Machado De Assis's Philosopher or Dog?

From Serial to Book Form

Suriani da Silva

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351559560
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Languages
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

The great Brazilian writer Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (1839-1908) published five of his nine novels as feuilletons in daily newspapers or fortnightly women's magazines. How were the structure and themes of those novels entangled with this serial-publication form? In da Silva's important new study, textual scholarship, critical theory and the history of the book are combined in order to trace this relationship. The most important case study is an extended consideration of Philosopher or Dog? (1891), the novel after which he abandoned the feuilleton. Through a comparison of the serial and book versions of Philosopher or Dog? and a thorough study of the periodical in which it appeared, the international women's magazine The Season, da Silva analyses the changes which the genre novel was undergoing at the end of the nineteenth century: the decline of the serial, and the standardisation of female press. Ana Claudia Suriani da Silva is Tutor of Portuguese at the University of Birmingham and Honorary Research Fellow at Birkbeck College, University of London.

PART I
❖
The Format and Context of Reading

CHAPTER 1
❖
Machado de Assis’s Novels in Serial and Book Form

My research into Machado de Assis’s work as a novelist is based on an analysis of the relationship between his novels and the publishing practices which were prevalent in the second half of the nineteenth century. At the time, novels were essentially published in two formats: as serials, which appeared in pamphlets, daily newspapers, and fortnightly or monthly magazines; and as books. It was common for works of fiction to be published in serial form first and then reprinted in book form once changes (which may or may not have been substantial) had been made to the text. The debut novelist submitted himself to the usual operational requirements of the newspapers and publishers with which he collaborated, and this left marks on the work he produced. These marks can be identified in the numbering and size of the chapters, the temporal evolution of the story, and the presence of elements characteristic of serialized stories in the narrative. In this chapter, we shall see that Machado de Assis’s relationship with the serial evolved progressively until it suffered a crisis with Quincas Borba [Philosopher or Dog?], the text which ended the cycle of novels written by Machado de Assis for serialized publication.

Linguistic versus Bibliographic Code

Machado de Assis published many of his short stories and novels in the Rio de Janeiro press, whether it was in daily newspapers such as O Globo, O Cruzeiro, and Gazeta de Notícias, or in illustrated fortnightly or monthly magazines such as Jornal das Famílias, A Estação and the Revista Brasileira. We must therefore ask ourselves if the editorial constraints of serial publication had any effect on the writing process. Marlyse Meyer has suggested that Machado de Assis invented the serialized short story in Brazil.¹ Before they appeared in a single volume, ‘O segredo de Augusta’, ‘A parasita azul’ and ‘O alienista’, for example, were published in the Jornal das Famílias or in A Estação. The author would have divided the longer short stories into chapters in such a way as to approximate the organization of the narrative into instalments, which were characteristic of the serial.

This chapter aims to explore the relationship between Machado de Assis’s prose and the serialized mode of publication. I am taking as a starting point not only the linguistic aspects of the text but also the bibliographic characteristics of Quincas Borba and the other four novels which were first published by Machado de Assis in the Rio de Janeiro press and which later appeared in one volume. These are:

1. A mão e a luva [The Hand and the Glove]: O Globo, Rio de Janeiro, 1874: 26, 28, 29, 30 September; 1, 6, 7, 8, 15, 16, 19, 21, 23, 24, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31 October; 3 November.

2. Helena: O Globo, Rio de Janeiro, 1876: 6, 7–8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16–17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31 August; 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11 September.

3. Iaiá Garcia [Iaiá Garcia]: O Cruzeiro, Rio de Janeiro, 1878: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 19, 21, 22, 23, 25, 26, 28, 30 January; 4, 5, 6, 9, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16, 19, 20, 22, 25, 26, 27 February; 1, 2 March.

4. Memórias póstumas de Brás Cubas [Epitaph of a Small Winner]: Revista Brasileira, Rio de Janeiro, 1880: 15 March; 1 and 15 April; 1 and 15 May; 1 June; 1 and 15 July; 1 and 15 August; 1 and 15 September; 1 and 15 October; 1 November; 1 and 15 December.

