Melvyn Bragg

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Melvyn Bragg (Host)

This is IN our time from BBC Radio 4, and this is one of more than a thousand episodes you can find in the In Our Time archive. A reading list for this edition can be found in the episode description Wherever you're listening, I hope you enjoy the program. Hello, Machado D', Assis, 1839-1908, is considered the towering figure of modern Brazilian literature with a global reputation, although arguably not as much as he deserves. The descendant of slaves, Machado wrote many of his novels and almost 200 short stories before Brazil abolished slavery in 1888, the last country in the Americas to do so. And while he vividly critiques the slave owning classes, he transcends that time and place, in Salman Rushdie's view, his work seemed to have been written yesterday, not 100 years ago. Well, with me to discuss Mashado Gyassis are Anna Claudia Suriani da Silva, Associate professor in Brazilian Studies at University College London, Claire Williams, professor of Brazilian Literature and Culture at the Faculty of Modern Languages at the University of Oxford and fellow of St. Peter's College, and Viviani Cavalho da Annunziasson, Affiliated Lecturer at the Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics at the University of Cambridge. And Viviani, it's to you that I come first. Can you tell us something about Machado's early life in Rio de Janeiro?

Viviani Carvalho da Annunziasson

Mashadou Justises, sometimes called the greatest Brazilian writer, but I come to think of him as the Pele of literature. Machado did the same thing as Pele did for football. He inherited an European tradition, mastered it and transformed it completely, creating it, something unmistakably Brazilian and original. And Mashad de Jassis was born in Rio de Janeiro, a burgeoning city. He was the son of Francisco Jose Jassis and Maria Lapogina Machad de Jassiz. His father was a painter descendant from freed slaves, and his mother was an Azorean washerwoman. He grew up in an affluent neighborhood, but connected to a working class family. He was baptized by Donna Maria Jose Jemain Donse, the wife of a senator. So he grew up going in and out of her mansion and going back to his working class family.

Melvyn Bragg (Host)

So what was his relationship with the wealthy family?

Viviani Carvalho da Annunziasson

She was his godmother and he would go to her house to have meals and to be with her.

Melvyn Bragg (Host)

So just to make it clear, what was that relationship between a relatively poor family, working class, how come he has this relationship with a wealthy family?

Viviani Carvalho da Annunziasson

Well, it's where his father and mother would work. This is basically where he would paint their houses, she would wash their clothes, and that was a patronage relationship.

Melvyn Bragg (Host)

And what were the prospects for a young boy like Machado at the time in Brazil, given his background and this relationship, relationship of dependency with the wealthy family?

Viviani Carvalho da Annunziasson

It was very slim. It was believed that he was going to follow the footsteps of his father and become a painter or some sort of manual worker. But effectively his health wasn't so great, so he started working, selling sweets. But then he wasn't strong enough and developing this incredible intelligence for literature. He transcended his background.

Melvyn Bragg (Host)

So although illiteracy in Brazil at this time is very high, I think around 70%, he nonetheless has access to books and reading because of that Relationship with the wealthy family. Is that right?

Viviani Carvalho da Annunziasson

Not exactly, because what happened is that he lost both his mother and his father at an early age. And he was brought up by his stepmother, Maria Ines, who was an Afro Brazilian woman. And Lucia Miguel Pereira. In her biography of Machado, Jessis says that she worked in a school for young women. And apparently he would overhear the lessons and the corridors. And get very much interested in what they were studying. Formal education didn't suit him. So he would learn French with Madame Galo, the baker Classics, Greek, Latin with Father Silvera Sarmiento, the priest. When he was 17, he started to go to the bookshop Pereira Brito and frequent literary circles. So in addition to reading by himself, studying by himself. He was also learning from people in different social classes. And in different levels of education.

Melvyn Bragg (Host)

So Anna Claudia Suriane da Silva. He is working associated with a bookshop. Which is run by a publisher in Rio. How does he start writing? What's his. His first break as a writer.

Anna Claudia Suriani da Silva

Mashadi starts to collaborate with the local press. So Paula Brito's press as a translator. So he translates poetry and he translates novels. But also he is an aspiring poet. And he's not very successful as a poet. He very soon realizes from very harsh criticism. That he's not a very good poet. At that time, there was a flourishing publishing market, print culture in Brazil. So with the end of censorship in 1821, all of a sudden we had lots of books being published. So a proper print culture, bookshops, circulating libraries. One of the circulating libraries was the British subscription library, the Portuguese Royal Cabinet. And lots of newspapers and periodicals. Many of them were ventures by European publishers. That settled down in Rio de Janeiro, including Garnier. So Garnier played a very important role in Machado's career. Because he had a fashion magazine, a magazine for women. So it was basically a magazine full of sewing material, fashion plates, and a lot of literary content. So Mashadou went from being an average poet. To being a very successful short story writer. So he wrote in this specific journal, published once a month. And it was actually printed in Paris. So his manuscripts had to travel to Paris and come back to Brazil. And serialized. And his short stories were very long. Which means that he made a good amount of money because of the word count of these stories.

