“A vida apertada numa hora” – Machado de Assis: short story writer and theorist

Abstract

Considering the Machadian tales, in its two phases of production, we intend to analyze how the author of Brás Cubas establishes, although diffusely, the bases for a theory of the short story, in agreement with the main theorists of the subject. Even though he has not formally theorized at some moments in his work, especially in the introductions and warnings of his short narrative collections, the Brazilian writer makes some important considerations about the genre, which will guide his production as a short story especially since Papéis avulsos. The number of short stories written by Machado de Assis demonstrates a preference for short and condensed narratives, productive ground in which the author was able to weave his analyzes and develop his writing and inquiring skills of social and psychological life. The diversity of themes and formal resources that the author will use in his narratives demonstrates how each of the texts formulates, in its construction, a reflection on the very feature that the genre may assume. By his ability to “tighten his life” by condensing the representation of reality in the short form of the story, Machado establishes the basis of his work: the particular – the Brazilian reality of the nineteenth century, and the universal – the human being and his essentially contradictory character. Considering these factors, the objective is to analyze how Machado’s way of constructing these narratives fixes the main guidelines of the genre in Brazilian literature, according to Lima Sobrinho (1967), and opens the way for its diffusion and consolidation during the twentieth century. After these explanations, the work will analyze the modalities of the Machadian short story, with emphasis on those denominated by Alfredo Bosi as “theory tales”, and will explain its characteristic way of artistic configuration.