Narrative Time and the defunto Autor in "Memorias postumas de Bras Cubas" Author(s): Paula K.

Speck Reviewed work(s): Source: Latin American Literary Review, Vol. 9, No. 18 (Spring, 1981), pp. 7-15 Published by: Latin American Literary Review Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20119252 . Accessed: 14/11/2011 14:42
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Latin American Literary Review is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Latin American Literary Review.

http://www.jstor.org

NARRATIVE TIME AND THE ?DEFUNTO AUTOR? IN MEMORIAS POSTUMAS DE BRAS CUBAS

PAULA

K. SPECK

Critics have long recognized that Memorias de Br?s Cubas postumas Memoirs a turning constitutes (1880) [The Posthumous of Br?s Cubas1] de Assis' fiction and that it anticipates many of the ex point inMachado of the ?new novel? in twentieth-century Latin America.2 Yet periments seems at first a strange cornerstone Memorias for a literary tradition. Its It is the autobiography is not promising. of a weak-willed Brazilian plot life in which false starts, dandy of the first half of the nineteenth century?a in a barren cynicism. In the title petty vanities, and larger failures conclude character we are shown neither great virtues nor infamous vices, neither heroism nor dramatic a Instead, he is mediocrity suffering. personified, the enterprise in which he engages the everyman. bourgeois Similarly, reader as an accomplice is commonplace and universal: the re-living of a life more written or, memory, through precisely, through to bring back This effort ?memorias??memoirs/memories. the past amounts to a fight against time and death, a fight that lies at the root of all narrative. The paradox of this struggle?both necessary and impossible?is summed autor? ?defunto up in the contradictory /?deceased phrase uses to characterize himself author?/, which the narrator of theMemorias the novel. The key to the two sides of Bras' character?his throughout as author and as mortal?lies in his struggle with time as it is predicament the narrative devices of the novel itself. In this paper, I expressed through will attempt to show that Machado de Assis' most profound insights into the human condition?generally ex considered a matter of ?content??find in ?formal? those that convey temporal pression techniques, particularly structures.5 I will begin with the devices associated with the characters, move to the represented ?author? and ?readers,? and conclude with obser vations concerning the novel form itself as Machado modified it to serve his own conception of time and fiction/ The first temporal series is the track on which the characters move. This is the time most often studied by critics, because only this time contains concrete events, or plot. The most complete study of Machado's handling of plot time can be found in Dirce Cortes Riedel's O tempo no romance in Machado's machadiano In that book, Riedel [Time Novels].5 was a master at communicating that Machado demonstrates the feeling of ?human time? in the Bergsonian and rallenti, its sense, with its accelerandos tendency to pass swiftly over long, empty periods, while drawing out signifi