Melvyn Bragg (Host)

And these were largely women's magazines. Is that right? Why is he so popular with women at the time?

Anna Claudia Suriani da Silva

Because these magazines were very successful. So there were all sorts of things, periodicals being published in Brazil. It was a very vibrant market for periodicals. So Political newspapers published daily and also these magazines that targeted women and were suited for the domestic sphere. So Machado was writing short stories, and the short stories were actually a big attraction to the readers for them to subscribe to these magazines. So he had a very diverse readership, both men when he was publishing short stories for political newspapers and women in these fashion magazines.

Melvyn Bragg (Host)

Thank you. Claire Williams. Brazilian literature comes late in the day. Was it in any sense ostracized during the slavery period?

Melvyn Bragg

Brazil as a nation was ostracized and looked down upon by the rest of the world, while they were a slave owning nation. And the development of Brazil is quite unique in that it was a colony of Portugal for 300 years and then became an empire in 1822, a kind of constitutional monarchy. And all this time the economy was run largely on slavery. This was something that was very much looked down upon by the rest of the world. And Brazilian politicians and intellectuals were worried that they wouldn't be taken seriously as a modern nation until slavery had been abolished.

Melvyn Bragg (Host)

Why did it take so long for slavery to be abolished?

Melvyn Bragg

Lots of. There are lots of thoughts about that. Historians have written many tomes about that, but because the politicians, the governing classes, were plantation owners. So a lot of money was at stake if they were going to give up their workforce. But they did eventually. So the slave Trade ended in 1850, and gradually slavery was abolished in various waves through various laws. And in 1888 it was abolished more

Melvyn Bragg (Host)

or less at the same time that Brazil becomes a republic.

Melvyn Bragg

And exactly so. 1889, Brazil becomes a republic, gets rid of the monarchy.

Melvyn Bragg (Host)

Let's look at one of Machado's most famous works. That's the Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Koubas. Can you describe that novel to us?

Melvyn Bragg

Absolutely. It's a novel where nothing happens and everything happens. So you'd think from the title that it's the story of a life. Then you realise that it's posthumous memoirs. So there's something strange going on.

Melvyn Bragg (Host)

So he's dead when he's writing it.

Melvyn Bragg

He's dead when he's writing it. And he tells us at the beginning, after making a dedication to the worms that gnawed on his cold body, the first worm who gnawed on his cold body, that this is not the book of an author who has died, but a dead man who has become an author. So he tells us right from the very beginning that he's not a very good writer, but he is quite good at being dead. And being dead gives him license to say all sorts of things. That he couldn't say when he was alive. It also gives him the chance to look back over his whole life and draw conclusions about the causes that produced certain effects and to reflect on how important he could have been. Because he's a character who's desperate for approbation, for acclaim, for recognition, and yet he's so lazy and cowardly and so entitled as well. He comes from a rich background, he's wealthy, he doesn't even need to work. And he could do anything with his learning. He studied in Portugal, he could do anything with his money, but he keeps it all for himself. And in fact, he's one of the great ironies is that he's very lucky. So almost as if whatever he wants, he gets. He likes a particular woman, he manages to seduce her, he finds money in the street. And all this at the time where poverty was rife.

Melvyn Bragg (Host)

So that's what I want to go on to Viviani, can you tell us what the social critique in this novel is really about?

Viviani Carvalho da Annunziasson

Well, the European. You have the tradition of the self made man, the person who works, who comes out of nothing and builds something extraordinary in a way. Brass has everything and he doesn't make anything out of that. And there is a whole chapter about him trying to be a politician, which is. And that is a big joke that Mashad plays with the reader. How did I become a politician? There is nothing to be read about it. And the following chapter. Well, I am in my house, I am with my slaves, I'm with my son, my chair. But I keep thinking about the work that I don't have. This is very typical of the higher classes. They have everything and they want a little bit more in the Brazilian situation of the 19th century. But he's still talking about what he could have been. In a way, it is Brazilian, but it's also very universal in a way, because we might have everything, but we still keep thinking about that little thing that didn't happen.

