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Machado de Assis Joaquim Maria
(1839–1908)

Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis was a Brazilian realist novelist, poet and short-story writer. He is widely regarded as the most important writer of Brazilian literature and his works had a great influence on Brazilian literary schools of the late 19th century and 20th century. Harold Bloom and Woody Allen are some of his admirers; Bloom calls him the greatest black writer in the history of Western literature (one should note, however, that in Brazil Machado would hardly be called black: see discussion on race in Brazil)

Son of Francisco José de Assis (a half-black housepainter, descendant of freed slaves) and Maria Leopoldina Machado de Assis (a Portuguese washerwoman), Machado de Assis lost both his mother and his only sister at an early age. Machado is said to have learned to write by himself, and he used to take classes for free will. He learned to speak French first and English later, both fluently. He started to work for newspapers in Rio de Janeiro, where he published his first works and met established writers such as Joaquim Manuel de Macedo.

In 1869 Machado de Assis married Carolina Xavier de Novaes, a Portuguese descendant of a noble family. Soon the writer got a public job and this stability permitted him to write his best works.

Machado de Assis began by writing popular novels which sold well, much in the late style of José de Alencar, but are not read much nowadays. His style changed in the 1880s, and it is for the sceptical, ironic, comedic but ultimately pessimistic works he wrote after this that he is remembered (the first novel in his 'new style' was Epitaph for a Small Winner, known by the new Gregory Rabassa translation as Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas -- a literal translation of the original title, Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas). In their brilliant comedy and ironic playfulness, these resemble in some ways the contemporary works of George Meredith in the United Kingdom, and Eça de Queirós in Portugal, but Machado de Assis' work have a far bleaker emotional undertone. Assis' work has also been compared with Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy.

Machado de Assis could speak English fluently and translated many works of William Shakespeare and other English writers into Portuguese. This explains his numerous allusions to Shakespearean plays, John Milton and the overall likeness to Sterne and Meredith. He is also known as a master of the "short story", having written classics of the genre in the Portuguese languages, such as O Alienista and Missa do Galo.

Together with other writers and intellectuals, Machado de Assis founded the Brazilian Academy of Letters in 1896 and was its president from 1897 to 1908.

Brazil, 1940, Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis

Brazil, 1958, Machado de Assis

Brazil, 1989, Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis

Cuba, 1989, Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis