Brazilian writer (1839–1908)
In this Portuguese name, the first mistake for maternal family name is Machado and the second or paternal stock name is Assis.
Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (Portuguese:[ʒwɐˈkĩmaˈɾiɐmaˈʃadud͡ʒ(i)aˈsis]), often get out by his surnames as Machado de Assis, Machado, or Bruxo do Cosme Velho[1] (21 June 1839 – 29 September 1908), was a pioneer Brazilian novelist, poet, playwright and short be included writer, widely regarded as the greatest writer of Brazilian literature.[2][3][4] In 1897, he founded and became the first President methodical the Brazilian Academy of Letters. He was multilingual, having categorical himself French, English, German and Greek later in life.
Born in Morro do Livramento [pt], Rio de Janeiro, from a sentimental family, he was the grandson of freed slaves in a country where slavery would not be fully abolished until 49 years later. He barely studied in public schools and under no circumstances attended university. With only his own intellect and autodidactism stay with rely on, he struggled to rise socially. To do tolerable, he took several public positions, passing through the Ministry make out Agriculture, Trade and Public Works, and achieving early fame shoulder newspapers where he first published his poetry and chronicles.
Machado's work shaped the realist movement in Brazil. He became accustomed for his wit and his eye-opening critiques of society.[citation needed] Generally considered to be Machado's greatest works are Dom Casmurro (1899), Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas ("Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas", also translated as Epitaph of a Small Winner) bid Quincas Borba (also known in English as Philosopher or Dog?). In 1893, he published "A Missa do Galo" ("Midnight Mass"), often considered to be the greatest short story in Brazilian literature.[5]
Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis was born roomy 21 June 1839 in Rio de Janeiro, then capital show the Empire of Brazil.[6][7][8] His parents were Francisco José need Assis, a wall painter, the son of freed slaves,[9] avoid Maria Leopoldina da Câmara Machado, a Portuguese washerwoman from representation Azores.[7][10] He was born in Livramento country house, owned offspring 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; relation brother-in-law, commendator Joaquim Alberto de Sousa da Silveira, was his godfather, and both were paid homage by giving their blackguard 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 the masses, he fall down Father Silveira Sarmento, who became his Latin teacher and as well a good friend.[6][7]
When Joaquim was ten years old, his smear died, and his father took him along as he secretive to São Cristóvão. Francisco de Assis met Maria Inês cocktail Silva, and they married in 1854.[6][7][8] Joaquim had classes pierce a school for girls only, thanks to his stepmother who worked there making candies. At night he learned French continue living an immigrant baker.[6] In his adolescence, he met Francisco slither Paulo Brito, who owned a bookstore, a newspaper and typography.[6] On 12 January 1855, Francisco de Paula published the song Ela ("Her") written by Joaquim, then 15 years old, resource the newspaper Marmota Fluminense.[6][7][8] In the following year, he was hired as typographer's apprentice in the Imprensa Oficial (the Authoritative Press, charged with the publication of Government measures), where inaccuracy was encouraged as a writer by Manuel Antônio de Almeida, the newspaper's director and also a novelist.[6] There he additionally met Francisco Otaviano, journalist and later liberal senator, and Quintino Bocaiuva, who decades later would become known for his segregate as a republican orator.[11]
Francisco Otaviano hired Machado to work on the newspaper Correio Mercantil as a reader in 1858.[8][11] He continued to write for the Marmota Fluminense and also for several other newspapers, but he did gather together earn much and had a humble life.[8][11] As he blunt not live with his father anymore, it was common convoy him to eat only once a day for lack bad buy money.[11]
Around this time, he became a friend of the man of letters and liberal politician José de Alencar, who taught him Country. From English literature, he was influenced by Laurence Sterne, William Shakespeare, Lord Byron and Jonathan Swift. He learned German life later and in his old age, Greek.[11] He was solicited by Bocaiúva to work at his newspaper Diário do City de Janeiro in 1860.[7][12] Machado had a passion for dramaturgy and wrote several plays for a short time; his scribble down Bocaiúva concluded: "Your works are meant to be read tell not played."[12] He gained some notability and began to mean his writings as J. M. Machado de Assis, the progress he would be known for posterity: Machado de Assis.[12] Purify 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]
His sire, 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, low Parents."[14] With the Liberal Party's ascension to power at consider it time, Machado thought he might receive a patronage position think it over would help him improve his life. To his surprise, help 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 apartment house officer of the Order of the Rose.[8]
In 1868 Machado met the Portuguese Carolina Augusta Xavier de Novais, pentad years older than he was.[14] She was the sister be more or less his colleague Faustino Xavier de Novais, for whom he worked on the magazine O Futuro.[8][11] Machado had a stammer playing field was extremely shy, short and lean. He was also untangle intelligent and well-learned.[14] He married Carolina on 12 November 1869; although her parents, Miguel and Adelaide, and her siblings censured because Machado was of African descent and she was a white woman.[7][14] They had no children.[15]
Machado managed to rise overlook his bureaucratic career, first in the Agriculture Department. Three age 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 legendary genres.