Melvyn Bragg (Host)

Anna Claudia, that sense of entitlement which Viviani described there. It sounds quite a lot like the Brazil of today. There's not much of a plot in this novel. So what is it that inspires people to read the book?

Anna Claudia Suriani da Silva

Well, in terms of the entitlement, Machado is writing to a niche of readers, so the literacy levels were actually quite low in Brazil. It was 30% of people could read. And he was writing to the educated elite. Yes, it's the first novel he publishes in the first person. So he moves away from the sentimental, omniscient narrator of his first novels. And in the preface of this specific novel, he says that he's now being in his second phase and he's heavily influenced by Sterne and Tristan Shendy. So we are about to engage with a novel that is going to be digressive, is going to be fragmented and very witty and ironic. So he constructs a character that is going to embrace the blindness of Brazilian elite. And for many times critics couldn't understand that he was actually being critical to this status quo. Because that character, who achieves nothing, leaves no legacy, is a failed scientist, a failed politician, a bad lover, is actually represents the failure of the Brazilian elite. Yes.

Melvyn Bragg (Host)

So how was it received when it was first published? You said that they didn't really understand it. They liked the novel, but they didn't understand it. Was it well received?

Anna Claudia Suriani da Silva

It was extremely well received. It was first published in a scientific magazine and then a sign of success that it was very quickly published in book form. And it had all sorts of positive reception that read in favor of this very witty, charming narrator.

Melvyn Bragg (Host)

You mean almost as though they were celebrating the fecklessness of the Brazilian elite?

Anna Claudia Suriani da Silva

Exactly, yes. And actually not seeing that a lot that is silenced. For example, Braskubas is a slave owner and he barely mentions slaves in his plot. So it's again that silence that tells everything. And that's what more reception, the reception of his novel from the 1950 onwards, start to open the eyes and see that the silence is more important than what is said.

Melvyn Bragg (Host)

Right. So reception changes as Brazil develops and people start to look at it in different ways. Claire Williams, the narrator here, is a man, Braskubas. But how strong are you women? In Machado's work, women are crucial.

Melvyn Bragg

So before Brej Kubo, before the memoirs, he published four other novels. This is his fifth novel, and the third and fourth have female protagonists and female. And the titles are female names, Elena and Yaya Garcia. And then from then on, he focuses on male narrators, almost all of them writing in the first person. So they are the ones with the voice, they are the ones with the agency, but we have to read between the lines to see what's going on with the women. So a lot of the female characters who these male narrators speak about are extremely beautiful. They have lovely long black hair, they have glittering eyes, they go to balls and they bare their shoulders and kissing them is close to heaven. And the men become bewitched until the point when they want to drop them. So we see it's a bit like Jane Austen, the way that the world of the women is that they have to capitalize on their beauty. They have to be practical and strategic in order to survive. And perhaps the best example of this is Capitou, who's the heroine of the seventh novel, Don Cajmojo. That title, dominant Kasmuro, has a double meaning which we can talk about later.

Melvyn Bragg (Host)

Well, do tell us now what it means.

Melvyn Bragg

Well, don is a title, as in Don Quixote. It's a title that means nobility, but here it's used ironically. And Kasmujo is a term which means grumpy, basically.

Melvyn Bragg (Host)

And so it's Sir Grumpy.

Melvyn Bragg

Yes, exactly. And in the first chapter of this novel, again, in the first chapter, that's where they give themselves, start to give themselves away. I think the reader gives them a bit of benefit of the doubt. But very soon we start to spot contradictions and realize that we need to think very hard about what they're saying before we trust them. So he tells us in the first chapter. Oh, a young poet called me Don Kazmujo when I didn't take his poems seriously and I accepted that title. But dear reader, don't go and look up in the dictionary. I will tell you what this means. It means somebody who is very quiet, a recluse. And of course, what does the reader do? The first thing we do is to go and look it up. And it means grumpy, stubborn. And I think this is a very early example of mansplaining. So we get these male characters who tell the women what to do, get very frustrated when they don't know what they're thinking and are seduced by their beauty. To a certain extent,

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Melvyn Bragg (Host)

Viv, we've just heard from Claire about Doncast Mulho. It doesn't sound like the way a lot of people describe it. Which is a modern Othello. Is that right? And why is it compared to Othello?

