saved by refusing to live
by Douglas Messerli
Machado de Assis Resurrrection, translated into English
by Karen Sherwood Sotelino (Pittsburgh: Pennsylvania, 2013)
His first novel, Resurrection
of 1872, translated by Karen Sherwood Sotelino for the first time into English,
has nearly all the elements that make Machado de Assis’ work so popular, the
major difference being that here the scale is much less epic that in his later
works, and its lack of complexity slightly disappoints. Nonetheless, is does
give us a kind structural glimpse into the underlying themes in those later
masterworks.
The plot of Resurrection—and in this author’s books, plot is crucial—focuses on
a retired doctor, Félix, and the two women he loves, Raquel, and the beautiful
and well-to-do young widow, Lívia. Minor but also important characters include
Lívia’s brother Viana and a mutual friend Meneses. Numerous other figures fill
the rooms for the book’s several parties, but only one other figure stands out,
the villain of Machado de Assis’ tale, Luís Batista, a man who has been spurned
by the widow.
Although the story of these figures’
comings and goings are the heart of this Brazilian fiction, the action is often
paired down in this work so that the author can center his attentions on the
psychological conditions of his three major figures. Both women are loved and
in love with the so-called “hero,” both of whom he, in time, rejects, because
he himself—as we gradually come to discover—has no heart, justifying his
rejections and his unperceived misogamy to be the fault of the two
irreproachable women. And, in that respect, although the book does not out
rightly say so or even hint at it, Félix can be seen as a kind early fin de siècle-like dandy, a man somewhat
like characters out of works by Wilde or Huysmans, while not quite recognizing
himself as homosexual.
But in this case, it hardly matters.
For the doctor’s core problem, as the author makes clear, is his inability to
live life. If we, as readers, might be able to forgive his rejection of the
fragile Raquel in order to marry Lívia, we cannot forgive Félix for believing
an anonymous letter castigating the widow for driving her husband and others to
despair because of her unfaithfulness. The letter, in fact, has been sent by
Luís Batista, in revenge for Lívia’s dismissal of him. And it is Félix’s reaction
to that Iago-like act that tells us of the doctor’s inability to love. Even
though he later discovers the letter to have been Batista’s lie, Félix
continues in the illusion:
When all had calmed down
in his heart, Félix naively confessed
to himself that the
breach in his love, as painful as it had been, was
yet the most reasonable
solution. The doctor’s love experienced
posthumous doubts. The
veracity of the letter that had prevented
the marriage, with the
passing of years, not only seemed possible
to him, but even
probable. One day Meneses told Félix he had
ultimate proof that Luís
Batista had written the letter. Not only
did Félix refuse his
testimony, he did not even ask what proof he
had.
Machado de Assis sums up his hero:
“Nature placed him among the class of men who are cowardly and visionary, whom
the poets describe as ‘losing the good for fear of seeking it.’”
So does this brilliant author transform
his “hero” into a kind “anti-hero,” a figure who begins the work as a possible
romantic but, in the end, becomes a modern everyman unable to act because of
inner opposing forces. The title of his work becomes ironic as what that hero
perceives as having “saved” him has, in fact, prevented him from having lived a
full life.
While Machado de Assis wrote into the 20th
century, however, he never adapted the modernist transparent narrative
strategies as did Henry James, and later, Marcel Proust, Virigina Woolf, and
William Faulkner adopted. If his story-telling often takes us into a
psychological world akin to modernist writing, Machado de Assis remained an
interruptive narrator, which is one of the reasons I so like his work. When
Menses first convinces Félix that Batista is behind the letter, for example,
the author intrudes:
Reader, let us understand
each other. I am the one telling this story,
and I can assure you the
letter was indeed from Luís Batista, However,
the doctor’s
conviction…was less solid and well thought out than
befitted the state of
affairs.
In short, Machado de Assis
humorously criticizes his characters for believing what they do—even when they
are right!
At other times, the writer uses his
authorial powers to speed up or slow down his narrative as in a film:
It was mid-December. The
wedding date was imminent. Everything
required a swift
solution.
Like several writers of the late
19th century and early decades of the 20th—Zola, Stein, Lewis, Barnes,
etc—Machado de Assis retained his authorial voice in order to entertain the
reader and to point to his themes in a way that would be “picked up” again by
post-modern fiction writers. Accordingly, while some readers may see these
intrusions as “old-fashioned,” they are in fact original and fresh, at least to
my way of thinking, helping to enrich his art. If Resurrection is far from being a major work, it reveals much about
this great writer’s literary methods.
Los Angeles, March 8, 2014
Reprinted from Rain Taxi (August 2014) [on-line].
No comments:
Post a Comment