by Douglas Messerli
Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, Quincas Borba, translated from the Portuguese by Clotilde Wilson as
Philosopher or Dog? (Quincas Borba)
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux/Noonday Press, 1954)
The major character of Brazilian novelist Machado de Assis’ great classic, Quincas Borba—translated into English as Philosopher or Dog?—is a kind of everyman, an innocent who is deluded and ultimately goes mad, but is far from being “dim-witted” as the book’s jacket describes him. Rubião has once been a director of a boy’s school, we are told, and has closed the school in order to care for a friend, Quincas Borba, a philosopher who is ailing. He comes under the influence of the philosopher in attempting to comprehend certain of his teachings, most notably Borba’s theories of “Humanitism” which maintain, among other things, that the major principle of life is humanity, a “unique, universal, eternal, common, indivisible and indestructible force that sums up the universe, and the universe is man.” As does Candide’s Pangloss, Borba, accordingly, argues in his circular logic that, given such a role, the human race necessarily must behave as it behaves, fighting for survival and dominance, even war being seen as a beneficial preservative.
Although near
death, Borba suddenly determines to travel from his home in Barbacena to Rio de
Janeiro to take care of business affairs, leaving the care of his dog, whom
Quincas Borba has named after himself, to Rubião. After several weeks, the
friend receives a letter from the philosopher, wherein Borba claims to be Saint
Augustine, and a week later the old man dies, willing his entire estate—along
with the care of his dog—to his disciple.
Although Rubião
may not thoroughly comprehend the teachings of the philosopher, I have chosen
the word “disciple” because the meandering plot that follows makes it clear
that the author is in some manner retelling the story of Quincas
Borba—detailing his descent from sanity to lunacy—in the tales of Rubião and
his adventures in the great capitol city that follow.
Machado de Assis’
novel is nearly overstuffed with humanity representing, in one form or another,
the principles of “Humanitism,” characters fighting for survival and dominance,
most often at the one another’s expense. On the train to Rio, Rubião meets a
young couple, the predominant figures in his series of adventures, an
intelligent young man, Christiano de Almeida e Palha, and his young wife
Sophia. Enchanted with the meek and quiet Sophia and her exuberant, young
husband, Rubião readily tells them of his newfound wealth and reveals his
plans. The man is so disarmingly innocent that Palha warns him not to tell his
affairs to strangers: “Discretion and kind faces don’t always go together.”
Indeed, they do
not! For, although Rubião quickly makes friends with the couple, and as a
regular visitor in their house, he is soon asked for loans of money, requests
he is only too ready to grant. The seemingly shy woman is revealed as a
flirtatious wife, fully aware of her own beauty and only too ready to use it in
conquering the hearts of the males she encounters, including Rubião. In his
innocence, however, he confuses cultural flirtatiousness with romance, and
crosses the line by admitting his love to Sophia, who responds with distressed
shock. The friendship between the couple and Rubião soon resumes, in part,
because the young Palha is still in his debt. An even closer relationship soon
develops as Rubião becomes a partner in Palha’s new importing business.
Rubião has also
made friends with Dr. Camacho, a politician/journalist whose politics seems to
consist of being on the right side of every cause. He too is happy to consort
with the new visitor to the city, particularly since Rubião is only too happy
to fund his newspaper. Others avow friendship, rewarded with nightly gatherings
at Rubião’s house with lavish meals and drink.
Sophia attempts to
marry her cousin, now living with her and Palha, to Rubião without success;
ironically she is now courted at the dinner event by Carlos Maria, a young man
far more handsome than Rubião, whose proclamations of love to Sophia are
received far differently from the older man’s. But Carlos Maria, unlike the
smitten Rubião, is not truly in love with anyone except himself; his marriage
to Sophia’s cousin, Maria Benedicta, is perfect, for she has such low
self-esteem that she is quite willing to serve as a submissive wife and accept
his common outbursts of dissatisfaction with her and their life together.
Meanwhile, Palha,
who now serves as executor to Rubião’s finances, is increasingly impatient with
the man’s readiness to give away his fortune, including gifts of jewelry to his
own wife. As Palha becomes more and more successful—despite the fact that he
has still not repaid his own debt to Rubião—he ends their partnership, perhaps
so that he will not have share his own wealth. The nightly dinners at Rubião’s
home continue, despite the fact that the host is often late or absent from the
events. Just as Rubião has been misled in affairs of the heart with Sophia and
others, so is he misled in politics by Camacho, who insists that Rubião will
soon be elected to government office. In short, ideas of grandeur gradually
expand in Rubião’s mind, as he begins gradually to lose his sense of
perspective, harboring a suspicion that Quincas Borba, the philosopher, may
actually reside in the dog for whom he has become the guardian.
Numerous other
characters come and go in Rubião’s increasingly frenetic life—figures who, like
nearly all the Rio de Janeiro citizens the author presents, struggle for what
Quincas Borba has described as “the potatoes” of life, not only the true
necessities but what they mistakenly perceive as necessary for their
pleasures—money, love, class, power. Is it any wonder that Rubião, who has been
only generous and open in all his relationships, should also desire these
things?
Convinced he is
Napoleon III, Rubião alternates between moments of sanity and utter lunacy,
ultimately going along the streets greeting his imaginary subjects, followed by
gangs of mocking children, including a young boy whose life he once saved from
being overrun by a carriage. Given the behavior of the humans into which he has
been thrown, Rubião, like the philosopher before him, becomes “someone else,” a
being at war with the world about him.
Now without money,
Rubião has little to offer his former friends, who half-heartedly (the easily
distracted and comically portrayed Dona Fernanda being, perhaps, the one
exception) seek treatment for him; but as he comes close to being cured, Rubião
determines to return to his old home in Barbacena, where the “fever” once more
overcomes him. Although he has taken in by an old friend, he dies laughing: “To
the victor, the potatoes!” The dog—or is he, after all, the true philosopher,
himself seeking attention and love—dies three days later in the street.
Machado de Assis’s
brilliant satire is at once a loving acceptance of the condition of man, and a
somewhat cynical view of mankind’s intentions. As the author, himself, explains
the apparent contradiction: “The Southern Cross, which the beautiful Sophia
would not gaze upon as Rubião begged her to do, is too high in the heavens to
distinguish between man’s laughter and tears.”
Los Angeles,
August 20, 2006
Reprinted from EXPLORINGfictions
(June 2009).