Viviani Carvalho da Annunziasson

Well, it's all about jealousy. It's all about this woman, Capitou, who has watery eyes under toe wise, who is very seductive and we don't hear her voice, we hear her through his eyes. But he's very jealous. He believes that his best friend Escobad had an affair with her and their child is actually his best friend and not his. And the end of the novel he goes and watches Othello. And after he comes out, he keeps thinking, well, poor Desdemona, she is not guilty, but what would have happened if she was guilty es capitou. And then he tries to think about ways to punish Capitou. And in many ways this Kazmujo has deceived readers and literary critics for 50 years. It took an American critic Helen Caldwell in the 80s and 90s to write the Brazilian Othello. And she pointed out to us, which was right in front of us, you shouldn't trust this first person narrator. We are hearing everything from his point of view.

Melvyn Bragg (Host)

That's right, because in Shakespeare's Othello, we know throughout the play that Desdemona is absolutely innocent. Here we don't know because we only have one voice, and that's Don Kazmujo. And so there is doubt. We simply don't know.

Viviani Carvalho da Annunziasson

But his name is Bento.

Melvyn Bragg (Host)

Santiago Bento and Don Casmuro are the same person.

Viviani Carvalho da Annunziasson

So Saint Iago. Iago is within his name. So Machado is a brilliant author. That he is. He's already showing us Iago is inside his mind.

Melvyn Bragg (Host)

So Don Kazmujo is both Othello and Iago at the same time, both the duped one and the person who's suggesting that Capitou is unfaithful. Anna Claudia. This is probably his best known work. How does it highlight his strengths as a writer?

Anna Claudia Suriani da Silva

It's a novel that shows how varied his style in prose is. So the young Machado was exposed to a tsunami of novels. He read at the same time. Stern, Balzac, Dickens, Cervantes. Different traditions of novels. And throughout his career, he experimented with different novel traditions. So in Doncas Muju, we see this all together. It's at the same time a sentimental novel. It's analogy. So he misses Capitou. So he has a sort of hate and love relationship with Capitou, and he misses her. He writes a memoir, which is at the same time an autobiography, but analogy.

Melvyn Bragg (Host)

So he doesn't kill Capitou, she leaves him for Europe.

Anna Claudia Suriani da Silva

It's also realist. So there are chapters in which you find very clear and realistic descriptions of the setting, the farm where he grew up, characters like Escobar, his mother, his aunt, and the dependent.

Melvyn Bragg (Host)

Can you just explain what the dependent is? Because this is an important concept in Brazil, but not so familiar here.

Anna Claudia Suriani da Silva

Yeah, so Mashad was a sort of dependent of this wealthy family that he lived with and supported him. So dependent is a free person that works, works and has a very complicated relationship with a wealthy family, because it's not an enslaved person and it has no blood ties with the family. So they have to make themselves useful for the family in order not to be sent out.

Melvyn Bragg (Host)

Viv, you wanted to come in briefly there.

Viviani Carvalho da Annunziasson

Yeah. Because I think that the drama is very important in Don Casmogo. Of course it is. From Shakespeare, Machado, justice was him, he began his career writing poetry, but also write in theatre. It's also very Brazilian, this type of performance. When you are under a patronage, some sort of system, you have to perform in a certain way that you're going to make your employer very much flattered.

Melvyn Bragg (Host)

It's a very theatrical society, Brazil. I remember when I first went there, I had come from working in the Balkans for a long time. Circumstances in Brazil, in terms of poverty and things like that, are comparable to the Balkans. But people still party all the time. It's a very lively society. And I wonder if Mashadou captures any of that liveliness as well.

Anna Claudia Suriani da Silva

I think so, because his novels and short stories, they all have a dark side, because of the plot, characters, owning slaves, etc. But they are joyful. And that reflects a characteristic of Brazilian Brazilian culture and Brazilians nowadays. If you go to Brazil for the first time, you think everybody's happy. And if you read these statistics, not really lots of people are not happy, but we are joyful. So in Brazil you learn very quickly to distinguish between being joyful and happy. And I think part of his wit and one contribution for the formation of Brazilian literature is exactly how to convey this very specific, unique Brazilian humor into literature, which was then, of course, expanded, incorporated by Lima Barreto, Jean do Rio and other writers that came after him.

Melvyn Bragg (Host)

Claire, do you think that he was writing for women? Were those his first readers, as it were? I mean, we know that he wrote for women's magazines. Do you think he was hoping that women would recognize what was in these novels?

Melvyn Bragg

Very possibly. I think he. He creates these very resourceful, practical, strategic female characters. Because they are the ones who are going to educate the sons and the Brazilians of the future. And clearly nobody wants the Brazilians of the future to be like Bento or Bras Kubert. Because society will fail just as they have failed. And I think one of the things that's interesting is that in these novels none of the protagonists have children who survive past the end of the. Of the book. They are the end of a generation in a way that's really important, because Brazil needed to reinvent itself, create new citizens who were forward looking.