8 cant

LATIN AMERICAN LITERARY REVIEW

the narrator of theMemorias instants. For example, dismisses whole of his protagonist's life with a few sentences: his school years, his stages long stay in Europe, his vain attempts to become a cabinet minister. The on life that really matter?the only parts he has really ly parts of Br?s' lived?are his experiences with four women: Marcela, the courtesan who the lame girl whom he deserts takes his money and abandons him; Eugenia, for fear of ridicule; Virgilia, the woman who is first fianc?e, then lover, and friend to him; and Nha-lol?, the girl who was to give him im finally discreet in the form of a son before she died of yellow fever. Each rela mortality event from outside only after the bond has tionship is ended by a contingent been weakened Br?s' boredom and the sheer passage of time. by already to the time that carries him, not only to The protagonist submits passively the big death, but also to the little deaths of ideals, projects, emotions, and of a face out of the past con former selves. Twice, the sudden reappearance to it is possible vinces Br?s momentarily that, in D. Casmurro's words, ?altar as duas pontas da vida? /?tie the two ends of life together?/.6 While courting Virgilia, Br?s takes his watch to be repaired at a sordid gem store The courtesan's and meets his adolescent once-beautiful passion, Marcela. face is eaten by pock-marks, and poverty or avarice have forced her to trade in the jewelry once given by admirers. The second ?resurrection? of the past occurs when Br?s unexpectedly runs into his old school-fellow, Quincas in the street. Quincas' and he Borba, clothing betrays extreme poverty, steals his old friend's watch. Both ?reunions? horrify Br?s because they demonstrate that the changes undergone by men themselves make true reu of inexorable time?in nion impossible. The presence of the watch?symbol the point. each episode underlines to turn back time. the characters fail in their feeble attempts Clearly, But it would be possible to maintain that Br?s as ?Author? succeeds in br to purports inging back a past he lost in living. After all, the Memorias recover Br?s' entire biography, from birth to death. To put it more ac it recounts his life from death to death and does so twice, for the curately, novel takes the form of two temporal loops, each returning to the moment of death. The first, which takes up only the first nine chapters, begins with the protagonist's last illness and death, jumps back to the time of his great then forward again to the famous ?delirium? and, once more, grandfather, to his death. The second loop, which constitutes the bulk of the book, 10 and carries us in straightforward begins with Br?s' birth in chapter order through his four love relationships, his infatuation with chronological and Quincas Borba's ?humanitism? back to his death fatherhood, politics, later. The protagonist's 150 chapters death, then, is not only nar again, in the the most rated three times, but it occupies strategic positions and its close. The narrator defends this procedure with book?its opening these words: Although the common practice is to begin at the moment of

MEMORIAS POSTUMAS DE BRAS CUBAS

have led me to adopt a different pro birth, two considerations cedure: one is that I am not, strictly speaking, an author who to be deceased, for whom but a deceased author, the happens tomb has been a new cradle; the other is that itmakes my writing seem wittier and more original, (p. 25)

The point ismade through syntactical order in the Portuguese: Br?s is not, a contingent, he insists, an ?autor defunto??following adjective signifying a ?defunto autor? a dead man and an author equally trait?but descriptive one at and essentially. is not merely The ?author?'s being ?deceased? does this mean? tribute among others, but his defining quality. What or fantastic explanations are ruled out from the start. Death is Religious ?nothingness? (p. 35), ?the point from which Laplace cannot be distinguis ed from a tortoise.? author? merely a mask (p. 144) Nor is the ?deceased recounts his own life; for the ?author? behind which Br?s-the-character as ?opinionated, and rather contemp dismisses his protagonist egotistic, tuous of other men.? On many important matters, the opinions of (p. 41) to those of the character: for example, the young the ?author? are opposed Br?s believes that Marcela loves him, while the ?author? exposes that love with bitter irony; the older Br?s dreams of fathering a child, while the counts his failure to do so as the ?slight margin? which justifies ?author? his life (p. 199).7 The most is that the ?author? claims to have important difference overcome to time. On the level of the sentence, the character's bondage is imprisoned within the past tense and the third person; Br?s-the-character his life is over and he cannot make it come back. The ?author,? in contrast, moves a first-person the past (what I freely within capable of entering the prsent (what I am writing), and the future (what I will write). wrote), And he makes It is the ?author? who rear frequent use of this freedom. ranges Br?s life in two loops and makes him die three times; the ?author? who skips over long periods (such as Br?s' school days) while devoting to a brief lovers' quarrel (pp. 150-52); throughout the novel, it is the pages a consistent ?author? who maintains ironic tone by displacing the emphasis from the great crises of Br?s' life (which threaten his emotionless detach to moments of pettiness and egotism. The ?author?'s claims are ment) wider still: in his eyes, what he iswriting is not a novel at all??This is not a a novel is a time-bound form condemn novel,? he states flatly (p. 70)?for ed to sentimentality written to (see p. 118). Instead, it is a set of ?memoirs,? serve ?Science? and ?the study of social phenomena? (p. 148) by for the general such as ?the law of the laws of human nature, mulating of windows? and the proverbs of the chapter ?Paren equivalence (p. 96) thesis? (pp. 166-67). It would seem, then, that the ?author? has defeated time if he can br or transcend it in general laws. Yet it is ing it back at will through memory when the ?deceased in the name author? of precisely speaks

