Resumen de Machado de Assis: author of "Don Quijote" versus Brás Cubas: author of "Memórias póstumas"
It is no longer a novelty to consider the relation between the work of Machado de Assis and Cervantine literature, especially Don Quijote. Whether in terms of character resemblances or narrative techniques, the presence of the mad man from La Mancha has been identified in Quincas Borba, Dom Casmurro, O alienista, "Noite de Almirante," and Memorias postumas de Brás Cubas by scholars in Brazil and abroad. Carlos Fuentes, for example, states that "Machado asume, en Brasil, la lección de Cervantes, la tradición de La Mancha que olvidaron, por más homenajes que cívica y escolarmente se rindiesen al Quijote, los novelistas hispanoamericanos, de México a Argentina" (9-10). According to Fuentes, such a tradition "históricamente [...] la inaugura Cervantes como un contratiempo a la modernidad triunfadora, una novela excéntrica de la España contrarreformista, obligada a fundar otra realidad mediante la imaginación y el lenguaje, la burla y la mezcla de género" (10).
The studies conducted thus far, however, hardly seem to exhaust the subject, and so the present work examines Machado's novel Memorias postumas de Brás Cubas in order to offer more possibilities for reading such a relationship. Specifically, I show how close attention to the dialogue between the works of Machado and Cervantes serves to emphasize the role of Cubas as the author of his own memories,2 the effect of which is to challenge the tendency of scholars to locate the work primarily within an English literary tradition. By way of achieving this goal, I will highlight shared aspects of Memorias postumas and Don Quijote with an eye toward establishing literary influence and examining the nature of narrative authority.