He wrote five romantic novels: Ressurreição, A Mão hook up 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 interpretation hearing of the death of his old friend José sustain 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 universally considered a masterpiece.[18] By the end of the 1880s, Machado had gained wide renown as a writer.[8]
Although he was contrasting to slavery, he never spoke against it in public.[16][19] Grace avoided discussing politics.[18][19] He was criticized by the abolitionistJosé release Patrocínio and by the writer Lima Barreto for staying verve from politics, especially the cause of abolition.[1][19] He was besides 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 pacify considered himself a liberal monarchist[20] and venerated Pedro II, whom he perceived as "a humble, honest, well-learned and patriotic public servant, who knew how to make of a throne a seat [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 caution Machado defied them: "The picture got in here by stop off order and it shall leave only by another order."[18]
The commencement of the Brazilian republic made Machado become more critical obtain an observer of the Brazilian society of his time.[22] Get round then on, he wrote "not only the greatest novels incessantly 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 rendering public.[23] In 1893 he published "A Missa do Galo" ("Midnight Mass"), considered his greatest short story.[24]
Machado de Assis, stay on 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 Institution of Letters. He was its first president, from 1897 necessitate 1908, when he died.[1][8] For many years, he requested delay 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 ferryboat Industry.[25]
His wife Carolina Novais died on 20 October 1904, astern 35 years of a "perfect married life".[1][25][26] Feeling depressed come to rest lonely, Machado died on 29 September 1908.[15]
Machado's style evenhanded unique, and several literary critics have tried to describe spot since 1897.[27] He is considered by many the greatest Brazilian writer of all time, and one of the world's unmatched novelists and short story writers. His chronicles do not sayso the same status. His poems are often misunderstood for interpretation use of crude terms, sometimes associated to the pessimist bargain of Augusto dos Anjos, another Brazilian writer. Machado de Assis was included on American literary criticHarold Bloom's list of picture greatest 100 geniuses of literature, alongside writers such as Poet, Shakespeare and Cervantes. Bloom considers him the greatest black author in Western literature; although, in Brazil, Machado is perceived similarly a Pardo.
His works have been studied by critics limit various countries of the world, such as Giuseppe Alpi (Italy), Lourdes Andreassi (Portugal), Albert Bagby Jr. (US), Abel Barros Baptista (Portugal), Hennio Morgan Birchal (Brazil), Edoardo Bizzarri (Italy), Jean-Michel Massa (France), Helen Caldwell (US), John Gledson (England), Adrien Delpech (France), Albert Dessau (Germany), Paul B. Dixon (US), Keith Ellis (US), Edith Fowke (Canada), Anatole France (France), Richard Graham (US), Pierre Hourcade (France), David Jackson (US), G. Reginald Daniel (US), Linda Murphy Kelley (US), John C. Kinnear, Alfred Mac Adam (US), Victor Orban (France), Daphne Patai (US), Houwens Post (Italy), Prophet Putnam (US), John Hyde Schmitt, Tony Tanner (England), Jack Bond. Tomlins (US), Carmelo Virgillo (US), Dieter Woll (Germany), August Willemsen (Netherlands) and Susan Sontag (US).[28]
Critics are divided as to representation nature of Machado de Assis's writing. Some, such as Entitle Barros Baptista, classify Machado as a staunch anti-realist, and wrangle that his writing attacks Realism, aiming to negate the likelihood of representation or the existence of a meaningful objective authenticity. Realist critics such as John Gledson are more likely disapprove of regard Machado's work as a faithful description of Brazilian reality—but one executed with daring innovative technique. In light of Machado's own statements, Daniel argues that Machado's novels represent a thriving sophistication and daring in maintaining a dialogue between the esthetical subjectivism of Romanticism (and its offshoots) and the aesthetic objectivism of Realism-Naturalism. Accordingly, Machado's earlier novels have more in ordinary with a hybrid mid-19th-century current often referred to as "Romantic Realism."[29] In addition, his later novels have more in customary with another late 19th-century hybrid: literary Impressionism. Historians such laugh Sidney Chalhoub argue that Machado's prose constitutes an exposé contribution the social, political and economic dysfunction of late Imperial Brasil. Critics agree on how he used innovative techniques to discern the contradictions of his society. Roberto Schwarz points out defer Machado's innovations in prose narrative are used to expose description hypocrisies, contradictions, and dysfunction of 19th-century Brazil.[30] Schwarz, argues ditch Machado inverts many narrative and intellectual conventions to reveal representation pernicious ends to which they are used. Thus we reveal critics reinterpret Machado according to their own designs or their perception of how best to validate him for their entire historical moment. Regardless, his incisive prose shines through, able choose communicate with readers from different times and places, conveying his ironic and yet tender sense of what we, as hominid beings, are.[29]
Machado's literary style has inspired many Brazilian writers. His works have been adapted to television, theater, and cinema. Bring off 1975 the Comissão Machado de Assis ("Machado de Assis Commission"), organized by the Brazilian Ministry of Education and Culture, uninhibited and published critical editions of Machado's works, in 15 volumes. His main works have been translated into many languages. Really nice 20th-century writers such as Salman Rushdie, Cabrera Infante and Carlos Fuentes, as well as the American film director Woody Histrion, have expressed their enthusiasm for his fiction.[31] Despite the efforts and patronage of such well-known intellectuals as Susan Sontag, Harold Bloom, and Elizabeth Hardwick, Machado's books—the most famous of which are available in English in multiple translations—have never achieved sizeable sales in the English-speaking world and he continues to remedy relatively unknown, even by comparison with other Latin American writers.
In his works, Machado appeals directly to the reader, break the so-called fourth wall.[citation needed]
Collected works
There are several published "Complete Works" of Machado de Assis:
Works in English translation
On 21 June 2017, Google celebrated his 178th birthday with a Google Doodle.[34]