10

LATIN AMERICAN LITERARY REVIEW

caricature of positivism ?Humanitism??the preached by his idol, Quincas fall apart. We know from such documents as his pretensions Borba?that Machado's review of E?a de Quieroz' O primo Basilio [Cousin Basilio] that and its literary child, realism.* But the Brazilian was skeptical of positivism even without the way in which Borba is described and his in such evidence, intends the ?author?'s signal to us that Machado sanity prefigured would to fail. In fact, there are clues scattered throughout the novel in ?science? is being swept along by a time-stream that the ?author? dicating just as swift and irreversible as that of the characters. He frequently cuts a passage to lose time? (p. 162); ?I lack of time: ?...I can't afford shot pleading would never finish if I had to recount in deatil? (p. 126). Often he admits that he cannot remember what he has just written: ?I believe that I said...? (p. 69); ?Now, where was I...?? (p. 102). At one point he reminds himself to suppress a chapter and at another to insert a chapter in a different place; yet is carried out (pp. 147 and 175-76). So bound is he to the neither correction in his own narration that when he feels the need to rest, he flow of words must write himself a chapter without CII, ?At rest??in content?Chapter announces order to catch his breath. By the time the ?author? that he is to tire of the book which he began merely as a ?task to relieve ?beginning? the boredom of eternity? (p. 118), we have already begun to wonder what can be this could be in which both haste and boredom kind of ?eternity? author? feels obliged to confess: felt. At last, the ?deceased My dear critic: A few pages back, noting that Iwas fifty years old, I added, that my style is no longer as lively as it ?It's already noticeable was in the early years.? Perhaps you find this statement hard to understand, knowing my present state; but I call your attention Imean to say is not that I to the subtlety of that thought. What am older than when I started the book. The dead do not age. I of my life I ex that in each phase of the narration do mean sensations. Heaven I the corresponding help me! Must perience explain everything? (pp. 181-82)

the character's exists only when he is ?authoring? The ?author? story, and both are subjected to the temporal imperative. it is possible to discern a third temporal succession within the However, creates this ?reader? ?reader.? Machado that of the represented novel: within the fiction itself by using a battery of techniques that go back to Cer ?author? confesses vantes and Sterne.9 Although?or perhaps because?the of the book that he counts on only five readers, these five at the beginning are present on every page (p. 23). In fact, the dialogue between the ?author? for the weakness is so vivid that itmore than compensates and his ?readers? it becomes the real plot of the novel. and indecision of the characters; uses a wide range of devices to integrate the ?readers? into Machado

MEMORIAS POSTUMAS DE BRAS CUBAS

11

the narration. Almost every other sentence contains either a direct address of mine? to them??sensitive soul? (p. 78), ?aging contempraries (p. 161), a grammatical form referring to them, such as ?I swear to and so on?or instruc is constantly giving the ?readers? you? or ?see here.? The ?author? to turn back and refresh their tions: sometimes he grants them permission memory (e.g., pp. 55 and 81); at other times, he forbids them to skip (pp. 33 and 122). He passages or exhorts them to pay greater attemtion sur husband scolds the ?pale lady reader? who trembles when Virgilia's prises the two lovers (p. 109); observes acidly that ?a certain lady? has clos is over (p. 179); and makes savage fun ed the book because the love-intrigue who loses himself in pedantic details (p. 119). Through of the ?bibliophile? the the ?author? builds an image of a different ?reader,? such judgments, one he would wish to have. This ?reader? shares the narrator's concern for or idealized. sentimentalized, accuracy and rejects all that is ?novelistic,? a critical reader: ?But if I tell that I was deeply demands The ?author? agitated, you would do well to doubt me a little, to demand proof of the is dotted with phrases like ?let the reader assertion.? (p. 156) The Memorias the reader which command and ?judge for yourself,? decide,? ?imagine,? to take an active part, along with phrases which imply a common task, such as ?let's finish,? and ?our case.? Like Cort?zar and many other twentieth demands an active rather than a passive reader, century novelists, Machado of Cort?zar's ?lector hembra? /?female and there is even a profiguration readers? who sentimental in Machado's easy, ?lady prefer reader?/ ?author? appeals to the ?reader?'s creativity Instead, Machado's reading.10 secrets. by opening up the writing process and exposing his professional ?Observe now the skill, the artistry, with which Imake the sharpest transi to the like these bind the ?reader? tion of this book? (p. 39)?phrases the writing process, and in two ways: they make him experience ?author? they distance him, preventing him from identifying with the emotions of the
characters.

