Bruxaria do início ao fim: o Humanitismo como projeto filosófico-(meta)ficcional de Machado de Assis

Abstract

Machado de Assis, our greatest writer, is commonly known as Wizard of Cosme Velho (Bruxo do Cosme Velho). This paper aims at evidencing his main witchcraft, which is to turn Literature real, problematizing the concepts of reality and fiction. The writer s work, in the light of Adorno's Aesthetic Theory, intends to elevate fiction as a form of knowledge as important as any other, whether it be scientific, philosophical, etc. To do so, he gives life to his characters, real for they are aesthetical, since Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas (Memórias póstumas de Brás Cubas), a book that was written, from another world , by a being that can no longer be considered one, and who presents one of the axioms that will guide this research: The work itself is everything. Thus, the defunct-author, from eternity, moves spatially, temporally and ontologically as an adequate conduct to put reality under threat and to enhance the transmission of knowledge offered by fiction. Paradoxically, the Humanitism will be understood, therefore, beyond Quincas Borba s philosophy; it will be understood as Machado de Assis own literary project, which intersects all his work, from Resurrection (Ressurreição) to Counselor Ayres' Memorial (Memorial de Aires), characterizing a work in progress . The first person singular employed by the memoirist Brás Cubas, according to the encomiastic project in favor of fiction, enables the criticism to the notion of being, in dialogue with Nietzsche, in the sense that the narrative, inherently fictional, is everything, including the beings who narrate and play they own roles as characters, with no authorial voice. Machado's collaboration on the German philosopher s thought supplants him, since Humanitas states that "the principle of things is nothing but the same man divided by all men". In addition, the hypothesis in favor of fiction is complemented by the idea that Brás Cubas Plaster (Emplasto Brás Cubas) − the wonderful idea of the defunct memoirist, and whose function is to cure humanity of hypochondria − is the very act of narrating. Therefore, the thesis that stands for the fact that Machado s plaster is a machadian metafiction that permeates, in equal measure, the entire work of the wizard. This literary choice "unifies" Machado de Assis, commonly divided into Machadinho and Machadão by critics. The latter exists in continuity with the former. Both are one, the same entity, divided, as it occurs on his work. Humanitism is a fictional philosophy that emerges, with power, from Posthumous Memories of Brás Cubas, but it is possible, in textual terms, to verify its genesis in the novels of Machadinho. It is in continuity that the novels of the writer are metaficcionally written, such as the reading of the importance of the Plaster to the romanesque architecture now defended. Metafiction, however, transcends Machado's work and recovers, dialogically, canonical texts of the universal literature, in perpetual emulation, from the beginning of the ages to eternity − shortly, everything has always been in fiction.