Leben des Galilei (Interpretation)

Overview: Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, often known as Machado de Assis, Machado, or Bruxo do Cosme Velho, (June 21, 1839, Rio de Janeiro—September 29, 1908, Rio de Janeiro) was a Brazilian novelist, poet and short story writer. He is widely regarded as the most important writer of Brazilian literature. However, he did not gain widespread popularity outside Brazil in his own lifetime.
"A palm tree, seeing me troubled and divining the cause, murmured in its branches that there was nothing wrong with fifteen-year old boys getting into corners with girls of fourteen; quite the contrary, youths of that age have no other function, and corners were made for that very purpose. It was an old palm-tree, and I believed in old palm-trees even more than in old books. Birds, butterflies, a cricket trying out its summer song, all the living things of the air were of the same opinion." So begins this extraordinary love story between Bento and Capitu, childhood sweethearts who grow up next door to each other in Rio de Janeiro in the 1850s.
Like other great nineteenth century novels--The Scarlet Letter, Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary--Machado de Assis's Dom Casmurro explores the themes of marriage and adultery. But what distinguishes Machado's novel from the realism of its contemporaries, and what makes it such a delightful discovery for English-speaking readers, is its eccentric and wildly unpredictable narrative style. Far from creating the illusion of an orderly fictional "reality," Dom Casmurro is told by a narrator who is disruptively self-conscious, deeply subjective, and prone to all manner of marvelous digression. As he recounts the events of his life from the vantage of a lonely old age, Bento continually interrupts his story to reflect on the writing of it: he examines the aptness of an image or analogy, considers cutting out certain scenes before taking the manuscript to the printer, and engages in a running, and often hilarious, dialogue with the reader. "If all this seems a little emphatic, irritating reader," he says, "it's because you have never combed a girl's hair, you've never put your adolescent hands on the young head of a nymph..." But the novel is more than a performance of stylistic acrobatics. It is an ironic critique of Catholicism, in which God appears as a kind of divine accountant whose ledgers may be balanced in devious as well as pious ways. It is also a story about love and its obstacles, about deception and self-deception, and about the failure of memory to make life's beginning fit neatly into its end. First published in 1900, Dom Casmurro is one of the great unrecognized classics of the turn of the century by one of Brazil's greatest writers. The popularity of Machado de Assis in Latin America has never been in doubt and now, with the acclaim of such critics and writers as Susan Sontag, John Barth, and Tony Tanner, his work is finally receiving the worldwide attention it deserves.
Newly translated and edited by John Gledson, with an afterword by Joao Adolfo Hansen, this Library of Latin America edition is the only complete, unabridged, and annotated translation of the novel available. It offers English-speaking readers a literary genius of the rarest kind.

"At last, a new translation of Machado's masterpiece that is complete (unlike Scott-Buccleuch's 1992 version - see HLAS 54:5078 - which omitted key chapters) and highly readable. Gledson produces a much-needed, graceful and accurate translation, attentive to Machado's tone and rhythms. Hansen's Afterword is excellent"--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 58.

Annotation Like other great nineteenth century novels--The Scarlet Letter, Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary--Machado de Assis'sDom Casmurroexplores the themes of marriage and adultery. But what distinguishes Machado's novel and what makes it such a delightful discovery for English-speaking readers, is its eccentric and wildly unpredictable narrative style. As he recounts the events of his life from the vantage of a lonely old age, the narrator Bento continually interrupts his story to reflect on the writing of it. But the novel is more than a performance of stylistic acrobatics. It is an ironic critique of Catholicism, in which God appears as a kind of divine accountant whose ledgers may be balanced in devious as well as pious ways. It is also a story about love and its obstacles, about deception and self-deception, and about the failure of memory to make life's beginning fit neatly into its end. This crisp new translation by John Gledson is the only complete, unabridged, and annotated edition available of one of the most distinctive novels of the turn of the century "Like other great nineteenth century novels--The Scarlet Letter, Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary--Machado de Assis's Dom Casmurro explores the themes of marriage and adultery. But what distinguishes Machado's novel and what makes it such a delightful discovery for English-speaking readers, is its eccentric and wildly unpredictable narrative style. As he recounts the events of his life from the vantage of a lonely old age, the narrator Bento continually interrupts his story to reflect on the writing of it. But the novel is more than a performance of stylistic acrobatics. It is an ironic critique of Catholicism, in which God appears as a kind of divine accountant whose ledgers may be balanced in devious as well as pious ways. It is also a story about love and its obstacles, about deception and self-deception, and about the failure of memory to make life's beginning fit neatly into its end. "--Provided by the publisher Dom Casmurro, by the Brazilian novelist Machado de Assis (originally published in 1900), is one of the great unrecognized classics of the turn of the century. This new translation provides an informative introduction and notes by John Gledson, which set the novel in its historical context, as well as an afterword by the Brazilian scholar Joao Adolfo Hansen. **Dom Casmurro**, publicado pela primeira vez em 1899, é um dos romances realistas mais importantes de Machado de Assis, considerado por alguns sua obra-prima. O livro narra a história de Bento Gonçalves desde sua juventude, abordando temas como religião, adultério e ambiguidade moral. One evening just lately, as I was coming back from town to Engenho Novo* on the Central line train, I met a young man from this neighborhood, whom I known by sight: enough to raise my hat to him.