The Alienist and Other Stories of Nineteenth-Century Brazil
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“Simão! Simão, my love!” said his wife, her face bathed in tears.
But the illustrious physician, his eyes bright with scientific conviction, gently pushed her away and closed the door of the Casa Verde. Inside, he dedicated himself to his books and to his own treatment. The chronicles say that he died seventeen months later, having achieved nothing. Some chroniclers conjecture that the alienist was the only true madman in the history of Itaguaí. But that idea stems exclusively from a rumor that circulated after the great man’s death, a rumor that seems doubly questionable because it is attributed to Father Lopes, who always spoke so well of him. Whatever the truth of the matter, Itaguaí buried the great Simão Bacamarte with rare pomp and solemnity.
ENDNOTES
To Be Twenty Years Old!
1. Machado’s characters often brandish the names of books and authors merely to show off. The content of the reference is generally not very important. Sometimes it is unclear whether the speaker has actually read the book that he (invariably a male, because girls got so little education) cites so ostentatiously. Therefore, footnotes will be added to the names of books and authors only when explanation is needed to communicate important content that the modern reader is unlikely to gather from the context. What the modern reader should get from most of these references is simply the prestige of European authors in nineteenth-century Brazil.
The Education of a Poser
1. Machiavelli’s sixteenth-century classic contained behind-the-scenes advice on politics as actually practiced, in contrast to idealized appearances.
The Looking Glass
1. Meaning: “Sister Anne, sister Anne, do you see no help on the way?”
2. Luís Vaz de Camões, a sixteenth-century poet, is often considered Portugal’s greatest writer. Reciting half of his epic poem, Os Lusiadas, chronicling the Portuguese voyages of discovery and seaborne expansion, would be something like reciting half of Shakespeare’s plays.
Chapter on Hats
1. Mariana’s reading is not only redundant but also unchallenging intellectually. Interestingly, the list includes a novel by one of Brazil’s first novelists, Joaquim Manuel de Macedo, but this is not a compliment to Mariana. In the nineteenth century, romantic novels like Macedo’s Moreninha were considered frivolous reading.
2. An extremely popular opera indicative of not-very-sophisticated taste. The Cassino mentioned a few lines ahead was Rio’s most prestigious social club, not a gambling casino in the modern sense.
3. Machado contrasts Mariana’s romantic favorites with Voltaire, his own favorite, whose sharp irony the young poser-to-be’s father warned against.
A Singular Occurrence
1. The Lady of the Camellias was a romantic novel by Alexandre Dumas, later adapted as a drama, about a French courtesan who falls in love with one of her clients and then disappears to spare him embarrassment.