There is no evidence that his debut novel Ressurreição [Resurrection] was published as a serial before the bookseller and publisher B. L. Gamier published it as a book in 1872.² The author’s second novel, A mão e a luva, is therefore the first to appear as a serial. Although Casa velha [Old House], like Quincas Borba, was published in the magazine A Estação, it lies outside the scope of this study (Casa velha appeared between 15 January 1885 and 8 February 1886).³ This is because Casa velha was not published as a single volume during the author’s lifetime; it was Lúcia Miguel Pereira who later located the chapters in the ‘Literary Section’ of the magazine and brought them together in a single volume.⁴ Quincas Borba, the last of Machado de Assis’s novels to be originally published in serial form, is only the writer’s seventh novel. It was followed by Dom Casmurro, Esaú e Jacó [Esau and Jacob] and Memorial de Aires [Counselor Aires’s Memoirs].

TABLE 1.1: Novels published by Machado de Assiss⁵

In serial and book form	Only in book form	Only in serial form
A mão e a luva, 1874	Ressurreição, 1872	Casa velha, 1885
Helena, 1876	Dom Casmurro, 1889
Iaiá Garcia, 1878	Esaú e Jacó, 1904
Memórias póstumas de Brás Cubas, 1881	Memorial de Aires, 1908
Quincas Borba, 1891

This chapter investigates the way in which the serialized novels were transformed into books, a process which, I believe, had some impact on the structure and meaning of the novels. My investigations will involve analysing the publishing context in which each of these five novels was published, as well as their typographic composition and some textual variants. Attention will be paid to:

1. The publication context, including the differences between the format of the book and the periodical, the space set aside for the writer every day in the newspaper or every fortnight in the magazine; the place where printing took place and the company which published the serial and the novel;

2. The typography, including the type and size of the font, the length of the line, the size of the printed area in the book and the number of columns in the newspaper;

3. The variants, which are, in the bibliographic sense, the typographical adjustments which make it possible to reuse the same newspaper matrix for the book. When the number of variations is very great, the text needs to be typeset again in order to print the book. For the purposes of this study, the bibliographic characteristics inherent in the variations are as important as the linguistic contents.

The case of ‘Several Stories’

In fact, it is Machado de Assis himself who encourages us to consider both the bibliographic and the linguistic aspects of his literary texts. Let us remember, for example, the draft of his letter of 8 September 1902 to Mr Lansac, H. Garnier’s representative in Rio de Janeiro.⁶ In it, the writer discusses the proofs of the second edition of the short-story collection Várias Histórias [Several Stories], which was being prepared in France by the Gamier publishing house. In order to understand the case, we need to remember that Várias Histórias is made up of stories selected from Machado de Assis’s collaboration with the Gazeta de Notícias between 1884 and 1891. The first edition in book form had already been published by the Laemmert publishing house in 1895.⁷ The contract between Machado de Assis and Laemmert is dated 18 December 1894. Laemmert paid Machado de Assis 400,000 réis on the signing of the contract, article 5 of which specified that ‘no caso de proceder-se a nova edição, os atuais editores terão a preferência em igualdade de condições’ [in the event that a new edition is published, the current publishers will have preference under the same conditions]. In a letter to Machado de Assis dated 21 March 1902, Laemmert proposed a new edition in book form. At this stage, however, Machado de Assis had already sold ‘a propriedade inteira e perfeita’ [the whole and complete property] of the majority of his work to Garnier.⁸ On 13 March 1902, i.e., one week after receiving Laemmert’s proposal, Machado de Assis wrote to Gamier to propose the same work for 1,200,000 réis. The contract between Machado de Assis and H. Gamier for the reissuing of the book was finally signed on 27 May 1902. In the contract, Machado de Assis sold the whole and perpetual ownership of Várias Histórias for 1,000,000 réis.

In September 1902, when Machado de Assis wrote the draft of the letter to Mr Lansac, the book was already being produced. However, the writer was not impressed by the appearance of the typography. When he returned the first proofs to Gamier, Machado de Assis confessed that he found the typography unsuitable. The previous edition, which was published by Laemmert, consisted of 310 pages, while that of Gamier contained only 230. Machado de Assis believed that the new edition would have the appearance and value of a small book, which would harm its sales. Later in the letter, he compared the line length and print area of the two editions. The author believed that long lines, and a greater number of lines per page, would harm the over...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Dedication
• Machado de Assis’s Fiction Translated into English
• Conventions Adopted
• Introduction
• Part I: THE FORMAT AND CONTEXT OF READING
• Part II: NARRATIVE TECHNIQUE AND THE TWO VERSIONS
• Conclusion: Philosopher or Dog? The Beginning of the End of the Serial?
• Bibliography
• Index