Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis was a pioneer Brazilian novelist, poet, playwright and short story writer. He was widely regarded as the greatest writer of Brazilian literature, nevertheless he did not gain widespread popularity outside Brazil in his own lifetime.
Background
Joaquim Machado de Assis was born on June 21, 1839 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. His parents were Francisco José de Assis, a mulatto wall painter, the son of freed slaves, and Maria Leopoldina da Câmara Machado, an Azorean Portuguese washerwoman. He was born in Livramento country house, owned by Dona Maria José de Mendonça Barroso Pereira, widow of senator Bento Barroso Pereira, who protected his parents and allowed them to live with her. Dona Maria José became Joaquim's godmother; her brother-in-law, commendatory Joaquim Alberto de Sousa da Silveira, was his godfather, and both were paid homage by giving their names to the baby. Machado had a sister who died young. Joaquim studied in a public school, but was not a good student. While helping to serve masses, he met Father Silveira Sarmento, who became his Latin teacher and also a good friend. When Joaquim was ten years old, his mother died, and his father took him along as he moved to São Cristóvão. Francisco de Assis met the mulatta Maria Inês da Silva, and they married in 1854.
Education
Joaquim had classes in a school for girls only, thanks to his stepmother who worked there making candies. At night he learned French with an immigrant baker.
Career
On 12 January 1855, Francisco de Paula published the poem Ela ("She") written by Joaquim, then 15 years old, in the newspaper Marmota Fluminense. In the following year, he was hired as typographer's apprentice in the Imprensa Oficial (the Official Press, charged with the publication of Government measures), where he was encouraged as a writer by Manuel Antônio de Almeida, the newspaper's director and also a novelist. There he also met Francisco Otaviano, journalist and later liberal senator, and Quintino Bocaiúva, who decades later would become known for his role as a republican orator.
Francisco Otaviano hired Machado to work on the newspaper Correio Mercantil as a proofreader in 1858. He continued to write for the Marmota Fluminense and also for several other newspapers, but he did not earn much and had a humble life. He was invited by Bocaiúva to work at his newspaper Diário do Rio de Janeiro in 1860.
With the Liberal Party's ascension to power about that time, Machado thought he might receive a patronage position that would help him improve his life. To his surprise, aid came from the Emperor Dom Pedro II, who hired him as director-assistant in the Diário Oficial in 1867, and knighted him as an honor. In 1888 Machado was made an officer of the Order of the Rose.
Machado managed to rise in his bureaucratic career, first in the Agriculture Department. Three years later, he became the head of a section in it. He published two poetry books: Falenas, in 1870, and Americanas, in 1875. Their weak reception made him explore other literary genres.
Achievements
In 1897 he founded and became the first President of the Brazilian Academy of Letters.
Works such as "Quincas Borba", "Dom Casmurro", "Esaú e Jacó" and "Memorial de Aires", considered masterpieces, were successes with both critics and the public. In 1893 he published "A Missa do Galo", considered his greatest short story.
Machado de Assis was included on American literary critic Harold Bloom's list of the greatest 100 geniuses of literature, alongside writers such as Dante, Shakespeare and Cervantes.
Joaquim avoided discussing politics. Machado had no sympathy towards republicanism, as he considered himself a liberal monarchist.
Views
Urbane, aristocratic, cosmopolitan, aloof, and cynical, Machado ignored such social questions as Brazilian independence and the abolition of slavery. He failed to share Brazilian enthusiasm for local colour and self-conscious nationalism.
Machado viewed human nature as fundamentally irrational and found self-love to be the only consistent motivating force in human behavior. While characterizing this worldview as pessimistic, critics have also noted that Machado’s fiction conveys amusement rather than bitterness toward the folly of selfish, passion-driven humanity.
Personality
Joaquim was sickly, epileptic, and a stutterer. He was left melancholic, pessimistic and fixed on death.
Physical Characteristics:
He was described as unprepossessing in appearance.
Quotes from others about the person
The greatest and most complete man of letters in Brazil.
Interests
Writers
Laurence Sterne, William Shakespeare, Lord Byron and Jonathan Swift
Connections
In 1868 Machado met the Portuguese Carolina Augusta Xavier de Novais, five years older than him. She was the sister of his colleague Faustino Xavier de Novais, for whom he worked on the magazine O Futuro. Afflicted with a stammer, Machado was extremely shy, short and lean, but he was very intelligent and well learned. He married Carolina on 12 November 1869; although her parents Miguel and Adelaide, and her siblings disapproved because Machado was mulatto and she was of purely European ancestry. They had no children.
