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Machado de Assis
Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (Portuguese:*[ت’wةگثˆkؤ© mةگثˆة¾i.ةگ mةگثˆتƒadu dت’i ةگثˆsis]), often known by his surnames as Machado de Assis, Machado, or Bruxo do Cosme Velho[1] (21 June 1839 – 29 September 1908), was a Brazilian novelist, poet, playwright and short story writer. Widely regarded as the greatest writer of Brazilian literature,[2][3][4] nevertheless he did not gain widespread popularity outside Brazil in his own lifetime. He was multilingual, having taught himself French, English, German and Greek in later life.

Machado's works had a great influence on Brazilian literary schools of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In 1941, the Brazilian Academy of Letters founded in his honor the Prêmio Machado de Assis (Machado de Assis Prize), the most prestigious literary award in Brazil. José Saramago, Carlos Fuentes, Thomas McGuane and Susan Sontag are among his admirers, and Woody Allen has expressed enthusiasm for one of Machado's novels.[5]

Biography

Birth and adolescence
Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis was born on 21 June 1839 in Rio de Janeiro, then capital of the Empire of Brazil.[6][7][8] His parents were Francisco José de Assis, a mulatto wall painter, the son of freed slaves,[9] and Maria Leopoldina da Câmara Machado, an Azorean Portuguese washerwoman.[7][10] 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.[6][7] 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.[6][7] Machado had a sister who died young.[8] Joaquim studied in a public school, but was not a good student.[6] While helping to serve masses, he met Father Silveira Sarmento, who became his Latin teacher and also a good friend.[6][7]

When Joaquim was ten years old, his mother died, and his father took him along as he moved to Sأ£o Cristأ³vأ£o. Francisco de Assis met the mulatta Maria Inês da Silva, and they married in 1854.[6][7][8] 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.[6] In his adolescence, he met the mulatto Francisco de Paulo Brito, who owned a bookstore, a newspaper and typography.[6] On 12 January 1855, Francisco de Paula published the poem Ella ("She") written by Joaquim, then 15 years old, in the newspaper Marmota Fluminense.[6][7][8] 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.[6] There he also met Francisco Otaviano, journalist and later liberal senator, and Quintino Bocaiأ؛va, who decades later would become known for his role as a republican orator.[11]

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Machado's style is unique, and several literary critics have tried to describe it since 1897.[26] He is considered by many the greatest Brazilian writer of all time, and one of the world's greatest novelists and short story writers. His chronicles do not share the same status. His poems are often misunderstood for the use of crude terms, sometimes associated to the pessimist style of Augusto dos Anjos, another Brazilian writer. 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. Bloom considers him the greatest black writer in Western literature, but his classification of him as black is based on United States's conceptions of race. These are not the same in Brazil.[27]