into a collaborator, the ?deceased However, by turning his ?reader? author? subjects him to the time imperative inherent in the process of narra tion itself. He can, like the ?lady readers,? close the book and thereby cease he must resign himself to the linear suc being a reader; but if he continues, Like the ?author,? the ?reader? cession of language and of plot-episodes. in the end, that he has failed to bring back a past conceived as will discover, existing outside the text. The best that ?author? and ?readers? can do is to the inevitable last page by making postpone digressions: ...the greatest defect of this book hurry to get old, and the book substantial story straightforward, while this book and my style lurch is you, reader. You are in a slowly; you like a proceeds and a simple, dynamic style, and stumble like drunks, (p.

119)

12

LATIN AMERICAN LITERARY REVIEW

The very time which he uses to postpone is the the end, warns the ?author,? time in which he and the reader are growing old. In the end, every ?reader? is forced to recognize that his truest image is that of the worm of the dedica tion: To who the first
worm

gnawed the cold flesh of my cadaver I dedicate in fond memory these Posthumous Memoirs

(P. 19)
a dead body?what A grave worm devouring symbol could better reader who awaits a ?deceased author?? the only ?explanation? Perhaps we are now ready to confront within the novel for the riddle of the ?deceased author?: fit the given

...I will refrain from recounting the extraordinary method which I followed in composing these Memoirs, written here in the It would be interesting, but it would take too long, and Beyond. it is not necessary for understanding the text. The text in besides, itself is every thing... (p. 23) contem ?The text in itself is everything.? This phrase,which Machado's poraries no doubt read as another example of the author's teasing refusal to strikes the twentieth-century reader as a succinct expres give any answer, of modern sion of one of the watch-words fiction. For if every author of a in the sense that after writing he disap written text is a ?deceased author? his text as a mysterious pears, leaving object in the hands of the reader, modern literature may be said to have made this isolation of author from In its reader?the central preoccupation. problem of the text as object?its this problem is related to that of time. Author-time and reader-time turn, are congruent only in oral, face-to-face in which they are iden storytelling, tical and follow the straight, irreversible line of the spoken sentence. As soon as a story is written down, a tension arises it loses this innocence: betwen the temporal and plot and the imperatives of spelling, grammar, " as a former printer's appren spatial forms of chapter and page. Machado, was keenly aware of the concrete reality of paper, type, and binding." tice, Whenever he fills a chapter with punctuation marks (chapters LV and CX or suggests that the reader approach in an alternate his chapters XXIX) he forms a link between Sterne's famous marbled page and the order, of Macedonio Julio Cort?zar, twentieth-century Fern?ndez, experiments

MEMORIAS POSTUMAS DE BRAS CUBAS

Guillermo

13

Cabrera Infante, the Brazilian concrete poets, and others.n the book is one of Machado's for man favorite metaphors Moreover, himself. The stages of Br?s' life are compared to successive editions twice sees himself as (pp. 71 and 81); in his metaphysical delirium, the protagonist a copy of St. Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theo l?gica bound in silver and fine leather (p. 33); the novel's readers are satirically described as a fashionable book with scanty text and wide margins (p. 64); and so on. I believe that this among others; it is the fundamental figure ismore than one metaphor sym bol of the novel. Like the reader confronted by a book, a man looking back over his life possesses a limited power?the freedom to turn pages in one in the other?to overcome time. But whenever case, the faculty of memory he exercises this power, he finds time awaiting him, for both language and consciousness contain time in their very essence. All novels attempt to recover a stretch of a fictional past inmemory, and all memoirs/memories are only posthumous: none really resurrects its ?deceased author.? Instead of presenting its readers with a slice of a fictional past, the novel succeeds in creating a new entity inhabiting the eternal and infinitely was among the first the text itself. Machado repeatable present-of-reading: to make to transcend writers this failure language his very subject. Memorias de Br?s Cubas represents a dialectic, not a conclusion. postumas Br?s' contradictory and immortal at identity as ?deceased author??mortal the same time?mirrors the double intention of his text, both referential and It isMachado's self-sufficient. ability to express both thrusts of this dialec tic that makes his novel one of the foundation-stones of modern fiction.

Frostburg

State College

NOTES

1. Paulo:

Joaquim Editora

Maria Cultrix,

Machado

de Assis,

Memorias references

postumas

de Br?s will

Cubas, be made

5th ed.

(Sao

1968). Hereafter, Epitaph of

to this edition Winner

in parenthesis Press, own tenses

in the text. William 1952) is an excellent

L. Grossman's translation because

of a Small

(New York: I have chosen

Noonday to use my exact verb

the Memorias. of my points

However, depend

translations and wording. 2. Helen

in this paper

many

on Machado's

Caldwell de Assis: especially

traces Machado The Brazilian pp. Livraria 73-126.

's career Master For

as a novelist

and

the crucial

role of theMemorias of California Machado August de

in Machado Press, Assis Machado Recent 1970),

and his Novels dissenting Editora, views,

(Berkeley: see Agripino

University Grieco,

(Rio de Janeiro: de Assis

Jos? Olympio

1959), p. 48 and passim; 1952), p.

Meyer,

(Rio de Janeiro: of Machado's

Organizac?o influence

Sim?es, on

14 and passim. ?new novel? include

explorations

the Latin American

14
Alfred Hisp?nica Cubas: No. 3. poral MacAdam's Moderna, Contemporaneidad 1 (enero Among de 1973), ?Machado 37, No.

LATIN AMERICAN LITERARY REVIEW

An Introduction 180-87; de Assis,? and Nueva to Latin John American ?El Satire,? Revista

de Assis: 3 (1972-73),

B. Hughes'

principio-Br?s III,

de Machado 25-30. which have

Narrativa

Hispanoamericana,

the works

influenced

my

thinking

on

the relationship Time

between and

tem

and narrative Peter Nevill Press, The

structures, Ltd.,

the most 1952); Hans

important Meyerhoff, Studies

are A. A. Mendilow, Time in Literature Time,

the Novel University Coleman trans.

(London:

(Berkeley: trans. Elliott

of California (Baltimore: H.

1968); Georges Press,

Poulet,

in Human Mann, 1955), Lessing's

Johns Hopkins (New York: critical school

1956); and Tomas Library, with

The Magic especially well-known

Mountain,

T. Lowe-Porter One modern among

The Modern takes The issue

p. 541. classification with of nar

literature rative See

the ?temporal

arts.?

school

sees twentieth-century and Faulkner,

experiments

form,

such as those Frank, ?Spatial

carried Form

out by Joyce in Modern

as a ?spatialization? published in 1945

of fiction. in the Sewanee Indiana can in

Joseph and

Literature,? Gyre

Review Unviersity be found

reprinted Press,

in his collection, overview Foust's of

The Widening the thought

(Bloomington, followers Place opinion, kind with of

Indiana:

1968). An Earl

of Frank's

and opponents of Spatial Joyce, Form

in Ronald Literary modern constant,

unpublished

dissertation, 1975).

?The In my

Modern and

Criticism?