Melvyn Bragg (Host)

Yes, of course, one of the cliches about Brazil is Brazil is the country of the future and it always will be. It's that elite, that middle class elite, who are often seen as preventing the development because of characters like Don Kazmuhu. Anna Claudia Machado's been criticized for not speaking out enough about slavery as clearly as he might have done. Is that A fair assessment.

Anna Claudia Suriani da Silva

Not really, but that's how he was read for many generations of critics. So, first of all, in his birth and death certificate, he appears as a white person, and he was considered by many contemporary critics as apolitical. He was even considered against the Republican, the change of the regime. He was considered a monarchist, just basically because he didn't believe in any changes. He was not really the person who would believe that changing abolishing slavery or changing from the monarchy to republic would change anything. He's writing for the elite and talking and embracing the point of view of the elite and leaving a lot unsaid about the working class and slavery. But as one of the critics says, Alfredo Bozzi, a Brazilian critic from the University of Sao Paulo, Machado worked around asymmetric relations that were very close to each other. So father against mother.

Melvyn Bragg (Host)

That's the story. That's the title of the story.

Anna Claudia Suriani da Silva

Yes, yes, It's a short story, and it was published in 1906, 18 years after the end of slavery. And Machado d' Yassis constructs a narrator presenting elements of slavery in what it was like in an anecdote about a slave catcher and a runaway slave woman. So you see the very asymmetric relations. The slave catcher has to catch the slave because it depends on that reward in order to keep his son. So we as readers, we have in one side the runaway slaver, who is a pregnant woman, Arminda, and the slave catcher whose wife is also pregnant. So as readers, the narrator doesn't pass any judgment, and we are put in this moral dilemma. So this was a way for him to confront the system, talk about it, expose without being judgmental, leaving for the reader to make the conclusions.

Melvyn Bragg (Host)

Claire, there's a sense in Machado's work that he really despises mediocrity. Where do you find examples of this?

Melvyn Bragg

There are lots of examples of this. And we've already touched on the fact that Bras Kubo achieved very little in his life, despite having all the wealth, all the training, all the education, all the charm to do this. So Brash is the ultimate underachiever. He wanted attention from everybody, but he did nothing really, to deserve it. He's somebody who. Who does nothing. And this, I think, is very frustrating for Mashada, but also for the reader. He has no initiative. You know, this is. This is what the new generation need. They need initiative. They need to take responsibility. And there's the last chapter of Brash Kubas is called Negatives. And it's all about what Brash didn't do in his life. So he said, says, I did not have children and thus did not bequeath to any creature the legacy of our misery. He's listed all the things that he didn't do, which is basically what the whole story is about.

Melvyn Bragg (Host)

And also I would say that although Machado is described as a realist, it seems to me as though there are the seeds of modernism in what Machado is doing as well. And a Claudio.

Anna Claudia Suriani da Silva

Yes. So I think Don CAS Mulu, for example, is a novel that is almost impressionist. We have the one version of a story and not exactly the access to facts because it's a first person narrator. So we are very close to. We can compare to James Joyce and also Lord Jim by Conrad. So we have the impressions of. Of the narrator. And the narrator writes about his relationship with a dead character exactly like in Lord Jim. So we don't have access to that character be, you know, in the case of Lord Jim and Machado, Jacis Capitou. So what we have is the impressions, the. The memories of the main narrator about that character. So we are getting very close to modernism. But Machado is still, still grounded in the 19th century. So his plots are very grounded in a patriarchic slave owning society and the characters reflect that society.

Melvyn Bragg (Host)

But he also, he writes quite economically, which, if I might say, is not necessarily a Brazilian trait of short books, short sentences, short chapters. He's a very efficient writer.

Melvyn Bragg

Yes, that's true. I mean, he's also been described as a postmodern. And I think that's something to do with the knowing nature of the way that the characters address you, as if, you know, you've just left the room and come back in and you are their dear reader.

Melvyn Bragg (Host)

Yes. That addressing of the audience is quite striking, isn't it?

Viviani Carvalho da Annunziasson

And it's to call attention to the medium of the novel. This is not reality. You have to engage with this in some sort of way because sometimes it's dear reader, sometimes it's damned reader or something like that. I don't like. Yeah, I don't like he read or like, don't look up that in the dictionary. Don't tell Virgilia about this. So there is like, Like. Yes. So what do we do with this? So he's, he's always spoken you like. Yeah, let's. In the theater, when you break the fourth wall and it's like, now you make your own decision about the novel, about the story, about society, about what you think of the world.

