He established himself in advanced Liberal Party circles by taking stands in defense of religious freedom and Ernest Renan's controversial Life of Jesus while attacking the venality of the clergy.[13]

Machado de Assis when he was 25 years old, 1864.

His father Francisco de Assis died in 1864. Machado learned of his father's death through acquaintances. He dedicated his compilation of poems called "Crisálidas" to his father: "To the Memory of Francisco José de Assis and Maria Leopoldina Machado de Assis, my Parents."[14] With the Liberal Party's ascension to power about that time, Machado thought he might receive a patronage position that would help him improve his life. To his surprise, aid came from the Emperor Dom Pedro II, who hired him as director-assistant in the Diário Oficial in 1867, and knighted him as an honor.[14] In 1888 Machado was made an officer of the Order of the Rose.[8]

In 1868 Machado met the Portuguese Carolina Augusta Xavier de Novais, five years older than he was.[14] She was the sister of his colleague Faustino Xavier de Novais, for whom he worked on the magazine O Futuro.[8][11] Machado had a stammer and was extremely shy, short and lean. He was also very intelligent and well learned.[14] He married Carolina on 12 November 1869; although her parents, Miguel and Adelaide, and her siblings disapproved because Machado was of African descent and she was a white woman.[7][14] They had no children.[15]

Machado de Assis around age 41, by Marc Ferrez, c. 1880.

Machado managed to rise in his bureaucratic career, first in the Agriculture Department. Three years later, he became the head of a section in it.[7][16] He published two poetry books: Falenas, in 1870, and Americanas, in 1875.[16] Their weak reception made him explore other literary genres.

He wrote five romantic novels: Ressurreição, A Mão e a Luva, Helena and Iaiá Garcia.[16] The books were a success with the public, but literary critics considered them mediocre.[16] Machado suffered repeated attacks of epilepsy, apparently related to hearing of the death of his old friend José de Alencar. He was left melancholic, pessimistic and fixed on death.[17] His next book, marked by "a skeptical and realistic tone": Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas (Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas, also translated as Epitaph of a Small Winner), is widely considered a masterpiece.[18] By the end of the 1880s, Machado had gained wide renown as a writer.[8]

Although he was opposed to slavery, he never spoke against it in public.[16][19] He avoided discussing politics.[18][19] He was criticized by the abolitionist José do Patrocínio and by the writer Lima Barreto for staying away from politics, especially the cause of abolition.[1][19] He was also criticized by them for having married a white woman.[1] Machado was caught by surprise with the monarchy overthrown on 15 November 1889.[18] Machado had no sympathy towards republicanism,[18] as he considered himself a liberal monarchist[20] and venerated Pedro II, whom he perceived as "a humble, honest, well-learned and patriotic man, who knew how to make of a throne a chair [for his simplicity], without diminishing its greatness and respect."[21] When a commission went to the public office where he worked to remove the picture of the former emperor, the shy Machado defied them: "The picture got in here by an order and it shall leave only by another order."[18]

The birth of the Brazilian republic made Machado become more critical and an observer of the Brazilian society of his time.[22] From then on, he wrote "not only the greatest novels of his time, but the greatest of all time of Brazilian literature."[20] Works such as Quincas Borba (Philosopher or Dog?) (1891), Dom Casmurro (1899), Esaú e Jacó (1904) and Memorial de Aires (1908), considered masterpieces,[20] were successes with both critics and the public.[23] In 1893 he published "A Missa do Galo" ("Midnight Mass"), considered his greatest short story.[24]

Students and friends, among them Euclides da Cunha, leave the Academy carrying the coffin of Machado de Assis to the Cemetery St. John the Baptist, 1908.

Machado de Assis, along with fellow monarchists such as Joaquim Nabuco, Manuel de Oliveira Lima, Afonso Celso, Viscount of Ouro Preto and Alfredo d'Escragnolle Taunay, and other writers and intellectuals, founded the Brazilian Academy of Letters. He was its first president, from 1897 to 1908, when he died.[1][8] For many years, he requested that the government grant a proper headquarters to the Academy, which he managed to obtain in 1905.[25] In 1902 he was transferred to the accountancy's directing board of the Ministry of Industry.[25]

His wife Carolina Novais died on 20 October 1904, after 35 years of a "perfect married life".[1][25][26] Feeling depressed and lonely, Machado died on 29 September 1908.[15]

• 1872 – Ressurreição (Resurrection)[32]
• 1874 – A Mão e a Luva (The Hand and the Glove)
• 1876 – Helena
• 1878 – Iaiá Garcia
• 1881 – Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas (The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas, also known in English as Epitaph of a Small Winner)
• 1891 – Quincas Borba (also known in English as Philosopher or Dog?)
• 1899 – Dom Casmurro
• 1904 – Esaú e Jacó (Esau and Jacob)
• 1908 – Memorial de Aires (Counselor Ayres' Memorial)

• 1881 – O alienista (The Psychiatrist, or The Alienist)
• 1886 – Casa velha (published as a book in 1944)