(University

of Maryland, question of

Faulkner

other

experimental and irreversible Far

novelists concept from Or,

a particular

temporality?the physics it strange? neither and and with

unilinear,

time associated time,

Newtonian ?make

nineteenth-century place it at the center space

positivism. of

ignoring to put

these novelists way,

their work. a kind of

it another which

they are concerned neither, and

time nor the two. 4. Booth created who

but with

space-time

is both,

the tension

between

Throughout has

this paper,

I will

use

the word

?author?

in quotes author, with that

to refer is,

to what Wayne

christened

the ?implied? within

or ?represented? to be confused

the narrator-author de Assis to his

as a character the streets

the text (not

the real man Machado in quotes The Rhetoric

walked

counterpart, (Chicago: 5. Jos?, 6. 7. 8. Dirce 1959). Machado Hence Machado

of Rio de Janeiro). Iwill use ?reader? Similarly, or ?represented? the ?implied? reader. Wayne C. Booth, of Chicago Riedel, O Press, tempo no 1961), pp. 70-77 and passim.

to refer

of Fiction

University Cortes

romance

machadiano

(Rio de Janeiro:

Livraria

Sao

de Assis,

D.

Casmurro

(Sao Paulo:

Editora

Cultrix,

1968), of a Small

p. 25. Winner. literaria (Rio

the title of William de Assis, M. review

Grossman's of Oprimo

translation: Basilio pp.

Epitaph

by E?a de Quieroz, 160-86. of Tristam pp. Shandy

in Critica

de Janeiro: 9.

W.

Jackson

Editores, his debt the Reader?

1942),

Machado Edition?

acknowledges and ?To op. cit.

to the author (Memorias,

in his ?Prologue Caldwell studies

to the this

Fourth influence 10. 11.

21 and 23). Helen

in detail,

Julio Cort?zar, Jacques Derrida

Rayuelo,

8th ed.

(Buenos a critique

Aires;

Editorial

Sudamericana, based with them

1968), on

p. 454.

has developed and the written

of Western spoken

metaphysics is associated allows doubt,

the tension interlocutors

between who dead Howver,

the spoken alive other;

word.

The while word

word

are both to each

and mutually hence

present,

the written represents

word evil,

to be absent mortality. as all

or

the written is a ?myth?;

the other,

absolute

presence

all languages

originate

in a kind of writing,

life

MEMORIAS POSTUMAS DE BRAS CUBAS

originates in death. The following passage might

15
with theMemorias inmind:

have been written

Spacing the subject...As the constitution of

as writing

is the becoming-absent relationship On with

and

the becoming-unconscious death, this becoming

of is

the subject's of subjectivity. of death. of All

its own

all levels of

life's organization,

that is to say, essence. And the

the economy absence

graphemes of writing

are of a testamentary is also the absence of

original referent.

the subject

the thing or the

Jacques

Derrida,

Of

Grammatology, Press, author for 1976),

trans.

Gayatri

Chakravorty

Spivak

(Baltimore: Machado,

The in

Johns Hopkins making holds teenth

Unviersity

p. 69 (emphasis is figuring on

in the original). the surface striking of

Hence

his represented for all texts and century, and the

deceased, itself.

the text a relation this

which

language

It is especially the majority

that he did

in the nine belief would in

last period

in which

maintained

an unquestioning of theMemorias

?presence? be 12. 13.

the meaning but

of the spoken Word. the scope p. 17. concrete of

A Derridean

analysis

interesting, Helen When

it is beyond op. cit.,

this paper.

Caldwell, D?cio

Pignatari,

the Brazilian

poet,

came

to give a talk at Yale University have turned in the direction In a conversation impor of

in the spring of a ?concrete afterwards, tant models

1976, he menntioned short narrative that Machado D?cio

that his pieces

latest experiments concrete

fiction,?

incorporating

principles.

he explained for his work.

de Assis

has provided interview,

him with April,

one of the most 1976.

Pignatari,

personal