Melvyn Bragg (Host)

Claire, why do you, or indeed your Students, why do you find him so fresh today?

Melvyn Bragg

Well, I think he covers very juicy topics, such universal topics about love, about parenting. So sometimes I read Memorias Posthumous as a kind of parenting manual. How not to be, how not to, how not to bring up. Your children, do impose discipline. And then also Don Kashmuho is a kind of marriage counseling, can be read as a kind of marriage counseling guide. So it's very up to date in the topics that it's dealing with. And then I very much enjoy texts where the reader has to participate. Mashado's novels are full of gaps and holes and clues which the reader has to put together. Once we realize that the narrator is a narrator, he's not the author, we have to deal with that sort of, that. That gap, the fact that there are different versions of reality being portrayed here and when it. And we also realize that the. The narrators have their own agenda. So, for example, in Doncas Muho, Bento is trying to prove throughout the novel that in fact that Capitou is guilty. And you can read it if you're on Capitou's side, that she's innocent. Just some other things that I really enjoy and my students have enjoyed the fact that he's very entertaining. The texts are full of jokes. They're full of, like, typographical quirks. As Viv was mentioning before. There's a chapter called the Age Old Dialogue of Adam and Eve in the posthumous memoirs, which there are no words, there are ellipses and there is punctuation. And you can tell from the number of question marks and exclamation marks that this is an argument between lovers. Yeah. So we become part of the storytelling process and we sort of. We search for these clues and gaps and Easter eggs as well, like Easter eggs that they have in films where he makes a reference to a particular place or a quotation, which we then go and follow up and find out what extra information that adds to the story.

Melvyn Bragg (Host)

Okay, Viv, a big question for you. How did Mashado change Brazilian literature?

Viviani Carvalho da Annunziasson

That is very. I think he changed it forever. He gave us a body of work that will go on for another hundred years and we could still be writing about the short stories. There's still a lot to be written about his novels, and I think it's a love and hate relationship. So we have Mario Gendaragi, who was one of our greatest modernist novelists. He wrote in a very avant garde style. And he used to characterize Mashad U Jassis as this classic writer. Writer, very much a Greek, that wrote in the models of an European tradition. But I would argue against that, especially in terms of science. So Nicalje was talking about slavery, about the issue of race. At the end of the 19th century, we have the beginning of eugenics. Nina Rodriguez was writing in a similar way as Cesare Lombroso in Europe. Identifying the race with criminality, certain aspects of genetic predisposition. And of course, Mashado Jassis was not only Afro descendant, but he also had a strange illness, his condition, his illnesses, which was epilepsia. And it was believed that it was associated with degeneracy, with the mixture of races. And in a way, when Mashadou Decis wrote stories like the Alienist Julienista. He was trying to criticize also these new scientists. Of course, in the 19th century Brazil, we don't have a big difference between the intellectual or the scientists. They all kind of wrote about everything. And he identified a problem with this kind of discourse of the whitening of the race. And that was what happened in the beginning of the century in Brazil. The whitening of Brazil was a governmental project. To bring European immigrants from Portugal, Spain and Italy to create this kind of whitening of the race. And this will happen at the end of the 19th century, the generation of 1870s. And Machado, in one of his critical texts, which made him hated by many intellectuals like Silvio Romero, he said, this generation doesn't read Spencer and Darwin properly. If you want to understand it properly, you should apply a scientific method. This is exactly what he did in his schmoll short stories. He applied the scientific method to criticize what was happening in this change in society.

Melvyn Bragg (Host)

Thank you very much, Viv. Anna Claudia, finally for you. What do you think Machado's appeal is today? He remains the lodestar of Brazilian literature, Certainly among writers and scholars. He enjoys a huge reputation. But Machado is not that well known by a general public outside Brazil. Why do you think that's the case?

Anna Claudia Suriani da Silva

Well, I think the case is with Brazilian literature in general. Or, you know, literature in Portuguese language. We are. We have our big neighbor or neighbors that write in Spanish. And the United States, you know, is a big market for Spanish literature. So it's. But I think Machado and all the Brazilian writers like Clarice Lispecto, Giorgio Amado and Mashado, with the new wave of new translations, are now actually bringing Machado to the shop windows of libraries and to the interest of newspapers. So there are more articles. And for me, Machado is the type of writer that teaches how to read and how to doubt narratives, which is something very important in nowadays. So he teaches us basically how to be, not to trust the media system. So he's writing novels, he's writing for periodicals. He's criticizing the information that is circulating in Brazilian periodicals all the time. He's mocking those who actually own the newspapers, the bookshops. And this is an excellent reading skill to acquire. So we can read his novels for that reason, but also just for the pleasure of his prose, which is so diverse, witty, ironic. And readers who enjoy Maupassan, Gogo, Jane Austen, Dickens, they are going to find something interesting in Machado and enjoy the prosecution by itself.

