The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas Read Online Free Page A

first the late Brás Cubas has already replied (as the reader has seen and will see in the prologue by him that opens the book) yes and no, that it was a novel for some and wasn’t for others. As for the second, this is how the decedent has explained it: “It’s a question of a scattered work where I, Brás Cubas, have adopted the free form of a Sterne or a Xavier de Maistre. I’m not sure, but I may have put a few fretful touches of pessimism into it.” All those people traveled: Xavier de Maistre around his room, Garrett in his land, Sterne in other people’s lands. It might be said of Brás Cubas that he traveled around life.
    What makes my Brás Cubas a singular author is what he calls “a few fretful touches of pessimism.” There is in the soul of this book, for all of its merry appearance, a harsh and bitter feeling that is a far piece fromits models. It’s a goblet that may carry a similar design but contains a different wine. I shall say no more so as not to get into any criticism of a dead man who painted himself and others according to what seemed best and most authentic to him.
    —
Machado de Assis

To the Reader
     
    That Stendhal should have confessed to have written one of his books for a hundred readers is something that brings on wonder and concern. Something that will not cause wonder and probably no concern is whether this other book will have Stendhal’s hundred readers, or fifty, or twenty, or even ten. Ten? Five, perhaps. The truth is that it’s a question of a scattered work where I, Brás Cubas, have adopted the free-form of a Sterne or a Xavier de Maistre. I’m not sure, but I may have put a few fretful touches of pessimism into it. It’s possible. The work of a dead man. I wrote it with a playful pen and melancholy ink and it isn’t hard to foresee what can come out of that marriage. I might add that serious people will find some semblance of a normal novel, while frivolous people won’t find their usual one here. There it stands, deprived of the esteem of the serious and the love of the frivolous, the two main pillars of opinion.
    Nonetheless, I hope to entice sympathetic opinion and the first trick is to avoid any explicit and long prologue. The best prologue is the one that says the fewest things or which tells them in an obscure and truncated way. Consequently, I shall not recount the extraordinary process through which I undertook the composition of these
Memoirs
, put together here in the other world. It would have been interesting but excessively long and also unnecessary for an understanding of the work.The work itself is everything: if it pleases you, dear reader, I shall be well paid for the task; if it doesn’t please you, I’ll pay you with a snap of the finger and goodbye.
    —
Brás Cubas

I
The Author’s Demise
     
    For some time I debated over whether I should start these memoirs at the beginning or at the end, that is, whether I should put my birth or my death in first place. Since common usage would call for beginning with birth, two considerations led me to adopt a different method: the first is that I am not exactly a writer who is dead but a dead man who is a writer, for whom the grave was a second cradle; the second is that the writing would be more distinctive and novel in that way. Moses, who also wrote about his death, didn’t place it at the opening but at the close: a radical difference between this book and the Pentateuch.
    With that said, I expired at two o’clock on a Friday afternoon in the month of August, 1869, at my beautiful suburban place in Catumbi. I was sixty-four intense and prosperous years old, I was a bachelor, I had wealth of around three hundred
cantos
, and I was accompanied to the cemetery by eleven friends. Eleven friends! The fact is, there hadn’t been any cards or announcements. On top of that it was raining—drizzling—a thin, sad, constant rain, so constant and so sad that it led one of those last-minute faithful friends to