• 1860 – Hoje avental, amanhã luva
• 1861 – Desencantos
• 1863 – O caminho da porta and O protocolo (two plays)
• 1864 – Quase ministro
• 1865 – As Forcas Caudinas (published 1956)
• 1866 – Os deuses de casaca
• 1878 – A Sonâmbula, Antes da Missa and O bote de rapé (three short plays)
• 1881 – Tu, só tu, puro amor
• 1896 – Não consultes médico
• 1906 – Lição de botânica

• 1864 – Crisálidas
• 1870 – Falenas (including the dramatic poem Uma ode de anacreonte)
• 1875 – Americanas
• 1901 – Ocidentais
• 1901 – Poesias Completas (complete poetry)

• 1870 – Contos Fluminenses
• 1873 – Histórias da meia-noite
• 1882 – Papéis avulsos (including "O alienista")
• 1884 – Histórias sem data
• 1896 – Várias histórias
• 1899 – Páginas recolhidas (including "A Missa do Galo" and "The Case of the Stick")
• 1906 – Relíquias de Casa Velha

• 1861 – Queda que as mulheres têm para os tolos, from the original De l'amour des femmes pour les sots, by Victor Hénaux
• 1865 – Suplício de uma mulher, from the original Le supplice d'une femme, by Émile de Girardin
• 1866 – Os Trabalhadores do Mar, from the original Les Travailleurs de la mer, by Victor Hugo
• 1870 – Oliver Twist, from the original Oliver Twist; or, the Parish Boy's Progress, by Charles Dickens[33]
• 1883 – O Corvo, from The Raven, a famous poem by Edgar Allan Poe

• 1910 – Teatro Coligido (collected plays)
• 1910 – Crítica
• 1914 – A Semana (collection of articles)
• 1921 – Outras Relíquias (collection of short stories)
• 1921 – Páginas Escolhidas (collection of short stories)
• 1932 – Novas Relíquias (collection of short stories)
• 1937 – Crônicas (articles)
• 1937 – Crítica Literária
• 1937 – Crítica Teatral
• 1937 – Histórias Românticas
• 1939 – Páginas Esquecidas
• 1944 – Casa Velha
• 1956 – Diálogos e Reflexões de um Relojoeiro
• 1958 – Crônicas de Lélio

Collected works

There are several published "Complete Works" of Machado de Assis:

• 1920 – Obras Completas. Rio de Janeiro: Livraria Garnier (20 vols.)
• 1962 – Obras Completas. Rio de Janeiro: W.M. Jackson (31 vols.)
• 1997 – Obras Completas. Rio de Janeiro: Editora Globo (31 vols.)
• 2006 – Obras Completas. Rio de Janeiro: Nova Aguilar (3 vols.)

Works in English translation

• 1921 – Brazilian Tales. Boston: The Four Seas Company (London: Dodo Press, 2007).
• 1952 – Epitaph of a Small Winner. New York: Noonday Press (London: Hogarth Press, 1985; republished as The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas: A Novel. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997; Epitaph of a Small Winner. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2008; UK: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2008).
• 1953 – Dom Casmurro: A Novel. New York: Noonday Press (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966; republished as Dom Casmurro. Lord Taciturn. London: Peter Owen, 1992; Dom Casmurro: A Novel. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).
• 1954 – Philosopher or Dog? New York: Avon Books (republished as The Heritage of Quincas Borba. New York: W.H. Allen, 1957; New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1992; republished as Quincas Borba: A Novel. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).
• 1963 – The Psychiatrist, and Other Stories. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• 1965 – Esau and Jacob. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• 1970 – The Hand & the Glove. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.
• 1972 – Counselor Ayres' Memorial. Berkeley: University of California Press (republished as The Wager: Aires' Journal. London: Peter Owen, 1990; also republished as The Wager, 2005).
• 1976 – Yayá Garcia: A Novel. London: Peter Owen (republished as Iaiá Garcia. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1977).
• 1977 – The Devil's Church and Other Stories. Austin: University of Texas Press (New York: HarperCollins Publishers Ltd, 1987).
• 1984 – Helena: A Novel. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• 2008 – A Chapter of Hats and Other Stories. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.
• 2012 – The Alienist. New York: Melville House Publishing.
• 2013 – Resurrection. Pennsylvania: Latin American Literary Review Press.
• 2013 – The Alienist and Other Stories of Nineteenth-century Brazil. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing.
• 2014 – Ex Cathedra: Stories by Machado de Assis — Bilingual Edition. Hanover, Conn.: New London Librarium.
• 2016 – Miss Dollar: Stories by Machado de Assis — Bilingual Edition. Hanover, Conn.: New London Librarium.
• 2018 – Trio in A-Minor: Five Stories by Machado de Assis—Bilingual Edition. Hanover, Conn.: New London Librarium.
• 2018 – The Collected Stories of Machado de Assis. New York : Liveright & Company.
• 2018 – Good Days!: The Bons Dias! Chronicles of Machado de Assis (1888-1889) — Bilingual Edition. Hanover, Conn.: New London Librarium.

• Founding member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters (1896–1908).
• President of the Brazilian Academy of Letters (1897–1908).

•  Empire of Brazil: Knight of the Order of the Rose (1867).
•  Empire of Brazil: Officer of the Order of the Rose (1888).

On June 21, 2017, Google celebrated his 178th birthday with a Google Doodle.[34]