Melvyn Bragg (Host)

My thanks to Claire Williams, Anna Claudia Suriani da Silva and Viviani Carvalho da Annunziasson. Next week, the Delian League. How Ancient Athens Used and abused Its alliance against Persia. Thank you for listening.

Melvyn Bragg

And the In Our Time podcast gets some extra time now with a few minutes of bonus material from Misha and

Viviani Carvalho da Annunziasson

his kids guests, the Walanista I have. I still wanted to talk about.

Melvyn Bragg (Host)

Well, talk about. Now is your. Now is your chance, Viv, to talk

Viviani Carvalho da Annunziasson

about Alanista the Alienist, I think is as important as bras and as important as dono. And it's usually looked down.

Melvyn Bragg (Host)

Why. Why is it termed?

Viviani Carvalho da Annunziasson

It's a short story. It's an. It's a novella.

Anna Claudia Suriani da Silva

It's.

Melvyn Bragg

It's.

Viviani Carvalho da Annunziasson

It's slightly shorter. And it's about this. The. The greatest doctor of. The greatest physician in Brazil, Portugal and of the two Spains. And he's basically the Don Quixote of science, who comes to. Who. Who returns from Europe to the village of Itaguay. And he wants to find the cause of madness. And he dedicates himself to the study of madness. He creates the greenhouse, the Casa Verde, where he starts to create a catalog of illnesses in a very absurd way. He starts to put everybody in this Casa Verdi. When everybody rebels against him and nothing happens to him, he continues putting people in his mental asylum. At the end of the story, he realizes there is no mad person in a Taguay. I am the only mad person. And then he locks himself up and dies alone. And it dies alone. And it's one of Machado's critique to the new vision of Brazil, of this intellectuality which is replacing religion by science, positivism, creating a new society, but reproducing the same mistakes, reproducing the same social relationships, the same structure.

Melvyn Bragg (Host)

So it seems to me that one of the real strengths of his work is that Those things which he critiques aspects of Brazilian society, the elite, the way the elite ignores the mass of other Brazilians, primarily Afro Brazilians, the inequality, the entitlement. These are phenomena which, when you go to Brazil today, they're all still there, they're all visible. Machado was writing about Brazil 100 years ago, but he's also writing about Brazil, Brazil today. Is that a fair enough comment?

Viviani Carvalho da Annunziasson

And I think that is. He, he captured that zeitgeist of Brazil, but he also captures our way of dealing with things, which is sometimes we joke, we make, we are, we are very much about not dealing with things directly. We, we kind of wit, we gossip about it and then we move on.

Melvyn Bragg (Host)

And he's initially seen as a romantic author with a capital R. And then he becomes what's described as a realist author. But what does realism mean within the Brazilian context?

Viviani Carvalho da Annunziasson

It's very strange that a dead author is the father of realism in Brazil and. And that shows a lot about us as Brazilians. Well, we are realist, but yeah, that was before the Latin American magic realism. And in a way, this way of dealing with things in a very oblique way.

Melvyn Bragg (Host)

Oblique way, exactly. That's right.

Melvyn Bragg

The great British researcher into Machado de Esseach, John Gledson, wrote a book about the deceptive realism of Don CAS Mujo. And that's what it is. It's skewed, it's oblique, it's realism with joy, with moments of shade and shock. And I was thinking that the films of Clbermendon Sophilo, who's a contemporary filmmaker, may have something. May be sort of a like 21st century reinvention of this idea of presenting a realist version of urban Brazil, but with little pockets of magical realism. So shadows of little Afro Brazilian boys running across the screen. Or there's a famous scene with a. In his film, neighbouring sounds with suddenly a fountain of blood, which there are lots of allusions to the slave owning past. And he writes films about landowners in contemporary Brazil.

Viviani Carvalho da Annunziasson

Yeah, in the northeast of the country where this reality is much more present than in Rio or Sao Paulo.

Melvyn Bragg (Host)

So it seems there was a. I mean, what happens in the 1930s in Brazil is that you start to get the creation of the myth of Brazil being a non racial society where everyone, it doesn't matter what you're born, you have the same equal opportunities. But that of course doesn't reflect the economic reality in Brazil. But tell me, Machado was, as you pointed out, Viv, he was writing at a time where there was this huge Campaign to whiten Brazilian society. Who was driving that amongst the elites? Why did they want to whiten Brazilian society?

Viviani Carvalho da Annunziasson

I think it was more towards the 20th century, in the 1870s. It was. Was the beginning of this wave of new ideas that arrived in the country from Europe. And eugenics was one of them. And one of the explanations why Brazil was underdeveloped was behind Europe was because we were mostly a black nation or an Afro Brazilian race. And that was because of Jaime Dunina's Rodriguez work on the CR on the Brazilian criminal, for example. He would analyze criminals in Brazil as being predisposed to that. And that was the Republican government. Well, we need to make sure that Brazil is not going to make this mistake again.

Melvyn Bragg (Host)

So they were associating modernity with whiteness and Europeanness. I have to say that attitude towards criminality and Afro Brazilian persists to this day in Brazil, sadly so. And in terms of the literature after Machado, Brazilian literature must have gained quite a deal of self confidence because of his work. And he becomes recognized as the sort of this towering figure fairly early on in Brazil. Would you see people like Jorge Armado, who's writing a little later or later on Clarissi Lispector. These are also great, great figures of Brazilian literature. Do they all admit a debt to Machado?

Viviani Carvalho da Annunziasson

I think not directly, but you can certainly. Lima Barreto, for example, example, an author that has quite a great deal of humor, of critical voice. Mario Chandraji, for example, he criticized Mashael Jessis. But if you, if you analyze it, if you read his first novels, it's. It's very much psychological analysis that are present in Machado from his. The beginning of his. Of his work, when he was a romantic. His greatest difference between him and Jose Gia Lencade was the psychological analysis of these female characters.

Melvyn Bragg (Host)

Okay, final question before we get our tea and coffee. Much deserved. What would you recommend to readers who don't know Mashadou Jasis? What should you read?

Melvyn Bragg

First Class Claire I. I love Don Kazmooho. I mean, I really love the character of Capitou. And I always hope that I'm going to spot a clue every time I read it that's going to prove that she was innocent.

Viviani Carvalho da Annunziasson

I will go for the. The aliens. There is a. There is a good translation now and I think it is. It's short, you can read over the weekend and it.

ZipRecruiter Advertiser

That's.

Viviani Carvalho da Annunziasson

It's massively entertaining and extremely relevant for our society.

Anna Claudia Suriani da Silva

Anna Claudia Since I cannot choose Donkas Muhu, I'm not going to repeat It I would say father against mother. And another short story in which you know the main character is a woman chopped on heads. They all have been translated into English, so you can see the both sides of Mashallah. You can also learn a lot about Rio de Janeiro. Social life in the old town of Rio de Janeiro. Rudo Vido Consumer habits in Rio de Janeiro with chapter on hat.

Melvyn Bragg (Host)

Rio's already the capital at this point.

Melvyn Bragg

Yes, yes.

Melvyn Bragg (Host)

So no longer Salvador.

Melvyn Bragg

And if you get the chance to go to Rio, you should visit the Cafe Colombo, which is is where Machado used to hang out with. And It's a wonderful 19th century cafe, still open today, with beautiful dark paneled walls and wall length mirrors.

Melvyn Bragg (Host)

Very glittery.

Melvyn Bragg

Yes, it is. You have to queue. And you should also visit the Cafe Capitou, which is in Cosmive up the hill where you can purchase a pena da gagliofa, the pen of mirthful merriment filled with the ink of melancholy. Which is what Machado says, what Brash says he's writing his story with.

Melvyn Bragg (Host)

Well, on that point.

Jamie Bartlett

Would you like tea or coffee?

Melvyn Bragg (Host)

Tea, please.

Melvyn Bragg

Tea, please.

Viviani Carvalho da Annunziasson

Tea.

Anna Claudia Suriani da Silva

Tea.

Jamie Bartlett

Four teas. Thank you very much.

Melvyn Bragg

In Our Time with Misha Glennie is produced by Simon Tillotson and it's a BBC Studios production.

Jamie Bartlett

I'm Jamie Bartlett and for BBC Radio 4, I'll be looking at how fakery took over the world. No, no, hang on, hang on. Sorry, you're not Jamie Bartlett. I'm Jamie Bartlett. Oh, really? Well, who am I then? I'm afraid you're not real, pal. You're just an imitation chatbot I created to help me make this series on modern fakery and why it's everywhere. Sounds good. What's going to be in it? Well, There's a lot. 1980s professional wrestling, dodgy academics, AI psychosis, Covid vaccines, skeptics. What's it called? Everything is Fake and Nobody Cares. With me, Jamie Bartlett and me, Jimmy Bartlett. Listen. First on BBC Sounds.

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